UnitVIII.pdf

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Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VIII Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Discuss the development of Western civil practices. 1.4 Argue the themes of greatest significance to the development of early Western culture.

3. Discuss key individuals in Western culture.

3.6 Identify leaders of the scientific revolution and their contributions.

5. Discuss influences that contributed to the development of Western society. 5.5 Identify the patterns of development of Western culture.

Required Unit Resources Chapter 13: Reformations and Religious Wars, 1500–1600 Chapter 16: Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789, pp. 505–512 Unit Lesson During the 16th and 17th centuries, the universe itself was transformed. The unified edifice built from the spiritual, moral, and physical foundations of the cosmos cracked, creating new worlds. Unit VII considered the two views of human life that arose during the Renaissance:

• as preparation for the afterlife by avoiding and atoning for sin, and • as valuable in and of itself with potential for achievement of human well-being and happiness.

Unit VIII explores the religious, intellectual, and political components of the Protestant Reformation during the period from 1500 to 1650. These include both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations of 1500–1600 and the Copernican Revolution of 1520–1630. The reading for this unit includes all of Chapter 13 and one section of Chapter 16. Why include the new ideas about the universe in Chapter 16? As discussed in previous units, the medieval worldview integrated all aspects of life into one sacred universe and gave every aspect a spiritual meaning. One of the most important lessons in the course is that artifacts cannot be interpreted accurately outside of their historical context. The changes in ideas about the cosmos are an integral part of other developments during this period. To understand the influences and transformation of faith from the beginning to the end of the period, we have to recognize the activity we now call science as a part of culture and politics in the 16th century. The pursuit of profit, power, or purity of belief generated widespread violence during this period of tremendous change. Religious, economic, and political motives continued to be fused in a way that modern students who are used to separation of church and state will have to try to imagine. In 1500, despite growing criticism, there was still one universal western Christian Church. By 1650, Christendom had splintered into many factions and developed stable, distinct denominations. To the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic versions of Christianity were added varieties of Protestant faiths, including Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican (Church of England), and Anabaptist. Yet, very few states offered toleration or separation of church and state by 1650. Wars triggered by religious differences among rulers—such as the Thirty Years’ War—were also shaped by political and economic competitions as conquest and trade expanded around the globe. Religion became a

UNIT VIII STUDY GUIDE Reformations, Revolution, and Religious Warfare: 1500-1630

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potent motive for both authentic reform and for generating loyalty in civil wars, such as that of the Calvinist and Catholic nobles who murderously vied for the French throne. The new emphasis on the authority of each believer ignited social revolution, too, during the Peasant Wars of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE). Ardent faith led to the call for political reform and, at the same time, also led to the persecution of many accused of heresy, witchcraft, and popery—all versions of religious error believed to be the devil’s work. By 1650, the rash of warfare in Europe began to subside as regions enforced specific religions and accommodated dissenting believers. Yet warfare continued overseas where misery increased with the expansion of the African slave trade. By 1650, the universe itself had shifted from earth- to sun-centered, destroying the harmony of celestial, earthly, and spiritual life that scholasticism had created. The Renaissance emphasis on trade and achievement, industriousness and inquiry, and the use of patronage to gain power generated a new worldview and a new universe.

Factors Shaping the Reformations The term reformations sums up the many currents of reform and innovation during this period. We can point to at least three different strands of religious reformation: the Protestant Reformation on the European continent; the unique English Reformation; and the Catholic Church’s own response, known as the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Students may have encountered three historical myths caused by oversimplifications of the Reformation:

• the Reformation split Christendom, • Luther intended to break from the Church as the first “modern” man, and • the Reformation began in Germany (George, 2017).

Instead, the Reformation is best understood as part of the same centuries-long attempt to stabilize belief and produce fidelity or loyalty to one truth. As noted previously, during the centuries prior to the 16th century (1500s), the unity and power of the Church were never complete. From Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 that supported Christian worship to the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches in 1054, there was at least one official voice of Christianity. Even after 1054, the Western popes succeeded in enforcing reforms, such as canon law and ex-communication, which helped them to shape the decisions of secular rulers and to govern their clerics. The multiplication of popes during the second Great Schism or Western Schism (1378–1417) badly hurt the prestige of the papacy. How could there be one truth with more than one pope and one Church hierarchy? As noted in Unit VII, this schism halved Western Christianity due to the interference of secular leaders in the choice of popes. The increasing wealth of the Church brought sharp criticism, and innovations to the printing press enabled more people to read the scripture for themselves, raising both the level of piety and the degree of criticism. A flood of pamphlets and flyers spread debate, propaganda, and invective. As kingdoms or independent cities generated their own borders, cultures, and administrations, the higher ranks of the clergy, often Italian, were seen as intruders interfering in states and refusing to share the burdens of taxation. The fees for sacraments and insertion of the Church into political and social life became more and more suspect, driving humanist discussions of the authenticity of certain sacraments and practices. The pope also incurred the ire of powerful leaders for his role in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor and influence in parceling out other significant positions.

The “Unexpected” Reformation It is easy when looking backward to see the fracture of Christendom as inevitable or predestined. This assumption can mask the actual motives as events unfolded. The greatest critics of the Church were themselves churchmen charged with maintaining the purity of the faith. Doctor of Theology regularly debated issues, and they were engaged by the pope to help settle matters of doctrine. The Scholastic philosophers had used reason to uphold the teachings of the Church, and this is what St. Thomas Aquinas was doing when Christianizing Aristotelian philosophy.

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To weigh in on debates on the authoritative teachings, humanists, such as Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), delved into the scriptures in Hebrew and Greek and studied the writings of the early Church fathers (review Unit IV). Christian humanists throughout Europe, many of whom were priests and monks, frequently engaged in debate on these matters. The first major successful reformer, Martin Luther (1483–1546), was part of this broader community and tradition. Understanding the place of specific people in their communities is key to understanding how the world was re-created in this period.

Luther’s First Goal: Protect the Catholic Church from Corruption Initially a lawyer from a family of prosperous Germanic brewers, Luther entered the monastery in fulfillment of a promise made to God during a dangerous storm. Nevertheless, he was not just a simple, pious monk. He was influential even before he publicly criticized the Church because of his position—a Doctor of Theology with oversight over 11 Augustinian monasteries (George, 2017). Luther’s education reflected his life’s work, which was to aid the pope in ensuring correct belief and practice. He was unaware that the behaviors he was criticizing were the exact behaviors engaged in by his archbishop Albert of Brandenburg and Pope Leo X (1475–1521; pope from 1513–1521). While not knowing that his own archbishop had paid the pope for several Church offices or that the pope sold indulgences to cover the costs of the extensive renovations of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Luther drew up the “95 Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences” (George, 2017). As was the custom to invite debate, he affixed them with wax to the door of Castle Church at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. He did not intend to break with the Church by this action. In fact, he was shocked at his archbishop’s negative reaction. It is important to realize this in order to understand Luther’s subsequent moderation and conservative social decisions discussed below (George, 2017). Indulgences had existed in the early Church; this was a continuation of a Roman tradition of showing mercy to debtors by forgiving taxes or debts. In the early Church, forgiveness of sin had to be followed by an act of penance or restitution. So even after forgiveness, Christians had a debt to fulfill. When martyrs and others who had received forgiveness died without the opportunity to complete the penance, their debt was forgiven. This was the original meaning of indulgence. By the Middle Ages, in principle, indulgences could release a sinner from time spent atoning after death for bad deeds or having to make some other act of restitution. The idea that one could buy forgiveness of sins was a corruption of the actual meaning and intent of indulgences (Kent, 1910). As early as 1215, Church leadership had itself attempted to prevent the sale of indulgences. In the corrupted version of their use, these ways of atoning for sin could be purchased for money that was used to build a cathedral or to support the payment for a Church office or the war against the Turks. Dominican Friar Tetzel traveled through the HRE with lurid stories of dead loved ones crying out to their living family members to rescue them from punishment through purchase of an indulgence. Luther found himself agreeing, then, with the growing chorus of people charging corruption (George, 2017).

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The Sale of Indulgences, a woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger, is one of many illustrations the artist created that criticized the Catholic Church. It juxtaposes the Protestant and Catholic approaches to salvation, with earnest Protestant penitence on the left vs. the Catholic purchase of indulgences in the money-changer’s

house that was the gaudy court of Pope Leo on the right. There is evidence that Holbein relied on Luther’s first German version of the Bible, published in 1522, for inspiration (Grossman, 1961).

(Holbein, ca. 1529)

Ego Sum Papa (I am the Pope) is a 16th century example of anti-clericalism. This is a French woodcut of Pope Alexander VI, father of ruthless Italian prince Cesare Borgia, used by Machiavelli as an example of

successful seizure of power (unknown artist in the late 1500s). (Ego sum Papa, ca. 1500)

His critique fell on welcoming ears greatly multiplied by the impact of the printing press. Unlike reformer John Hus, who had been executed by the Catholic Inquisition a century before, Luther had strong political support.

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In northern Germanic lands within the HRE where cities were rapidly expanding through work and trade, people had already become intolerant of churchmen, a sentiment known as anti-clericalism (Ozment, 1981). The wealth and the increasing political influence of Italian Church leadership in the German regions of the empire annoyed townspeople as well as the German princes, who in 1510 refused to give the pope money to fight the Turks. The German princes sided with the cardinals in the conciliar movement, the belief that councils of cardinals—not the pope alone—had authority to determine religious matters. This method of decision-making was similar to the political diets (pronounced “dee-its”) held by the princes as part of their governance of the HRE. Some people also began to resent the multiplication of sacraments by the reforming popes who had intended to insert the Church into significant events and into the life of the believer (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020; Ozment, 1981). When the pope tried within the year to force Luther to recant, Luther’s own supervisors in the Augustinian order took his side, and his influence spread through the trade routes, the monasteries, and especially wherever there was a printing press. Cities with at least one printing press were more likely to adopt Lutheranism than cities with none (Rubin, 2014). Only about ten percent of the population could read, but the nobility had begun to send their children to humanist schools, particularly in central Europe where the first humanist university was founded in Poland. Propaganda did not require words; often flyers used symbols and pictures of scriptural themes that many Christians recognized, such the caricature of Pope Alexander the VI above and the dueling caricatures below of both Luther and the pope as the beast with seven heads from Christian scripture in the Book of Revelation.

A seven-headed Martin Luther reads a leaflet in this 16th century caricature, Flugblatt Gegen Luther (Leaflet Against Luther) (Flugblatt Gegen Luther, ca. 1550)

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This 16th century caricature depicts a seven-headed papal beast with “kingdom” (Regnum) on the left and “devil” (Diaboli) on the right (The Seven Headed Papal Beast, ca. 1530)

These images of seven-headed monsters are examples of the propaganda generated during the Protestant and Catholic Reformations due to the invention of the printing press. Here Luther (left) and the Pope (right) are represented as the seven-headed beast or symbol of false and corrupt prophets described in the Christian scripture The Book of Revelation. Here, the images reflect the battle for the right to interpret the scripture and define true belief. Importantly, disagreement became monstrous and diabolical, and adherents of one faith or another were dehumanized, facilitating violence against each other.

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Frederick the Wise in Prayer Before the Virgin and Child is a portrait created between 1490 and 1553 by Lucas Cranach the Elder

(Lucas Cranach the Elder, ca. 1490) The prince in Luther’s own state, Frederick III of Wittenberg (1463–1525), a lifelong reform-minded Catholic, was critical to the success of the Protestant Reformation because he protected Luther from the grasp of the pope. The pope knew that the election of a new Holy Roman Emperor was approaching, and that Frederick was a likely winner who would not tolerate the pope’s interference. As scholar Mario Biagioli (1993) has noted, once in Rome, a dissenter was doomed. Biagioli notes that unlike western justice today, a charge was never brought with the intention of finding innocence or accepting criticism but with the intention of forcing the charged to recant and receive penance (PBS – Empires, 2004). To appease Frederick, the pope suggested that a delegation from Rome travel to Saxony to question Luther to see if the issue could be resolved. Rumors of bad intent on the part of the delegation led to Luther’s escape before the delegation could arrest him for refusing to admit errors of faith (Ozment, 1981).

Luther’s New Theology and Rejection of the Catholic Church At this point, the behavior of the papacy itself became the issue, and what was at first only the intention to stop the practice of indulgences expanded into a complete theological reform. The reason for this is clear—the practice of requiring a fee or other service as atonement for sin was enmeshed in the much broader debate about the role of the Church in the salvation of the individual and as the interpreter of God’s will in human history (known as Providence). The key issue was the interpretation of good works. In Catholic theology, good works was interpreted to mean three things:

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1. acts or works required to earn salvation, 2. works performed by believers through the seven sacraments, and 3. works performed by the Church to interpret and guide correct beliefs.

The key issue was whether good works, also known as acts, earned salvation. For Catholics, salvation was gained through both grace and a life of good works. For Luther, grace was a gift that alone could bring salvation. The key difference is the function of the good works. In the first scenario, they are part of deserving or earning salvation. In the second, salvation is not deserved but granted so good works are the effects or products of an already saved soul. For Luther, indulgences were wrong because salvation could not be earned so there was no debt, and, therefore, acts were not relevant to the life of a Christian except as the natural outcome of grace. Further, these two ways of seeing the role of good works related not just to indulgences but also to the authority of the Church. Catholic theology expanded the concept of good works to mean not only acts of kindness and self-control but also acts the Church required or encouraged in believers, such as participating in the seven sacraments and making a pilgrimage. The sacraments were seven rites that conferred grace throughout the life of the believer; these occasions ensured that the Church was indispensable at many points in the life of the believer since ordained priests were needed to perform the sacraments.

• Baptism: Originally, this was an induction into the Church upon the conversion of an adult that evolved into a ritual of welcoming infants into the faith.

• Eucharist: This is the blessing of bread and wine as the scriptures indicate that Christ did on the evening of his arrest during what is known as the Last Supper, which for Catholics makes Christ present in the bread and wine. The rationale for this is complex and has to do with Aristotle’s Four Causes (material, efficient, formal, and final) explained in Unit IV.

• Confirmation: Originally, this was a rite that followed closely upon baptism that evolved into the confirmation or commitment to faith.

• Marriage: This was instituted as a sacrament in the 12th century as part of the papal reforms. • Penance (reconciliation): This involves the confession and forgiveness of sins. • Extreme Unction (sacrament of the sick): This sacrament is conferred upon contraction of a critical

illness or prior to death. • Holy orders: This is ordination (“Medieval Sourcebook,” n.d.).

Good works also meant the works of the Church through history, building understanding and traditions of the scripture as history evolved. Thus, good works also embraced the synods or councils that made decisions about faith. Scripture was illuminated through the ongoing relationship of the Church to God through time. The debate over good works or acts, then, became a debate over the centuries-long and increasing role of the Church as the key intermediary in the relationship between humanity and God. Upon realizing that abuses of indulgences would not be rejected, Luther also realized that the pope could not have the legitimate authority to act as intermediary between God and humankind. According to George (2017), this resulted in the principles of faith below that Luther published in several key pamphlets and books in the German language, including On the Freedom of a Christian (1520).

• Salvation is gained through the gift of God’s grace alone and not earned by good works. • There are not seven but two sacraments communicated in scripture, only baptism and the Eucharist

(blessing of bread and wine). However, some Lutheran denominations also see the confession of sin as a sacrament and ordination was almost also accepted.

• The Eucharist contains the presence of Christ because Christ and God are present in the world. • There is a priesthood of all believers, meaning that the ordained ministers are not intermediaries

between the believer and God and that non-religious life and communities were as worthwhile as religious endeavors and communities. This led to a re-evaluation of secular life, marriage over celibacy, and some support for the revaluation of women, although their freedom and authority was increasingly restricted to Bible study and education of children (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020).

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There were additional reform movements.

• Calvinism: This is the foundation of Presbyterianism and Baptist faiths. John Calvin, born a Frenchman, argued that the anxiety caused by the fear of failing to merit salvation undermined the ability to live a Christian life. His solution was the Doctrine of Predestination, the idea that people were pre-selected by God for salvation (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020).

• Zwinglism: Sharing Luther’s humanist education, including reading the works of Catholic reformer Erasmus, Catholic priest Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) became leader of the Swiss Reformation. He saw the Eucharist as purely a ritual of remembrance and made the Bible the standard for determining the right faith. He rejected the idea instituted by St. Augustine that humans were born with original sin, an idea that both Calvin and Luther retained (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020).

• Anabaptism: This is a radical rejection of all institutions seeking to control individual belief, including governments and even other Protestant denominations, leading to the almost universal persecution of Anabaptists. It insists on adult baptism (Stayer, 1991).

• Anglicanism: Also known as the Church of England with the English monarch and not the pope as head, this denomination was created by Henry VIII’s rejection of the pope’s authority (see below). At first, very similar to Catholicism, Anglicanism shifted to more emphasis on scripture through the influence of Henry’s ministers and Queen Elizabeth I. This is the foundation of the Episcopal Church in the United States (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020).

• The Catholic Reformation: Included here as a reminder that there was a broad movement toward the reform, the Catholic Reformation is seen by most historians as part of a longer movement to stop corruption that predated the Protestant Reformation (Ozment, 1981). The series of meetings known as the Council of Trent (1545–63) affirmed the use of both scripture and Church tradition, as well as faith and works. The council explained further the scriptural foundations of the seven sacraments, took measures to avoid corruption, and made the education of clerics more extensive and rigorous. To ensure correct belief, the Inquisition gained even more power and had the authority to approve or prevent publication of ideas.

Early 17th century, German School painting depicting an imaginary meeting of the heroes of the Protestant Reformation: Heinrich Bullinger, Girolamo Zanchi, John Knox, Huldrych Zwingli, Pietro Martire Vermigli,

Martin Bucer, Jerome of Prague, William Perkins, Jan Hus, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Wycliffe; at the bottom are a devil, pope, cardinal, and monk who cannot extinguish

the light of truth written by these men, no matter how much air they blow on the flame. In the lower right, Wycliffe, who translated the New Testament into English, attempts to subdue them with Scripture.

(Anonymous, n.d.)

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Political Dimensions of Reformation The role of Frederick’s political aims in protecting Luther has been noted. Political ideas also accompanied new ideas about the nature of salvation. Howard (2005) argues that the transfer of authority from the centralized Catholic Church hierarchy to each individual reader of scripture created both fundamentalism (necessity of one unified, true reading) and pluralism (embrace of multiple or individual personal interpretation) that churches and states have continued to grapple with in subsequent centuries. Reformers’ theological ideas prompted political ideas in support of obedience to the state, or reformation of the state, or freedom from the state. Believing in rule by divine right (ordained by God), some Protestants—including Luther and Henry VIII—affirmed the need to obey civil rulers, yet others came closer to articulating a right of rebellion that helped shape later constitutional governments. The Peasant Wars offer an early example of this tension between the proposed freedom of each believer to interpret the Bible and the idea that nevertheless, there could be errors in reading the Bible. Compared to other reformers, Luther’s social ideas were conservative, meaning that he did not seek to disrupt the social hierarchy or to remake society. Lutheranism was compatible with secular governments but did not seek to use them to order civic life in a particular way to bring salvation. He rejected the electrifying rationales of some of the Anabaptist preachers claiming the serfs were not required by God to serve their earthly lords since this was a form of idolatry—the worship of men instead of direct worship of God. Led by Thomas Müntzer, the peasants of the German lands in the Holy Roman Empire rose up in revolt in 1524–1525, a war that was brutally crushed, leaving 100,000 peasants dead. Luther did not support the peasants despite encouraging individual reading of the Bible and belief in the priesthood of all believers (Stayer, 1991). Anabaptists renounced civil society as corrupt and sought to escape it, some as Puritans in the New World. Calvin created a society and government based on his principles of faith; after a false start and initial ejection from Geneva, he did successfully merge church and state in Geneva. Zwingli also sought to create a Swiss state governed by Christian morality, with government as an aid in shaping belief and behavior. For Zwingli, church and state were merged into one, with God as the governor. Calvin taught that all earthly leaders should be followed but not when they disobeyed God’s laws. John Knox promoted this idea in Scotland, as did the Puritans in England. An unjust ruler had no claim to power (Macleod, 2009). While this sounds familiar to students living in 21st century democracies, the goal was not religious freedom but theocracy—a religious realm ordained by God. The famous 18th century Enlightenment philosophies and revolutions, including the American Revolution, take this idea a further step toward religious tolerance and separation of church and state, with rights and freedoms God built into the universe.

The English Reformation: A Unique Case The political causes and outcomes of the Reformation in England reveal it to be distinct from the Protestant Reformation in the rest of Europe. Independent of much of the critique that generated the above reforms, Henry VIII (1491–1547) rejected the authority of the pope and made himself the head of the Church of England. Historians like Newcombe (1995) see the resulting Church as initially essentially Catholic until subsequent changes were introduced through the influence of Thomas Cromwell and Elizabeth I. The English Reformation began primarily with the desire of a faithful Catholic King Henry VIII to gain the pope’s permission to marry again. According to one simplified version, Henry was a selfish, arrogant man who split the Church to satisfy his own lust and greed. In this view, men like Thomas Cromwell, influenced by Reformation ideas on the European continent, were able to steer him away from obedience to the Church. In reality, Henry was an intelligent, well-educated, humanist scholar and writer, and a Renaissance man whose tracts defending the seven sacraments caused the pope to name him “Defender of the Faith.” Aware of the centuries of warfare prior to his father’s reign, Henry faced a political dilemma. How could he avoid reigniting another war among competing noble families for the throne if he had no male heir to continue the line of the Tudor kings? The question was part of his broader quest to consolidate the power of the monarchy. His older brother, Arthur, was engaged or betrothed as a child to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and aunt to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who controlled Germany, Spain, and France. This was a very advantageous marriage designed both to protect the Tudor kings from internal

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threats (ambitious nobles) and external threats (from the emperor himself). After his brother’s early death, Henry requested and received permission to annul that marriage so that he himself could marry the older Catherine and preserve the political advantage. When Catherine did not produce that necessary male heir, Henry blamed her age but also the sin of inappropriately marrying his brother’s wife. He sought a second annulment so that he could marry the younger Anne Boleyn, with whom he was infatuated. Under pressure from Catherine’s relatives, Charles V, and his heir, Philip II, the new Pope Clement VII refused (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020). Henry was a savvy political strategist who tried repeatedly and almost succeeded in gaining the throne of France. His break from the papacy to marry Anne Boleyn enabled him to consolidate power over England by forcing his subjects to acknowledge his position as head of the Church in England and his divine right to rule in the Act of Supremacy in 1534. In the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act in 1536, Henry confiscated all Church land and possessions, infusing his coffers with new wealth. Was the seizure due to greed or political acumen? That wealth enabled him to purchase the loyalty of nobles, create new nobles beholden to him, and generate a centralized bureaucracy. He also built up his navy and secured parliamentary acts assuring the succession of the children of his subsequent marriages. He took formal possession of Wales. Brutal suppression of Catholics who tried to unseat Henry or refused to swear to the oath of supremacy ensued, including the execution of loyal Catholic and inquisitor, Thomas More, Henry’s former Lord Chancellor and author of Utopia (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020).

The Age of Religious Warfare and Persecution Nowhere were civil wars more gruesome or the state more blood-soaked than in France where the battle raged between the Catholic heirs of King Henry II—the powerful Catholic Guise nobles—and the French Calvinist Condé nobles. Calvinism was attractive to French nobles for spiritual reasons and because it provided a rationale for rejecting the claim of Henry’s weak sons to the throne. Again, if kingship is a divine gift, then there is no right to rebel against the will of God. Calvin questioned whether a king who did not protect the true faith and did not behave accordingly could be divinely chosen, leaving the door open for usurpation of the throne. The struggle culminated in bloodshed in 1572—the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, during which up to 20,000 French Protestants were killed. Fighting for the throne, Henry of Navarre, who eventually had to convert from Protestantism to Catholicism to rule, ensured through the Edict of Nantes (1598) that Huguenots were free to live in particular areas unmolested (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020). It is tempting to see this as the beginning of religious toleration, but the Huguenots still had to flee France after Henry was murdered by a Catholic subject. In the HRE, something closer to tolerance developed because Charles V needed all the German princes to unify behind him in battle against the Turks to the east. He tried to heal the breach by inviting the German princes to report on the state of religion in their realms. He was of course unsuccessful, but this was not inevitable (Ozment, 1981). The resulting Augsburg Confession (1530) laid out Lutheran beliefs. Importantly, the first ten articles demonstrate agreement with the Catholic Church on the nature of God, humanity, and sin (George, 2017). Because of his military need for unity and due to an alliance among Protestant princes and rulers, known as the Schmalkaldic League, war did not break out among the German provinces. Instead, Charles allowed each prince to determine the religion within his realm (Ozment, 1981). The Netherlands were not as fortunate—as first Charles and then Philip II, Charles’ heir, brutally suppressed Protestantism. Protestants in the Netherlands who hated adornment of Catholic Churches rioted and ruined many treasured icons. In revenge, Phillip sent the Duke of Alba, who instituted the Council of Blood to catch and prosecute Protestants—and bloody it was, once executing 1500 men in a single day. The fighting persisted until 1608 when, with the aid of an alliance with England, the new United Provinces (Dutch Republic) emerged out of the North with both Protestant and Catholic regions and a form of religious tolerance. England had been famously victorious against Philip II of Spain whose armada was defeated by Sir Francis Drake and the forces of Elizabeth I in 1588. Elizabeth I was able to stabilize the kingdom by listing the obligations of non-Protestants but otherwise leaving their possessions intact. They were not, however, able to

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hold certain offices or be educated at certain universities, restrictions that remained in place until the 1930s (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020). The German regions of the HRE escaped war, but persecution on the basis of religion within these principalities exploded, including executions of papists and Protestants, Jews, and above all, witches, who were predominantly female. While the hunting and persecution of witches occurred throughout the West by Protestants and Catholics, it was most pronounced in Scotland and the German territories. Anxiety about true belief as well as more secular factors, such as economic advantage and control of women, fueled the execution of so-called witches. The height of the witch hunts coincided with the height of religious warfare (Pavlac, 2009). The witches themselves ranged from outspoken women, to envied women of position and wealth, to village wise women skilled in healing whose medicines were mistaken for potions and spells, to those women and wizards who actually did believe they could control nature through manipulation of spirits. The exact motives for accusations varied from place to place. Interpretations of history of the Salem witch hunts offer multiple explanations:

• ingestion of an unknown fungus that caused mass hallucination; • acute anxiety for survival of the New World communities; • starvation and illness; • avarice set on robbing older, propertied women of their holdings; • resentment due to class differences; and • manipulation by key leaders to gain control (Brandt, 2014).

Overall, the number of dead, mostly women, is estimated at between 40,000 and 60,000. This shows that persecution through charges of witchcraft was one of the greatest impacts of religious strife (Weisner-Hanks et al., 2020).

(Left)Torture of Witches, woodcut by an unknown artist (Torture of Witches, ca. 1590)

(AxelHH, 2011) (Right) Image of witches being hanged

([Witches Being Hanged], 1655)

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(Above) Pictured is the title page to Daemonologie, a text written by King James I of England in 1597 that

contains three sections: magic and necromancy, sorcery and witchcraft, and spirits and specters. (King James I, 1603)

Another book, the Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, was published in 1487, but despite the

rejection of the existence of witches and magic by the Roman Catholic Church, civil governments relied on it. It was published 13 times between 1487 and 1520 and 16 times between 1574 and 1669.

(Malleus Maleficarum, n.d.)

Shared Seeds: The Reformation and the Revolution The story of the transformation in worldview that was called the Scientific Revolution is often distorted due to oversimplification in earlier versions lacking the extensive use of archives to which historians now have access. The over-simplified story is that the Scientific Revolution describes the destruction of the intervention of God in the universe and the progress made in the less oppressive atmosphere of new Protestant countries in northern Europe. Myths about the flat world or the unmoving earth caused by superstition or literal readings of the Bible were exploded thanks to a new spirit of inquiry. In this view, the Protestant Reformation is part of the cause of the Scientific Revolution, motivating believers to understand the world with accuracy in order to use it well, as God intended. The Roman Catholic Church, in this simplified story, is the stock villain, either ignorant or intent on maintaining the ignorance of the people by persecuting scientists. Galileo is the victim of that ignorance, as he tried to convince leaders of the Catholic Church of the truth of the sun-centered solar system. The above version contains errors about what people actually knew. It masks the complexity of motives and reactions to new ideas in both Protestant and Catholic Christianity. Here are some scholarly versions that offer more insight by considering advances in science within their political and cultural context. The Merton Thesis Robert Merton, an American sociologist, saw the new science as the fruit of the Puritan work ethic. The idea was that industrious believers increased the value of utility and encouraged innovation by putting their lives to practical use. They believed that to harness nature or to make it useful glorified God, revealed God’s action in the world, and brought success that marked those favored by God. This atmosphere led to assigning

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increasing value to understanding nature that spurred science (Merton, 1974). Merton’s view was criticized for failing to include the development of mathematics and theoretical physics, or to acknowledge or explain the inquisitiveness of Catholic scientists, such as Copernicus, Pascal, Descartes, and Galileo (Becker, 1984). Gradualism Betty Jo Dobbs (2000) argued that in fact there was no revolution at all. She maintained that historians would not think in terms of revolution if they would only look at developments in science within their own times, part of other developments across society. Instead, she argued, science was an integral part of ways of interacting with nature that evolved gradually and were completely embedded in other social developments. Revolutions as shift in worldview Mentioned in Unit IV, Thomas Kuhn (1962) argued that knowledge of the natural world shifts from one worldview or paradigm to another almost instantaneously and so the revolution is in perception. Problem-solving ultimately leads to a completely new theory or outlook that reinvents the understanding of the world, methods, and training. The paradigms encourage historians to look at the cultural contexts that help to define new problems. This interpretation also rejects the assumption that one worldview is better than another, instead suggesting that each world works until it does not work anymore. Cultural Scholars Mario Biagioli (1993) and Lawrence Lipking (2014) see Galileo and other innovators as the same as other artists and writers who had to navigate the same systems of patronage. People like Galileo, their supporters, and detractors were influenced by and reacting to their social situations. The more complex version of the development of science places it within this context:

• the Protestant, English, and Catholic Reformations; • persecution of heretics and witches; • the scholastic recovery of ancient texts; • the humanist intellectual program of testing those texts against observations of the world; • patronage systems and self-fashioning; • the rise of humanist universities; • voyages of discovery and the recognition of the limitations of conventional knowledge; • early modern capitalism; and • agricultural advances.

Seen in context, the transition from an earth-centered universe to a sun-centered, infinite universe arose out of the same intellectual context as the Protestant Reformation—the humanist pursuit of authenticity and accuracy, as well as commitment to enhancing human life. The same political contest—that ongoing battle for authority among monarchs, nobles, and churchmen—shaped the fates of Galileo and Luther. Because accounts oversimplify due to the need for brevity, the role of Catholic Church members and Church patronage in the new science is not widely known, although scholars have known about it for approximately a century. Our textbook does not make this mistake and is essential to understanding the detailed developments. Here, we focus on how the Church promoted science and still prosecuted Galileo Galilei. The Church sponsored the attempts of religious people like Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) to find a solution to the errors in the Ptolemaic system in order to set an accurate annual Church calendar. However, the Church was embroiled in challenges to its authority and required that his findings be used only as a model and not as the true description of the cosmos. Upon his death, his new model of the solar system was published with Church approval in 1543—On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres or, as it is often called, De Revolutionabus.

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(Left) Ptolemaic system: The labeling represents the belief that the universe is a closed system of concentric

(rings around each other) crystal spheres to which the stars, planets, and sun are attached. (Apianus, 1524)

(Right) Copernican system: Copernicus’s image presents the new order of our solar system with the sun at

the center; it also indicates the separate orbit of the moon. (Copernicus, 1543)

Scholars from the Jesuit monastic order in particular pursued the mathematical implications of the new model, and many of them were friends of Galileo (Biagioli, 1993). The Jesuit order’s monks were highly educated, and many were natural philosophers and mathematicians. They protected Galileo, also Catholic, and promoted mathematics and physics (known as mechanics) in newly established academies of science. These were similar to the French academy started by a Jesuit Catholic priest and mathematician, Marin Mersenne. The networks of patronage developed during the Renaissance shaped the endeavors of natural philosophers just as they shaped opportunities for every other kind of creator of art, architecture, or knowledge. Galileo became the teacher to the sons of one of the most powerful families in Europe, the de Medici family who were famous for their support of arts and philosophy in Renaissance Florence. In fact, it was through the command of a de Medici, Grand Duke Cosimo I, that painter Vasari wrote about the arts in Florence, coining the name Renaissance. Galileo astutely used patronage to protect himself and to generate the freedom to pursue his ideas without the restrictions on thought that university positions could impose. He was a master of courtly ways, delighting his patron’s guests with ideas and demonstrations (PBS – Empires, 2004). With this context in mind, the political nature of the struggle between the pope and Galileo and the similarity between his situation and Luther’s becomes apparent. There is no doubt that the Inquisition resulted in the arrest, torture, and execution of people who wrote or preached about a world that did not conform to the Church’s teachings. Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar, was burned at the stake in 1500 because he preached that there was an infinite universe and type of world soul, an idea known as pantheism. Yet, the Church did not primarily persecute Galileo for holding his scientific ideas. They did not reject his work because they were superstitious or unable to imagine a universe that did not match their common-sense observation of the rising and setting sun. Nor were they unable to understand that the Bible’s account of the position of the sun and earth was not literally true; the Catholic Church did not require literal interpretations of the Bible.

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Then why did they arrest Galileo? Galileo failed to obey the pope’s command that he not present the sun-centered model as the real situation of the earth and sun. At a time when the pope was already wrestling with secular leaders and trying to reinstate the right of the Church to interpret the faith, Galileo’s ideas were particularly threatening to that right (Biagioli, 1993). Galileo confirmed that Copernicus’s model of a sun-centered universe reflected actual reality through a series of observations. When Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens, his observations seemed to show that the Ptolemaic or Aristotelian model could not be right (see depictions of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems above).

• Heavenly bodies were not perfect as shown in the Ptolemaic model, as evidenced by the pockmarked surface of the moon and sunspots.

• There were no crystal spheres moving the stars and planets. • Jupiter had four moons that revolved around the planet, suggesting that the universe was not a series

of concentric spheres as illustrated above. • Venus showed phases, like the moon waxing and waning, which could only be produced if it circled

the sun, not the earth (PBS – Empires, 2004). Galileo at first published his discoveries without noting the implications for the motion of the earth. He dedicated his publication of The Starry Messenger (1610) to his patrons, the de Medici family, by calling the four moons of Jupiter the Medicean Stars. Cosimo II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, had them painted into the frescos covering the ceilings of his palace, as if his power were ordained by the heavens themselves. As Biagioli (1993) notes, what better dedication could there be than eternal stars that would outlast any work of art? Realizing the danger of publication yet unable to resist, Galileo decided to write about the reality of the solar system as if it were a fictional conversation among friends. The publication of The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, Ptolemaic and Copernican (1632) was approved by the Church in Florence, but Galileo was unable to get permission from Rome. He nevertheless went ahead. The pope, who considered himself Galileo’s admirer, was incensed that Galileo would publish the data and arguments necessary to support the reality of the Copernican system, even in a fictional dialogue, after being told not to do so. Worse, Galileo wrote in Italian and not Latin, just as Luther had translated the Bible into German, sparking translations in many languages. Even worse, Galileo put the Church’s public, conservative position in the mouth of a character called Simplicio, or Fool. The de Medicis tried to protect Galileo, but the damage in an age of attack on Catholic authority was done, and the book was destroyed. The de Medicis needed the pope as their own patron in order to sustain their own authority, and so Galileo was forced to appear at a trial in Rome, to recant his position, and to live under house arrest until his death (Biagioli, 1993). Frederick Elector of Saxony had the power to successfully protect Luther; Cosimo II failed to protect Galileo and withdrew his patronage. The roots of the Scientific Revolution in the patronage and political systems of Renaissance Italy are clear (Biagioli, 1993). The Church was among the patrons who drove reform and innovation, but Galileo crossed the line the Church had set. What line was that, specifically? Galileo stepped over a political line, flaunting papal authority when he published in Italian and with the aim of circulating the arguments for Copernicanism publicly. It was not what he thought but that he made it public that brought the Inquisition down on him and destroyed his favored position in the court of Cosimo II. A change in the placement of the world would disrupt the consistency of the entire edifice that knit ideas about sin and salvation to the central position of the earth. Because Galileo’s challenge came close on the heels of Luther’s, it threatened to further erode the pope’s right to require obedience and claim to guide salvation. Therefore, we close this period and the course with innovations that would shape the future, innovations that were supported and suppressed depending on politics as well as faith and science.

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College History: Knowledge and Ways of Knowing Imagine walking into a great archive with vast stores of documents and other artifacts drawn together from libraries across Europe. How would you create one story out of all of that data? Jules Michelet, one of the first historians of the French Revolution of 1789, wrote about his experience moving through the new archives the revolutionary government created from the captured contents of private and Church libraries. Thinking about the acres of documents, Michelet realized that only the people in documents whose dust he disturbed would appear in his 1844 History of France (Michelet, 2009). He knew his accounts depended on which documents he examined. Like Michelet, this class has consistently made the point that histories are shaped by the kinds of data consulted. This is why the learning outcomes produced by the American Historical Association for college students insist that we accept that our knowledge will evolve, that there are multiple valid causes of events and multiple valid perspectives on them, and that we must use critical thinking to continually evaluate opinions about history. We commit to entertaining contradictory perspectives and data to help us see the underlying foundations of our own perspectives. Are these not the methods the Renaissance and Christian humanists applied to philosophy, scripture, and the natural world? Learning about Western societies teaches us how new methods of knowing emerged during this period. Further, the goal of learning about this emergence is also to learn those new methods—critical thinking, evidence-based opinion, and evaluation of information and interpretation. For the college history student, then, the fruits of Western civilization are not only facts to remember but also habits of mind to develop.

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