Cunnan - User contributions [en]

Protestant Reformation

2003-11-11T15:09:22Z

210.9.142.25:

This is Anton here, and I'd like to warn you that my own biases are going to fall into this topic. This is also very much work-in-progress ... it also needs a major rewrite, which is in progress. I wanted to stay away from it, but to get it to make sense, I'm goanna hafta talk about Charlemagne, the Donation of Constantine, Lay Investiture, One Sword, Two Swords, Emperors Barefoot in the Snow and the rest of it ...

To get it up front at the start, I think that by the time all the smoke cleared, the Reformation was (a) a continuation of medieval Church-State relations, and (b) on balance a Bad Thing.

OK, with that out of the way, let's start at the beginning, with the Roman Empire.

Rome conquered the world, and she made her Emperors Gods.

This meant that Christians, who could worship no other God, got on badly with the Empire, and many Christians were martyred. A good example of early Christian/Imperial relations is here ... http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pliny1.html

Eventually, the Empire and the Church came to co-exist, and Constantine made Christianity the State Religion of the Empire.

In the Greek, or Eastern half of the Empire, things pretty much continued that way, at least until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

In the western half of the Empire, slowly but inexorably, the Empire changed and mutated, until there was little that was recognisably Roman at all.

One of the things that was recognisable is that cities still had Bishops - and these Bishops were one of the few sources of continuity and certainty in a world consumed by famine, plague, disorder and war.

Many religious people donated land and other wealth to the Church, and many Bishoprics and so on started to get some quite impressive land holdings. Some cities in Germany, such as Mainz and Cologne, even ended up with the [[temporal]] ruler being the local Archbishop, who was also the local [[spiritual]] authority.

Talking of Donations, I should probably mention at this point the Donation of Constantine, a document that had the Roman Emperor Constantine giving the Papacy "Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa and Italy and the various islands". A copy of the document is here http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/donatconst.html

The ink was almost certainly dry on the parchment when it was first used to support Papal claims to certain lands in northern Italy in about 750 AD.
Even [[Nineteenth Century]] pro-Catholic historians now admit it was a blatant forgery, but it was regarded as genuine through the entire Medieval period, although it's importance was disputed

In Rome, on Christmas Day of AD 800, a particularily successful Frankish King, Charlemange, was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III.

This was widely seen as uniting [[temporal]] and [[spiritual]] power in one person - a divinely appointed Emperor.

And if an Emperor is appointed by God, then surely he can appoint Bishops and so on, right ?

This was known as Lay Investiture - that a [[secular]], or Lay, person could invest Bishops.

The fact that the Emperor had a big army that could ... convince ... many members of the Church to see things his way too, especially if, say, an Election for the Pope was coming up.

This is what happened with the Emperor Otto III, who around 1000 AD with the help of his army managed to get his brother appointed as Pope, and then put him back after an upset Roman citizenry threw him out. He also appointed the next Pope, Sylvester II, who was rumoured to be a magician.

This was probably the peak of successful Imperial intervention in Papal affairs, although Emperor Charles V's army did do a rather solid job in sacking Rome in 1527 (in case you are reading ahead, Charles V was definitely a Catholic when his army did this. Disputes exist whether they did it with or without orders ... )

Seventy years later, we saw a long, messy and involved struggle between Emperor Henry IV, and his handpicked anti-Pope Clement III, and Pope Gregory VII, and his handpicked anti-Emperor Rudolph II, in a struggle about (a) whether the Emperor or the Pope should be able to control who gets what positions in the Church, and (b) who can sack whom and when.

One of the key people in the war was the redoubtable Mathilde of Canossa, ruling Countess of Tuscany. If she had backed the Emperor rather than the Pope, Gregory would almost certainly have been deposed. A good web page about her is here http://www.geocities.com/mizzmelisende/woman65.html

In the end, a compromise was established, whereby the Pope would mostly appoint Bishops, but the Emperor would confirm them. Note that this deal only applied in Germany ...

The basic idea promulgated by the Papacy was that Christendom should have one Church, with a consistent doctrine, just like it should have one secular head - the Emperor. OK, OK, those Greeks over in [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople Constantinople] should have been part of a Universal and Catholic Church too, but they wouldn't agree on certain political and doctrinal points.

This meant that the church needed one Bible in one language - [[Latin]]. Imagine the problems if my translation of the Bible says 'Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live' and yours says 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'.

Now, things got complicated when you had over-powerful Emperors like Otto III who made a habit of [[Investiture dispute|appointing Popes]], or overpowerful Popes like Innocent III (*) who made a habit of sacking Emperors, but after a long series of wars in the eleventh, tweith and thirteenth centuries where Pope tried to have Emperors sacked and vice-versa, it pretty much got sorted out that the Pope wouldn't intervene in politics if the Emperor didn't try and tell him what to do.

In short, the Temporal power and the Spiritual power compromised, and didnt try to muscle in on each others territories.

This basic rule also more-or-less applied with independent kingdoms like England and France, although the issue of who should appoint people to those nice, rich Church positions kept cropping up - but no King tried to tell the Church what should or should not be doctrine.

(I feel I am not paraphrasing John of Paris too badly if I say his view on it was 'Does it say France anywhere ? No ? Then Boniface can get stuffed - he has to pay taxes like every other landowner in France')..

Time rolled on, and the fourteenth century saw the seat of the Pope was moved to Avignon in France. Well, more accurately, the seat of one of the three Popes moved to Avignon, with a pro-French Pope there, an anti-French Pope in Rome, and a third Pope in Pisa, and all of them exchanging insults, excommunications and interdicts.

Not good for a Universal Church, huh.

Eventually, things got sorted out with the Council of Constance in 1414-18, which got things back to an even footing, with one Pope, who lived in Rome.

The wars between Pope and Emperor had a side effect; northern and central [[Italy]] became independent from both the Pope and the Emperor, and Milan, Genoa, Venice and Florence started carving out their own little Empires.

Unfortunately, the same idea occurred to a gentleman by the name of Guiliano della Rovere, better known as Pope Julius II, who was elected on his third attempt in 1503, but basically controlled the Papacy from 1484 or so. To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia "the chief task of his pontificate he saw in the firm establishment and the extension of the temporal power. For the accomplishment of this task no pope was ever better suited than Julius, whom nature and circumstances had hewn out for a soldier".

To be slightly fairer to Julius, if the Papacy is a Temporal power with it's own lands, castles and army, then it is going to be more difficult for it's potential temporal enemy (eg German Emperor, King of France, Roman people etc) to force it into, for example, selecting their preferred Papal candidate at swordpoint. Not That That Ever Happened, Of Course.

Note that temporal powers need armies, and armies need money.

Temporal powers also need to cut deals with other temporal powers; it is notable that while the Papal-led League of Cambrai in 1508 was theoretically aimed at the Turks, it actually spent its time smacking the shit out of Venice.

Venice was the only power that could prevent the rise of Turkish power in the Mediterranean, Constantinople having fallen to the Turks in 1453, and Turkish power continued to rise until the failed Siege of Vienna in 1529.

Note that this base politicing by the Papacy did not go un-noticed by Europe at large - it is difficult to display moral leadership of Christendom as a whole when you are conspiring to rip some dependant city off another Italian power, or to prevent them doing the same to you.

A favoured method of raising money for the army and the building program was selling [[indulgence]]s - a method of having sins forgiven in exchange for a cash payment.

I'm sure we can all see what sort of abuses this could lead to.

The combination of the prestige of the Church being reduced by it's involvement as a Temporal power in secular wars against Christians, combined with the abuses inherent in raising large amounts of cash to pay for the above (well, that and Julius' building and art program, including things like St Pauls and the Sistine Chapel ceiling) laid the foundation for the Reformation that was about to happen ...

The occasion of the Reformation was [[Martin Luther]]'s protest in Wittenburg in 1517 against various abuses to do with the sale of Indulgences. See http://www.gty.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm for a copy <br>.

But what was more important - in my view - was not what end the Reformation had in mind, but what it was not, and how it was to be accomplished.

Luther's reforms as presented to the German Princes in his 1520 "Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" were not a universal reform of the Christian Church but a reform specifically limited to Germany. A copy of the letter is here http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-01.html

The reforms he proposed in this letter were for Germany alone ; they were an abandonment of the idea of a universal Christian Church.

Secondly, the mechanism for Reform is to be the temporal princes of Germany ; they are to take control of appointments to the Church in their principalities, of Church taxes, of laws over moral affairs, and so on.

Luther accused Popes of wanting to become Emperors ; by allowing the Temporal power to have power over church taxes and appointments his reform permitted Emperors to become Popes.

This Prince-based scheme of Reform was reinforced by the events of the Peasants War, a great German peasants rebellion in 1524-26 ; his pamphlet, 'Against the Peasants' he says that

"First they have sworn to their true and gracious rulers to be submissive and obedient, in accord with God's command, 'Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,' and, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.' But since they have deliberately an sacrilegiously abandoned their obedience, and in addition have dared to oppose their lords, they have thereby forfeited body an soul, as perfidious, perjured, lying, disobedient wretches and scoundrels are wont to do."

Let us compare this to what Luther, in his Open Letter, says about the duty of temporal powers to rebel against the Pope ;

"Therefore, when necessity demands, and the pope is an offense to Christendom, the first man who is able should, a faithful member of the whole body, do what he can to bring about a truly free council. No one can do this so well as the temporal authorities, especially since now they also are fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, "fellow-spirituals," fellow-lords over all things, and whenever it is needful or profitable, they should give free course to office and work in which God has put them above every man. "

Wittenburg was part of the lands of the Elector of Saxony, [[Frederick the Wise]] and as well as the sale of Indulgences, the Germans had a couple of objections to the way the Church worked.

Firstly, if the Church in general and the [[Monastaries]] in particular were immune to taxation, then this made the burden of the costs of local defence worse on everyone else.

Secondly, the Church was clearly more interested in raising money to play politics in Italy than in the care and saving of souls.

Thirdly, the Monasteries tend to buy little and sell much on local markets, thus depressing the prices for everyone else.

Fourthly, many corrupt and incompetant church officials existed, and the Church was doing little about them.

Finally, there should be a German Church for the German people.

(as a side note, recent research by Michael Wilks among others shows that [[Lollardry]] was not a peasant-based rebel movement, but rather absolutely based around the English court, and with the tacit and overt support of the English State. The kid-glove "sentences" for heresy should have been a giveaway)

(*) Note that as a good general rule, Popes called Innocent or Pius are neither pious nor innocent. Also note that popes called Victor generally lose.

=== Short Bibliography :===
*Mattingly, Renaissence Diplomacy (great summary of the Italian Wars, among other things)
* The Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ (but keep your bias filter turned on ; this is Rome's version of what happened)
* Project Wittenburg http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/wittenberg-home.html (the Lutheran reply to the Catholic Encyclopedia)
* Luther's Against the Peasants is at http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/peasants1525.html
* Millor (ed) The Letters of John of Salisbury (John was the point man for the Archbishop of Cantebury during the Papal succession crisis of 1159. He gives a participants view of a struggle between pope and Imperial-backed anti-pope)
* Internet Medieval Sourcebook http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html (it's all good)
* Lynn Nelson's lectures at UKansas are excellent ; http://www.ku.edu/kansas/medieval/108/lectures/index.html
* Giles of Rome ; pro-papal theorist. Read his stuff, and you know why his side lost
* Matthew of Paris ; pro-Gallician theorist. Pretty readable.

* Wikipedia has a substantial article at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation

Spiritual

2003-11-11T14:14:41Z

210.9.142.25:

Spiritual, or Ecclesiastical

To do with the next world.

A spiritual or ecclesiastical authority would be a Bishop, an Archbishop, a Pope and so on.

Note that the spiritual authorities can't kill anyone, even if they are a heretic, a witch or similar. Thats what [[temporal]] authorities are useful for.

Temporal

2003-11-11T14:13:12Z

210.9.142.25:

Temporal :

To do with this world.

A temporal authority is a King, a Prince, a Mayor - someone who does not have religious authority.

Temporal authorities were allowed to kill people in the Middle Ages.

Protestant Reformation

2003-11-11T14:11:52Z

210.9.142.25:

This is Anton here, and I'd like to warn you that my own biases are going to fall into this topic. This is also very much work-in-progress ... it also needs a major rewrite, which is in progress. I wanted to stay away from it, but to get it to make sense, I'm goanna hafta talk about Charlemagne, the Donation of Constantine, Lay Investiture, One Sword, Two Swords, Emperors Barefoot in the Snow and the rest of it ...

To get it up front at the start, I think that by the time all the smoke cleared, the Reformation was (a) a continuation of medieval Church-State relations, and (b) on balance a Bad Thing.

OK, with that out of the way, let's start at the beginning, with the Roman Empire.

Rome conquered the world, and she made her Emperors Gods.

This meant that Christians, who could worship no other God, got on badly with the Empire, and many Christians were martyred. A good example of early Christian/Imperial relations is here ... http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pliny1.html

Eventually, the Empire and the Church came to co-exist, and Constantine made Christianity the State Religion of the Empire.

In the Greek, or Eastern half of the Empire, things pretty much continued that way, at least until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

In the western half of the Empire, slowly but inexorably, the Empire changed and mutated, until there was little that was recognisably Roman at all.

One of the things that was recognisable is that cities still had Bishops - and these Bishops were one of the few sources of continuity and certainty in a world consumed by famine, plague, disorder and war.

Many religious people donated land and other wealth to the Church, and many Bishoprics and so on started to get some quite impressive land holdings. Some cities in Germany, such as Mainz and Cologne, even ended up with the [[temporal]] ruler being the local Archbishop, who was also the local [[spiritual]] authority.

Talking of Donations, I should probably mention at this point the Donation of Constantine, a document that had the Roman Emperor Constantine giving the Papacy "Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa and Italy and the various islands". A copy of the document is here http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/donatconst.html

The ink was almost certainly dry on the parchment when it was first used to support Papal claims to certain lands in northern Italy in about 750 AD.
Even [[Nineteenth Century]] pro-Catholic historians now admit it was a blatant forgery, but it was regarded as genuine through the entire Medieval period, although it's importance was disputed

In Rome, on Christmas Day of AD 800, a particularily successful Frankish King, Charlemange, was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III.

This was widely seen as uniting [[temporal]] and [[spiritual]] power in one person - a divinely appointed Emperor.

And if an Emperor is appointed by God, then surely he can appoint Bishops and so on, right ?

This was known as Lay Investiture - that a [[secular]], or Lay, person could invest Bishops.

The fact that the Emperor had a big army that could ... convince ... many members of the Church to see things his way too, especially if, say, an Election for the Pope was coming up.

This is what happened with the Emperor Otto III, who around 1000 AD with the help of his army managed to get his brother appointed as Pope, and then put him back after an upset Roman citizenry threw him out. He also appointed the next Pope, Sylvester II, who was rumoured to be a magician.

This was probably the peak of successful Imperial intervention in Papal affairs, although Emperor Charles V's army did do a rather solid job in sacking Rome in 1527 (in case you are reading ahead, Charles V was definitely a Catholic when his army did this. Disputes exist whether they did it with or without orders ... )

Seventy years later, we saw a long, messy and involved struggle between Emperor Henry IV, and his handpicked anti-Pope Clement III, and Pope Gregory VII, and his handpicked anti-Emperor Rudolph II, in a struggle about (a) whether the Emperor or the Pope should be able to control who gets what positions in the Church, and (b) who can sack whom and when.

One of the key people in the war was the redoubtable Mathilde of Canossa, ruling Countess of Tuscany. If she had backed the Emperor rather than the Pope, Gregory would almost certainly have been deposed. A good web page about her is here http://www.geocities.com/mizzmelisende/woman65.html

In the end,

The basic idea promulgated by the Papacy was that Christendom should have one Church, with a consistent doctrine, just like it should have one secular head - the Emperor. OK, OK, those Greeks over in [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople Constantinople] should have been part of a Universal and Catholic Church too, but they wouldn't agree on certain political and doctrinal points.

This meant that the church needed one Bible in one language - [[Latin]]. Imagine the problems if my translation of the Bible says 'Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live' and yours says 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'.

Now, things got complicated when you had over-powerful Emperors like Otto III who made a habit of [[Investiture dispute|appointing Popes]], or overpowerful Popes like Innocent III (*) who made a habit of sacking Emperors, but after a long series of wars in the eleventh, tweith and thirteenth centuries where Pope tried to have Emperors sacked and vice-versa, it pretty much got sorted out that the Pope wouldn't intervene in politics if the Emperor didn't try and tell him what to do.

In short, the Temporal power and the Spiritual power compromised, and didnt try to muscle in on each others territories.

This basic rule also more-or-less applied with independent kingdoms like England and France, although the issue of who should appoint people to those nice, rich Church positions kept cropping up - but no King tried to tell the Church what should or should not be doctrine.

(I feel I am not paraphrasing John of Paris too badly if I say his view on it was 'Does it say France anywhere ? No ? Then Boniface can get stuffed - he has to pay taxes like every other landowner in France')..

Time rolled on, and the fourteenth century saw the seat of the Pope was moved to Avignon in France. Well, more accurately, the seat of one of the three Popes moved to Avignon, with a pro-French Pope there, an anti-French Pope in Rome, and a third Pope in Pisa, and all of them exchanging insults, excommunications and interdicts.

Not good for a Universal Church, huh.

Eventually, things got sorted out with the Council of Constance in 1414-18, which got things back to an even footing, with one Pope, who lived in Rome.

The wars between Pope and Emperor had a side effect; northern and central [[Italy]] became independent from both the Pope and the Emperor, and Milan, Genoa, Venice and Florence started carving out their own little Empires.

Unfortunately, the same idea occurred to a gentleman by the name of Guiliano della Rovere, better known as Pope Julius II, who was elected on his third attempt in 1503, but basically controlled the Papacy from 1484 or so. To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia "the chief task of his pontificate he saw in the firm establishment and the extension of the temporal power. For the accomplishment of this task no pope was ever better suited than Julius, whom nature and circumstances had hewn out for a soldier".

To be slightly fairer to Julius, if the Papacy is a Temporal power with it's own lands, castles and army, then it is going to be more difficult for it's potential temporal enemy (eg German Emperor, King of France, Roman people etc) to force it into, for example, selecting their preferred Papal candidate at swordpoint. Not That That Ever Happened, Of Course.

Note that temporal powers need armies, and armies need money.

Temporal powers also need to cut deals with other temporal powers; it is notable that while the Papal-led League of Cambrai in 1508 was theoretically aimed at the Turks, it actually spent its time smacking the shit out of Venice.

Venice was the only power that could prevent the rise of Turkish power in the Mediterranean, Constantinople having fallen to the Turks in 1453, and Turkish power continued to rise until the failed Siege of Vienna in 1529.

Note that this base politicing by the Papacy did not go un-noticed by Europe at large - it is difficult to display moral leadership of Christendom as a whole when you are conspiring to rip some dependant city off another Italian power, or to prevent them doing the same to you.

A favoured method of raising money for the army and the building program was selling [[indulgence]]s - a method of having sins forgiven in exchange for a cash payment.

I'm sure we can all see what sort of abuses this could lead to.

The combination of the prestige of the Church being reduced by it's involvement as a Temporal power in secular wars against Christians, combined with the abuses inherent in raising large amounts of cash to pay for the above (well, that and Julius' building and art program, including things like St Pauls and the Sistine Chapel ceiling) laid the foundation for the Reformation that was about to happen ...

The occasion of the Reformation was [[Martin Luther]]'s protest in Wittenburg in 1517 against various abuses to do with the sale of Indulgences. See http://www.gty.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm for a copy <br>.

But what was more important - in my view - was not what end the Reformation had in mind, but what it was not, and how it was to be accomplished.

Luther's reforms as presented to the German Princes in his 1520 "Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" were not a universal reform of the Christian Church but a reform specifically limited to Germany. A copy of the letter is here http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-01.html

The reforms he proposed in this letter were for Germany alone ; they were an abandonment of the idea of a universal Christian Church.

Secondly, the mechanism for Reform is to be the temporal princes of Germany ; they are to take control of appointments to the Church in their principalities, of Church taxes, of laws over moral affairs, and so on.

Luther accused Popes of wanting to become Emperors ; by allowing the Temporal power to have power over church taxes and appointments his reform permitted Emperors to become Popes.

This Prince-based scheme of Reform was reinforced by the events of the Peasants War, a great German peasants rebellion in 1524-26 ; his pamphlet, 'Against the Peasants' he says that

"First they have sworn to their true and gracious rulers to be submissive and obedient, in accord with God's command, 'Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,' and, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.' But since they have deliberately an sacrilegiously abandoned their obedience, and in addition have dared to oppose their lords, they have thereby forfeited body an soul, as perfidious, perjured, lying, disobedient wretches and scoundrels are wont to do."

Let us compare this to what Luther, in his Open Letter, says about the duty of temporal powers to rebel against the Pope ;

"Therefore, when necessity demands, and the pope is an offense to Christendom, the first man who is able should, a faithful member of the whole body, do what he can to bring about a truly free council. No one can do this so well as the temporal authorities, especially since now they also are fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, "fellow-spirituals," fellow-lords over all things, and whenever it is needful or profitable, they should give free course to office and work in which God has put them above every man. "

Wittenburg was part of the lands of the Elector of Saxony, [[Frederick the Wise]] and as well as the sale of Indulgences, the Germans had a couple of objections to the way the Church worked.

Firstly, if the Church in general and the [[Monastaries]] in particular were immune to taxation, then this made the burden of the costs of local defence worse on everyone else.

Secondly, the Church was clearly more interested in raising money to play politics in Italy than in the care and saving of souls.

Thirdly, the Monasteries tend to buy little and sell much on local markets, thus depressing the prices for everyone else.

Fourthly, many corrupt and incompetant church officials existed, and the Church was doing little about them.

Finally, there should be a German Church for the German people.

(as a side note, recent research by Michael Wilks among others shows that [[Lollardry]] was not a peasant-based rebel movement, but rather absolutely based around the English court, and with the tacit and overt support of the English State. The kid-glove "sentences" for heresy should have been a giveaway)

(*) Note that as a good general rule, Popes called Innocent or Pius are neither pious nor innocent. Also note that popes called Victor generally lose.

=== Short Bibliography :===
*Mattingly, Renaissence Diplomacy (great summary of the Italian Wars, among other things)
* The Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ (but keep your bias filter turned on ; this is Rome's version of what happened)
* Project Wittenburg http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/wittenberg-home.html (the Lutheran reply to the Catholic Encyclopedia)
* Luther's Against the Peasants is at http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/peasants1525.html
* Millor (ed) The Letters of John of Salisbury (John was the point man for the Archbishop of Cantebury during the Papal succession crisis of 1159. He gives a participants view of a struggle between pope and Imperial-backed anti-pope)
* Internet Medieval Sourcebook http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html (it's all good)
* Lynn Nelson's lectures at UKansas are excellent ; http://www.ku.edu/kansas/medieval/108/lectures/index.html
* Giles of Rome ; pro-papal theorist. Read his stuff, and you know why his side lost
* Matthew of Paris ; pro-Gallician theorist. Pretty readable.

* Wikipedia has a substantial article at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation

Protestant Reformation

2003-11-11T13:19:45Z

210.9.142.25:

This is Anton here, and I'd like to warn you that my own biases are going to fall into this topic. This is also very much work-in-progress ... it also needs a major rewrite, which is in progress. I wanted to stay away from it, but to get it to make sense, I'm goanna hafta talk about Charlemagne, the Donation of Constantine, Lay Investiture, One Sword, Two Swords, Emperors Barefoot in the Snow and the rest of it ...

To get it up front at the start, I think that by the time all the smoke cleared, the Reformation was (a) a continuation of medieval Church-State relations, and (b) on balance a Bad Thing.

OK, with that out of the way, let's start at the beginning, with the Roman Empire.

Rome conquered the world, and she made her Emperors Gods.

This meant that Christians, who could worship no other God, got on badly with the Empire, and many Christians were martyred. A good example of early Christian/Imperial relations is here ... http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pliny1.html

Eventually, the Empire and the Church came to co-exist, and Constantine made Christianity the State Religion of the Empire.

In the Greek, or Eastern half of the Empire, things pretty much continued that way, at least until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

In the western half of the Empire, slowly but inexorably, the Empire changed and mutated, until there was little that was recognisably Imperial at all.

One of the things that was recognisable is that cities still had Bishops - and these Bishops were one of the few sources of continuity and certainty in a world consumed by famine, plague, disorder and war.

Many religious people donated land and other wealth to the Church, and many Bishoprics and so on started to get some quite impressive land holdings. Some cities in Germany, such as Mainz and Cologne, even ended up with the [[temporal]] ruler being the local Archbishop, who was also the local [[spiritual]] authority.

At this point I should probably mention the Donation of Constantine, a document that had the Roman Emperor Constantine giving the Papacy "Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa and Italy and the various islands". A copy of the document is here http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/donatconst.html

The ink was almost certainly dry on the parchment when it was first used to support Papal claims to certain lands in northern Italy in about 750 AD.
Even [[Nineteenth Century]] pro-Catholic historians now admit it was a blatant forgery, but it was regarded as genuine through the entire Medieval period.

In Rome, on Christmas Day of AD 800, a particularily successful Frankish King, Charlemange, was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III.

This was widely seen as uniting [[temporal]] and [[spiritual]] power in one person - a divinely appointed Emperor.

And if an Emperor is appointed by God, then surely he can appoint Bishops and so on, right ?

This was known as Lay Investiture - that a [[secular]], or Lay, person could invest Bishops.

The fact that the Emperor had a big army that could ... convince ... many members of the Church to see things his way too, especially if, say, an Election for the Pope was coming up.

This is what happened with the Emperor Otto III, who around 1000 AD with the help of his army managed to get his brother appointed as Pope, and then put him back after an upset Roman citizenry threw him out. He also appointed the next Pope, Sylvester II, who was rumoured to be a magician.

This was probably the peak of successful Imperial intervention in Papal affairs, although Emperor Charles V's army did do a rather good job sacking Rome in 1527 (in case you are reading ahead, Charles V was definitely a Catholic when his army did this. Disputes exist whether they did it with or without orders ... )

Seventy years later, we saw a messy and involved struggle between Emperor Henry IV (and his handpicked anti-Pope Clement III) and Pope Gregory VII (and his handpicked anti-Emperor Rudolph II).

One of the key people in the struggle was the redoubtable Mathilde of Canossa, Countess of Tuscany - it was at her castle of Canossa that Gregory made Henry wait barefoot in the snow. A good web page about her is here http://www.geocities.com/mizzmelisende/woman65.html

The basic idea promulgated by the Papacy was that Christendom should have one Church, with a consistent doctrine, just like it should have one secular head - the Emperor. OK, OK, those Greeks over in [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople Constantinople] should have been part of a Universal and Catholic Church too, but they wouldn't agree on certain political and doctrinal points.

This meant that the church needed one Bible in one language - [[Latin]]. Imagine the problems if my translation of the Bible says 'Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live' and yours says 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'.

Now, things got complicated when you had over-powerful Emperors like Otto III who made a habit of [[Investiture dispute|appointing Popes]], or overpowerful Popes like Innocent III (*) who made a habit of sacking Emperors, but after a long series of wars in the eleventh, tweith and thirteenth centuries where Pope tried to have Emperors sacked and vice-versa, it pretty much got sorted out that the Pope wouldn't intervene in politics if the Emperor didn't try and tell him what to do.

In short, the Temporal power and the Spiritual power compromised, and didnt try to muscle in on each others territories.

This basic rule also more-or-less applied with independent kingdoms like England and France, although the issue of who should appoint people to those nice, rich Church positions kept cropping up - but no King tried to tell the Church what should or should not be doctrine.

Time rolled on, and the fourteenth century saw the seat of the Pope was moved to Avignon in France. Well, more accurately, the seat of one of the three Popes moved to Avignon, with a pro-French Pope there, an anti-French Pope in Rome, and a third Pope in Pisa, and all of them exchanging insults, excommunications and interdicts.

Not good for a Universal Church, huh.

Eventually, things got sorted out with the Council of Constance in 1414-18, which got things back to an even footing, with one Pope, who lived in Rome.

The wars between Pope and Emperor had a side effect; northern and central [[Italy]] became independent from both the Pope and the Emperor, and Milan, Genoa, Venice and Florence started carving out their own little Empires.

Unfortunately, the same idea occurred to a gentleman by the name of Guiliano della Rovere, better known as Pope Julius II, who was elected on his third attempt in 1503, but basically controlled the Papacy from 1484 or so. To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia "the chief task of his pontificate he saw in the firm establishment and the extension of the temporal power. For the accomplishment of this task no pope was ever better suited than Julius, whom nature and circumstances had hewn out for a soldier".

To be slightly fairer to Julius, if the Papacy is a Temporal power with it's own lands, castles and army, then it is going to be more difficult for it's potential temporal enemy (eg German Emperor, King of France, Roman people etc) to force it into, for example, selecting their preferred Papal candidate at swordpoint. Not That That Ever Happened, Of Course.

Note that temporal powers need armies, and armies need money.

Temporal powers also need to cut deals with other temporal powers; it is notable that while the Papal-led League of Cambrai in 1508 was theoretically aimed at the Turks, it actually spent its time smacking the shit out of Venice.

Venice was the only power that could prevent the rise of Turkish power in the Mediterranean, Constantinople having fallen to the Turks in 1453, and Turkish power continued to rise until the failed Siege of Vienna in 1529.

Note that this base politicing by the Papacy did not go un-noticed by Europe at large - it is difficult to display moral leadership of Christendom as a whole when you are conspiring to rip some dependant city off another Italian power, or to prevent them doing the same to you.

A favoured method of raising money for the army and the building program was selling [[indulgence]]s - a method of having sins forgiven in exchange for a cash payment.

I'm sure we can all see what sort of abuses this could lead to.

The combination of the prestige of the Church being reduced by it's involvement as a Temporal power in secular wars against Christians, combined with the abuses inherent in raising large amounts of cash to pay for the above (well, that and Julius' building and art program, including things like St Pauls and the Sistine Chapel ceiling) laid the foundation for the Reformation that was about to happen ...

The occasion of the Reformation was [[Martin Luther]]'s protest in Wittenburg in 1517 against various abuses to do with the sale of Indulgences. See http://www.gty.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm for a copy <br>.

But what was more important - in my view - was not what end the Reformation had in mind, but what it was not, and how it was to be accomplished.

Luther's reforms as presented to the German Princes in his 1520 "Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" were not a universal reform of the Christian Church but a reform specifically limited to Germany. A copy of the letter is here http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-01.html

The reforms he proposed in this letter were for Germany alone ; they were an abandonment of the idea of a universal Christian Church.

Secondly, the mechanism for Reform is to be the temporal princes of Germany ; they are to take control of appointments to the Church in their principalities, of Church taxes, of laws over moral affairs, and so on.

Luther accused Popes of wanting to become Emperors ; by allowing the Temporal power to have power over church taxes and appointments his reform permitted Emperors to become Popes.

This Prince-based scheme of Reform was reinforced by the events of the Peasants War, a great German peasants rebellion in 1524-26 ; his pamphlet, 'Against the Peasants' he says that

"First they have sworn to their true and gracious rulers to be submissive and obedient, in accord with God's command, 'Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,' and, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.' But since they have deliberately an sacrilegiously abandoned their obedience, and in addition have dared to oppose their lords, they have thereby forfeited body an soul, as perfidious, perjured, lying, disobedient wretches and scoundrels are wont to do."

Let us compare this to what Luther, in his Open Letter, says about the duty of temporal powers to rebel against the Pope ;

"Therefore, when necessity demands, and the pope is an offense to Christendom, the first man who is able should, a faithful member of the whole body, do what he can to bring about a truly free council. No one can do this so well as the temporal authorities, especially since now they also are fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, "fellow-spirituals," fellow-lords over all things, and whenever it is needful or profitable, they should give free course to office and work in which God has put them above every man. "

Wittenburg was part of the lands of the Elector of Saxony, [[Frederick the Wise]] and as well as the sale of Indulgences, the Germans had a couple of objections to the way the Church worked.

Firstly, if the Church in general and the [[Monastaries]] in particular were immune to taxation, then this made the burden of the costs of local defence worse on everyone else.

Secondly, the Church was clearly more interested in raising money to play politics in Italy than in the care and saving of souls.

Thirdly, the Monasteries tend to buy little and sell much on local markets, thus depressing the prices for everyone else.

Fourthly, many corrupt and incompetant church officials existed, and the Church was doing little about them.

Finally, there should be a German Church for the German people.

(as a side note, recent research by Michael Wilks among others shows that [[Lollardry]] was not a peasant-based rebel movement, but rather absolutely based around the English court, and with the tacit and overt support of the English State. The kid-glove "sentences" for heresy should have been a giveaway)

(*) Note that as a good general rule, Popes called Innocent or Pius are neither pious nor innocent. Also note that popes called Victor generally lose.

=== Short Bibliography :===
*Mattingly, Renaissence Diplomacy (great summary of the Italian Wars, among other things)
* The Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ (but keep your bias filter turned on ; this is Rome's version of what happened)
* Project Wittenburg http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/wittenberg-home.html (the Lutheran reply to the Catholic Encyclopedia)
* Luther's Against the Peasants is at http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/peasants1525.html
* Millor (ed) The Letters of John of Salisbury (John was the point man for the Archbishop of Cantebury during the Papal succession crisis of 1159. He gives a participants view of a struggle between pope and Imperial-backed anti-pope)
* Internet Medieval Sourcebook http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html (it's all good)
* Lynn Nelson's lectures at UKansas are excellent ; http://www.ku.edu/kansas/medieval/108/lectures/index.html
* Giles of Rome ; pro-papal theorist. Read his stuff, and you know why his side lost
* Matthew of Paris ; pro-Gallician theorist. Pretty readable.

* Wikipedia has a substantial article at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation

Talk:Protestant Reformation

2003-11-11T12:38:54Z

210.9.142.25:

Nice work, Anton. I've made a couple of changes, including adding the "Rule of Victor", but I've got a couple of other suggestions -
*A lot of it is better suited to articles like [[Papacy]], [[Roman Catholic Church]], and [[Investiture dispute]]. [[Reformation]] should really be an outline of the Reformation.
*Wiki articles are designed to be edited by everyone- it's best to keep personal pronouns, names and the like out of Cunnan articles.
*Is it Lollardry or Lollardism? I've always thought Lollardry = the tenets of Lollards, Lollardism = practice of Lollardry.
[[User:Morgant|Morgant]]

I'm still new here and figuring out what goes where. There is some good history in this that seems like it would fit better on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation and the Cunnan article could work to make the history relevant to SCA folks. How does this affect someone's persona? Which contries were predominantly on which side? What were the consequences of being on the "wrong" side? How would this affect your costume? (E.g., did it affect the wearing of the rosary? etc.) ~ [[User:JakeVortex|JakeVortex]] 06:27, 5 Nov 2003 (EST)

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Anton here :

I wrote the article as SCA Deep Background - this is the kind of stuff real people in period knew about. Maybe not the precise details, but if you grew up in a 14th C northern Italian city, you know about Henry IV and Innocent III, becuase the political factions in your town (Guelph and Ghibelline) come from that period.

I also havent got to the bit where I discuss the - in my view - critical distinction between the medieval and the modern world view ; in the Medieval world, you are a member of a universal Christian community. In the modern world, you are a citizen of one of a number of co-equal discrete secular states. You can see how this fits with the Universal and Catholic Church, and the Danish, Swedish, English and so on National Churches.

If you can get that, then I think you can better understand the actual medieval world and world-view, not the bumper-sticker medjeeval version.

Also, what I'm trying to get away from is a history that says 'Luther nailed up the 95 theses in Wittenburg. There were some wars and some burnings. Some countries became Protestant. Some didnt'. I want to be able to tell a story about 'Why did Protestantism take the form it did, where it did, and when it did' in a way I'm happy with, given the restraints of time, words and audience attention.

Finally, I'd prefer to stay identified as a specific author, so that I can retain accountability for what I say, as some of my statements may justly be regarded as anti-Catholic, anti-Lutheran or anti-Calvinist.

:Wiki articles do not have a specific author. If you wan to be listed as the sole author (or the main author) of an article then a wiki isn't an appropriate place to write. I agree with Del that if you wish to have a personal bias in what you write then start articles that are clearly your own opinion (eg. [[Why Anton Thinks The Reformation Was A Bad Idea]], as Del suggested) - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]]

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I'm with Anton on this. Cunnan is somewhere where we can put SCA relevant articles, including SCA historically relevant articles. To know what your persona was thinking is as important (to me: more important) than to know what your persona was wearing. I'd hate to have to find that stuff buried in the wikipedia.

However, Anton, ditch the personal bias and present the facts, unless you're going to put in a callout like [[Why Anton Thinks The Reformation Was A Bad Idea]].

Also we need a lot more callouts in this -- go mad with the square brackets guys.

[[User:Del|Del]]

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Hey you wiki / cunnan guys,

Can we footnote these things?

You see, ever since [[User:Anton|Anton]] made the ridiculous assertion on his page about the [[Italian Renaissance]] that "the Humanists concentrated on winning the argument rather than having their facts and logic straight" (a complete falsehood that I specifically refuse to bite on, as everyone knows the Humanists were all about facts and logic and less of that papal infallibility nonsense), we've been caning each other over the the entire Reformation debate.

Now I've just had time to re-read this and I've seen the bit where he says "the Council of Constance ... got things back to an even footing" and I blew chunks out my nostrils. OK, this specifically deserves a footnote. Anton, if you think that burning [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Huss Huss] at the stake and digging up [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wyclif Wyclif]'s long dead body and casting it out of hallowed ground after he'd produced the first [[English]] translation of the bible is "an even footing" then you need to [[Nutbar with extra almonds|read this]].

You see the problem with you [[Scholastics]] is that you aren't prepared to stretch your reading wide enough to know what facts are, let alone [[grammar]], [[rhetoric]], and [[logic]].

(OK, enough Anton-baiting for now, I think I need to go consult a cooking laurel to find out what temperature is best to [[burn more catholics]]).

[[User:Del|Del]] 19:56, 11 Nov 2003 (EST)

Del,

Funnily enough, my current favorite theorist on Papal power - John of Paris - points out the bible text in question says you should shun, rather than actually burn heretics. Not that that stopped anyone in the 16th Century, of course. The fact that he was a player in a high-stakes game of 'Go ahead. Excommunicate France. See if we care' could have been a factor.

I'm also not sure about this newfangled idea of Papal Infallibility - it seems awfully Nineteenth Century. After all, only Church Councils can properly and finally resolve issues of theology, and it was the arrogance and vanity of certain Popes is that got us into this mess in the first place.

Digging Wyclif out of the ground is one of those 'who cares ?' things for me ; I'm much more concerned with what gets done to the living (eg suppresion of the Peasants Revolt by the Lutherans). BTW, Wyclif needs a page ... back at ANU library I've got some footnotes abnout him (eg he personally probably didnt translate the Bible, although he did head the project).

As to what got done to the Hussites ... yeah, well they were kind and gentle dealing with the Jacquerie in France, right ?

And as for the grammar, rhetoric and logic crack ... misused, rhetoric can be a tool to mislead, but grammar and logic are what Scholarly work is based on.

Anton, who is now caffeined up and revising his Reformation article