Q.

Assess the development and impact of the Reformation in England

and France in the 16​th​ century.

The Reformation in the conventional sense implies the schism or break within
the Roman Catholic Church that functioned under the Pope in Europe for
centuries and the creation of a separate Protestant Christianity. But this
process is multi-faceted as it led to the creation of several radical and
moderate folds within Christianity such as Lutherans, Calvinists, Puritans,
Anabaptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and also the efforts of some Catholics to
reform the church through the counter-reformation. Apart from this,
Reformation embraced a number of areas – reform of both the morals and
structures of church and society, re-interpretation of Christian spirituality and
the reform of its doctrine. Putting it very simply, the Reformation was a
protest by churchmen and scholars of privileged classes in 16​th century
against their own superiors. Then there was a coalition with laymen’s political
ambitions that gave its popular form to the movement. To understand it, the
Reformation has therefore to be place in its regional, historical, political, social
and economic context.

The split in the Christian Church in AD 1054 growing suzerainty of the

Catholic Church led to considerable problems. The Catholic Church interfered
in the internal matters of the rulers and controlled about one-third of all
cultivated land in Western Europe. It is told that it was an age of ecclesiastical
corruption and inefficiency with the financial burden falling on the ordinary
people. They were charged for marriages, baptisms, confessions and burials
by the Church. The clergy collected ‘tithe’, one tenth of income, from them and
the Papacy even received subscriptions on the sale of indulgences which
meant pardon from sins in return of huge payment. These growing expenses
created bitterness and hostility providing the background to Reformation. The
Church officials tried to hold as many church posts as possible leading to
pluralism that resulted in absenteeism which meant negligence of duties in
their offices. There was social discontent among the lower clergy due to lack
of promotion avenues and a general dissatisfaction from the ignorance and
poor quality of clergies and priests. European people suffered from mass
diseases and repeated lesser plagues in preceding decades and population
change had profound social consequences. The growth of the national Church,
the rise of absolutist states and nationalism became important features of the
era. Religious controversies became entangled with political and economic
conflicts and created inter-state rivalries and wars. The liaison between
reformers and politicians resulted in development of the national Church and
expropriation of the Church property contributed to the financial needs of the
newly rising states.

Reformation in France can essentially be studied in four phases: before the

exile of Calvin from France, after his exile – growth of Protestantism and
Calvin’s role, the Wars of Religion and thereafter. John Calvin was from the
second generation of reformers and had a powerful impact on different parts
of Europe. Many of his views were derived from the Bible but he was also
influenced by St Augustine. His biggest contribution of Reformation was
through his views on church structure and discipline. His structure of Genevan
church had four major institutions: pastors, doctors, Deacons 1and Elders.
Calvin sent missionaries to France, the Netherlands, Scotland and other parts
of Europe to carry forward his reforms. Calvin sincerely believed that
someday France would become a truly Christian commonwealth and he
worked for this. The success of Calvinism is located in tits effective
organisation and clarity of thought. Reformation ideas were abroad in France
by 1519 as is shown by printing of Luther’s Latin writings by John Froben of
Basle. The Paris theologians were reading the texts but were not very
approving of it. The censoring of religious books was instituted in June1521.

Through the concordat of Bologna between the King Francis (1515 - 47) and
Pope Leo X in 1516, the power of the crown over the church increased
considerably which among other things included nomination of bishops and
other ecclesiastics to the king and also the right to levy tithes on the clergy.
The latter is significant as this was an important financial reason for the
crown to oppose the Reform. The attitude of the French kings towards the
Reformation remained hostile. But as we will see, the relationship of the
crown with the Protestants was more complex than mere hostility as it was
guided by foreign affairs, political motives and dynastic rivalries and a need as
well as desire from the part of the crown, to maintain a balance of power in
insecure circumstances.

The centre for Reformation was not Paris, but a small town of weavers 30
miles east of Paris, called Meaux. France saw three important individuals who
initiated some level of reforms during this phase: the Bishop of Meaux,
Guillaume Briconnet, the famous humanist figure, Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples
and the king’s sister, Marguerite d’Angouleme. Briconnet had earlier served as
the king’s ambassador in negotiating the concordat of Bologna. On his return
he engaged in efforts to reform preaching and the religious life. To aid his
work, he invited humanist biblical scholar Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples to join. In
1509, he published his first edition of the Scriptures, beginning with the
Psalms which was translated in to French in to 1523. This was followed by the
translation of the Bible in 1530. Soon other evangelicals, including William
Farel, arrived to make up the Meaux circle. Marguerite, the king’s sister was
also a significant humanist sheltered Humanists accused of Protestantism and
had her own brush with the Inquisition over the publication of her mystical
writing, ‘The Mirror of the Sinful Soul’. Nevertheless, these three were
reformers only in the essence and were unwilling to create a new religion or a
new church by means of reformation and were not ready to provide
leadership in any such attempt. Reformation thus led a covert life in France till
the growth of Calvinism. The Protestants were called Huguenots.teh French
Calvinists, later, preferred the term ​Refromes, ​the Reformed. Heresy was
perceived to be a cancer in the body of society and the execution of heretics
was ritual action to expunge their memory forever.

Calvinism had begun to divide French city on religious grounds. Captivity of

the king after the Battle of Pavia (1525) led to the blame for it put on the
Meaux group of heresy which resulted in the fleeing of reformers including
Calvin from France. Louis de Berquin, humanist and translator of Luther was
burned at the stake in 1529 and this made clear the hostility towards reform
when radicals indulged in violence and iconoclasm. Francis’s response to the
evangelical vacillated between persecution by imprisonment and execution on
the one hand and moderation on the other. The placards posted in the palace
finally aggravated him to institute a swift and violent persecution of suspected
evangelicals. However, this could also be counterproductive and could spread
the ideas instead of eliminating them. Executions became a theatre of
martyrdom in the original sense of the word “martyr” as witness. They
reinforced the Huguenot conviction that their faith was a return to that of the
primitive church when the popular saying arose that “the blood of the martyrs
is the seed of the church”. Two royal edicts of June 1539 and 1540 turned
heresy jurisdiction over to the secular courts, provincial ​parlements,​ and
bishops acting jointly. In their suffering, the Calvinist martyrs drew courage
and legitimization from Old Testament models of a persecuted chosen people.
The universal embrace of the witness of the martyrs is evident in the
numerous martyrologies coming from Jean Crespin, Simon Goulart and others.
As religious divisions within France hardened, the execution of heretics in the
frame of “ritual as containment” broke down. The “cancer” in society was now
too widespread to be excised by the deaths of individuals.

By the mid-1530s, it was clear that for Reformation to survive in France,

external intervention was necessary and this came in the form of the
Reformed church of Geneva. By 1567, Geneva had sent at least 120 pastors
into France to organise congregations. The Reformed church spread rapidly
through France (in the west and south particularly) and in some areas began
worshipping publicly. Apart from the organisational genius, the rousing songs,
the Psalms became source of popular appeal. The first national synod of the
reformed church met in Paris in 1559 and set forth a confession of faith, the
Gallican Confession which was drafted by Calvin but it was later revised to
include insistence on absolute equality among ministers and churches which
signifies accommodation of unique characteristics in the ambit of Reformation
to make it suitable for France.

The successor of Francis, Henri II (1547 - 59) was even more severe than his
father and put the persecutions on a more established footing. The edicts of
Chateaubriant in 1551 and Compiegne in 1557 included clauses against
individuals who were either corresponding or had any association with
Geneva.

By 1559, the Huguenots constituted about one tenth of the total population
and about a thousand congregations concentrated in large provincial towns.
Calvinism in France appealed to particular social groups, notably skilled
artisans, independent shopkeepers, and middle-class businessmen such as
bankers. There is no doubt that the Calvinist virtues of hard work and thrift
motivated by a theology of vocation dovetailed nicely with a profit economy;
but as has been mentioned earlier, there are other factors responsible for its
success. By 1560 Calvinism had established considerable foothold amongst
the nobility, especially the houses of Bourbon and Montmorency. Gaspard de
Coligny (1519 -72, Montmorency) the admiral of France, became an
outstanding Huguenot leader. Also, aristocratic women formed the most
receptive audience of the reformist ideas. The North and east part of the
country was dominated by catholic houses of Guise-Lorraine. The familial
rivalry between the houses and the struggle for power was now enhanced by
the opposing religious affiliations. The king, probably due to his preoccupation
with the Habsburg-Valois wars, did not realise the religious defection brought
about in the people. His death was to prove critical as it marked the control of
crown by minor kings or women regents, which made it difficult for the crown
to assert itself on the nobility, and in turn, on their political ambitions.

The regency of Francis II (successor to Henri; 1559 – 60) was dominated by

the militantly Catholic Guise family, which included the mother of Francis’s
queen, Mary Stuart. Their repressive measures against the Protestants caused
such widespread resentment that more nobles joined those already
committed to the Reformation because they both hated the Guises and had
designs on the wealth of the Catholics church. Huguenot attempt at reducing
Guise control over the king manifested in the form of the Amboise conspiracy
(1560). Calvin had always been against political revolution but his eventual
successor Theodre Beza, had provided encouragement for this plot. But both
Calvin and Beza welcomed the death of Francis as it also led to release of the
Bourbon prince Louis de Conde who had been sentenced to death as accused
of the conspiracy. The conspiracy foreshadowed the Wars of Religion, which
had the nature of civil wars.

Catherine Medici’s second son, Charles IX (1560 - 74) succeeded Francis II.
The succession was challenged by Anthony of Bourbon, king of Navarre but
Catherine was able to outmanoeuvre him, but that triumph entailed
developing a policy favourable to the Huguenot party as counterweight to the
Guises. It is significant to note here that this shift of favour was determined by
political situation and would not remain constant. Nevertheless, it led to a
policy of moderation towards the Protestants that involved suspending
persecution, allow Huguenot nobles at court to have their own services, and
appointing new, liberal leaning Catholic tutors for the young king. The
Colloquy of Poissy was also called in 1561 to allow viewing of Protestantism
as an issue to be debated on and not to be judged but the fundamental
disagreements regarding the Eucharist and the mass led to its rupture and the
first edict of toleration was violated. The Catholics gave precedence to the
Council of Trent over the Crown in matters of judging the Protestants. Then
again, the support of the crown shifted towards the Catholics due to fear of the
Guise-Spanish alliance. On March 1, 1562 the duc de Guise sent a force of
troops against a congregation of some 1,200 Protestants attending a sermon
near Vassy, killing 74. This inaugurated the first of the Wars of Religion. With
reference to this it is important to note the changing popular perception of the
Huguenots – when they took up arms, they lost the image of a persecuted
church and when in September 1562 they looked to English Protestants for
assistance they lost their patriotic credibility. This Protestant hatred was
further inflamed by the Catholic preaching and thus for over the next 30 years
(1567 and March 1568; September 1568 to August 1570; from August 1572 to
July 1573; June 1574 to May 1576) Huguenots and Catholics murdered and
assassinated each other with increasing barbarity. In some regions, the war
was endemic; elsewhere it was sporadic or almost nonexistent, punctuated by
truces. The massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day was a high point of these wars.
It was the occasion of the marriage of Catherine’s daughter and Henry of
Navarre in Paris, which was supposedly a means of creating peace between
the warring religious factions by uniting the royal princess, Marguerite of
Valois, and the titular head of the Protestants but this resulted in the alleged
murder of Coligny and of numerous other Protestants. This is said to have
been done with the intention of freeing the king Charles IX from his influence
and to appease the Guises to an extent. Religion had repeatedly proved to be a
hindrance to political survival and some solution had to be found. The
violence spread to other regions and according to Cameron, by the time the
frenzy subside about 200,000 in all France had been murdered. The crown
had thus unleashed state terrorism but it was covered under the
precautionary measure to save the king. In later years however, the
martyrdom of Coligny was commemorated among the French Protestants.

The Wars of Religion have been interpreted in terms of personal and political
conflicts among the nobility and crown but Barbara Diefendorf pointed out
the religious connotations, perhaps the most significant one, of the Wars. Also,
it is important to note that people could relate more to the religious aspect
more than with the political battles and thus they had broad repercussions at
the popular level. This phase can be studied better in the context of reactions
to the Bartholomew Day massacre which ranged from evident relief to
ignorance of the incident amongst the Catholics to the increased and more
determined questioning of the religious tyranny of the crown by the
Calvinists. The crown itself was in the awkward situation of self justification
since tradition and theology had always asserted that the king was divinely
appointed to uphold law and protect its subjects. Outside of France,
Protestants mourned the incident but took no major steps against France
except for exploitation of the massacres. Also, many prominent Protestants,
faced with the choice of the mass or death, chose Catholicism but the princes
later returned to Calvinism. Others chose to migrate to Protestant nations.

The last phase in French Reformation comes with the death of Charles IX and
his succession by Henry III (1574 -89) who moved towards the third party of
politiques​, who placed national unity over religious uniformity. But this
became a prime issue for the Guises to prevent advantageous position to the
Huguenots and to Henry, king of Navarre. But in a series of dramatic political
events, King of Navarre became the next ruler – Henry IV, but only after a
power struggle which lasted for about five years. He also converted to
Catholicism which shows his inclination towards political control as opposed
to religious ideology. Henry IV understood that the separation of religion and
politics were essential for a state’s survival and therefore he was an ardent
supporter of absolute monarchy till the end. As the earlier moves towards
constitutionalism were tainted with violence and treason, the state filled this
vacuum. The king also provided for a policy of limited toleration, the edict of
Nantes, in 1598, for the Protestants. It made the Catholic Church the official
state church with its former rights, income and possessions. The Huguenots
were given right to worship on Protestant estates and in many other areas
(except Paris), granted civil rights, as well as political rights, included 200
fortified places. Thus, Calvinism did not triumph in France but it did survive
under the shadows of the king’s suzerainty.

England had been under the influence both of France and Central Europe and
was thus affected by Swiss Protestantism and the plots of the kings of France
and Spain. There are two schools of thought regarding the English
reformation. The revisionists believe that it was imposed from above,
occurred slowly and with difficulty on a population which did not want to do
away with the age old Catholic belief. The second explanation, as given by A. G.
Dickens and Claire Cross suggests that the Reformation and religious rather
than political roots and arose from below. There were instalments of
Reformations which have been correlated with the death of monarchs.
Contemporary scholarship continues to recognize the crucial role of the
Tudors in revolutionising ecclesiastical authority “by statute”, but corrects the
one-sidedness of former political interpretation with social and religious
studies.

The followers of John Wycliff and Lollards started an underground movement

of religious and social dissent and the opposition of transubstantiation as
blind faith. The period also saw the emergence of tradition of heresy and
anticlericalism. The protestant ideas had spread to the coastal regions through
the printing press, travellers and merchants. The role of printing was realised
also by the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall who rejected the proposal of
English translation of Bible by William Tyndale. The period was also marked
by growth of academic criticism as a result of Christian humanism and
significant scholars included Thomas More, Stephen Gardiner, Edward Fox
amongst others.

The origins of the Reformation in England can be traced back to the middle
ages. The endemic English resentments, coupled with the enthusiasm for new
learning promoted by Colet and Erasmus among others, provided the fertile
ground for Lutheran ideas to come to the region in around 1520.

The background to the reformation is in two significant incidents: the rupture

of alliance between Spain and England the inability of the cardinal-legate of
England, Thomas Wolsey to convince the Pope to allow the king to divorce his
wife Catherine. Also after Charles V’s troops had run amok in Rome, Pope
Clement VII was effectively in the Spanish Emperor’s power and could hardly
solve Henry’s matrimonial problems by allowing him to discard Charles’s
relatives.

Henry VIII embarked on a programme of humiliation of the higher clergy and

Wolsey was himself stripped of office in October 1529. On 3 November Henry
opened the Reformation Parliament which promptly proposed a series of
measures to regulate absentee and pluralist clerics and to restrict the powers
and fees of some Church courts. In 1531 the clergy was fined for a wholly
preposterous charge through payment of 118,840 pounds, the payment of
clerical tax known as ‘Annates’ to Rome was provisionally suspended. May
1932 marked the crisis in a struggle around the monarch over policy.
Conservatives tried to dissuade the king from his marriage plans and to
continue heresy-hunting; more radicals like Edward Foxe, Thomas Cranmer
and Thomas Cromwell urged that the marriage problem be solved by king’s
clergy within England even if that meant schism and using the talents of
religious heretics. A session of Parliament between 4 February and 7 April
enacted that appeals in case of wills, marriages and certain kinds of grants to
the church could only be decided within England and in May a special court
annulled the king’s marriage. Royal justice filled the gaps left by papal
instruments and licenses and ​a statute ‘corroborated and confirmed’ the
king’s title as supreme head of the Church. These changes were backed by a
formidable propaganda exercise varying from philosophical treatises on
obedience by the otherwise conservative Stephen Gardiner to satirical plays
by the protestant John Bale. They were protected by an equally formidable
testing of loyalty on oath and prosecution of the suspect or refractory; leading
to execution of Thomas More. The king set about stripping the Church of its
property before the reasons for such action were clear. The smaller
monasteries, friaries and convents were dissolved on the presumption that
small houses were usually ill-disciplined ones. In the mid-1530s, the king’s
secretary of state, Thomas Cromwell displayed a number of Lutheran
characteristics, though their recognition by Henry is doubtful.

Cromwell and his allies survived the challenge of revolts during 1536-37
when rebels called explicitly for their removal as heretics. However, their
rivals at court the duke of Norfolk and bishop of Winchester discredited the
secretary and by June 1540 had Cromwell executed on a wholly spurious
charge of treason. Thereafter the regime’s religious policy wavered in the
breeze of royal favour. In 1543 there was heresy hunt and a statute restricting
who was allowed to read the Bible; meanwhile Cranmer continued to struggle
with liturgical reform. Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547 with no
comprehensive statement on doctrine, the parish structure of the English
Church unchanged save at the top and regular worship still essentially in the
medieval forms, with only a few festivals omitted and centres of pilgrimage
abolished. The faction who had come uppermost, that of Edward Seymour,
Lord Protector for the boy King Edward VI, began to locate the English Church
decisively in the Protestant camp. Some of Henry’s anti-protestant legislation
was repealed and the following Easter some prayers in English were inserted
in the mass. The confiscation of endowments for prayers for the dead was
completed. The marriage of priests was formally condoned. Cranmer’s first
English Prayer Book was authorized in 1549 and imposed. Religious opinion
in England became more polarized; the bench of bishops was purged.
Cranmer imported numerous distinguished refugees from Germany
confirming his orientation towards south German and Swiss models.
Piermartire Vermigli and Martin Bucer were appointed as Regius Professors
of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge respectively. The liturgy was decisively
and visibly altered across the country for perhaps the first time: vestments
and ornaments were drastically simplified; leavened bread was given in place
of communion wafers into the laity’s hands, and tables in the body of the
church replaced altars in the chancel. Cranmer seems to have intended the
complete reformation of religion in England which Henry VIII had denied him
and besides changes in public worship, the rites and rules of ordination were
changed, a decidedly Swiss or south German statement of beliefs, the
‘Forty-two Articles’ was issued and when Edward VI succumbed to
tuberculosis in 1553 a programme for revising Church law was in progress,
never to be completed.

The catholic Mary, Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, swept to power and

treated the ‘heretical’ religious statutes as void at once, but found that the
legal niceties protracted themselves none the less. Edward VI’s religious laws
were repealed in the late autumn of 1553; but the restoration of papal
supremacy was delayed by the curious combination of Charles V, who wished
to make the papal restoration seem a result of Mary’s impending marriage to
his own son Philip and of the English gentry, whose loyalty to the old religion
did not stretch to surrendering ‘gratis’ their rights to Church lands for which
they had paid good money. The pope was readmitted, in the shape of
Cardinal-Legate Reginald Pole, in November 1554. Mary’s regime began to try
Protestants as heretics. Around 300 victims predominantly artisans or
labourers, were balanced by the 800 or so gentlemen, clerics and students
who evacuated safely to the Continent. The two aspects of the ‘suffering’
English protestant Church complemented each other to turn a largely
foreign-inspired minority clique into a national legend. The martyr’s records
were called and ultimately published by the exiles. The exiles became a
voluntary society consciously loyal to the ‘English Church’ of the reign of
Edward VI, and were to form the core of the protestant missionary effort in
the English countryside after 1559. Mary died on 17 November 1558, leaving
Anne Boleyn’s protestant daughter Elizabeth as heir.

Elizabeth I wasted no time in offending catholic sensitivities when on

Christmas she pointedly left mass when the officiating bishop insisted of
elevating the Host. The Parliament heard a sermon from the protestant
academic Richard Cox and passed the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity
which re-established the monarch’s control over the Church as ‘Supreme
Governor’ rather than ‘Supreme Head’ and restored the second prayer Book of
Edward VI’s reign, purged of some of its more violent anti-catholic rhetoric.
This drastic and definitive settlement reflected several pressures: a touchy
diplomatic position; the strength of conservative opposition among bishops
and some peers; the determined but politically astute Protestantism of royal
advisers like Anthony Cooke, Francis Knollys and William Cecil and the
scruples of the talented clergy. It was accompanied by a final scramble for
Church land, the plunder this time being the considerable landed estates of
the bishops. Worship was settled by the 1559 statutes; the structure of the
Church remained traditional except for the royal supremacy; belief and
doctrine waited a further four years until the convocation of 1563 adopted the
‘thirty-nine Articles’ of faith, a statement based on the explicitly and militantly
protestant Forty-two Articles of 1553. Elizabeth nurtured this settlement for
the rest of her reign. Herself celibate, she resented priests marrying but could
do nothing to stop them; she kept altars and crosses in her chapels, but
allowed them to be removed elsewhere; she feared the social risks of
protestant preaching more than she hoped for any political benefit from it.
Aware that she was the only hope of the protestant loyalists, she made more
superficial concessions to potential rebels among the old Catholics than to
zealous protestant disciplinarians among her own supporters. A great
majority of people accepted this Anglican settlement but ‘Puritans’ and
Catholics continued to oppose it. Puritans were associated with the radical
wing of the Protestants and their opposition intensified later during the reign
of James I and was reinforced by theoretical denunciation of absolutism in the
time of Charles I.

A wide range of steps, public and private, national and local, statutory and
voluntary, moderate and extreme were taken to make the English Church
more positively protestant during Elizabeth’s reign: (i) attempts to alter the
liturgy and ornamentation of Church services to a distinctly reformed type. (ii)
Proposals to incorporate the system of local, provincial and national synods or
‘classes’, in deliberate imitation of European Churches. (iii) Initiatives to
further the twin aim of doctrinal instruction and moral discipline at parish
level.

The Reformation in England was closely bound with the emergence of the
absolute state. The religious crisis in the 1530s had marked a significant
progress in the direction of national unification and the establishment of royal
absolutism making G.R. Elton term this period as the Tudor ‘administrative
revolution’. The disintegration of Papal church in England expanded the
prerogative powers of the ruler and had a major impact on the finances of the
crown as higher clergy who were also rich landowners lost much of their
independence. Reformation acts forbade any foreigner, even Pope, to
intervene in English affairs. The religious offenders were punished not by the
Pope but by the crown. During Elizabeth’s reign, the Court of High
Commission supervised and controlled ecclesial courts and got coercive
powers to enforce royal decisions. The result was, in the view of Sir Lewis
Namier, that religion in the 16​th century became a word for nationalism.
Unlike French, English monarchs did not face centrifugal tendencies due to its
relatively small size and the crown utilized some traditional institutions as
well as newly created ones to control the outlying regions.

The Reformations were complex movements of the century with direct or

indirect ramifications on the political, socio-economic and religious life of
European nations including England and France. The most obvious was the
division of the medieval Catholic Church into a number of churches. This
process of “Confessionalization” basically designates the fragmentation of the
unitary Christendom into at least three confessional churches- Lutheran,
Calvinist or “Reformed” and post-tridentine Roman Catholic. Each formed a
highly organized system, which tended to monopolize the world-view with
respect to the individual, the state and society and which laid down strictly
formulated norms in politics and morals. The Protestant communities began
to develop their own cultural and social identities informed by both their
specific theologies and their hostilities to each other as well as to the old faith.
The Reformers’ original understanding of faith as trust and confidence in
God’s promises shifted in the heat of battle to understanding faith in terms of
intellectual assent to correct doctrine as evident from highly rationalized
chart of election and reprobation drawn up by the Elizabethan Puritan
William Perkins. A rationalistic and creed-bound Protestantism and
Catholicism contributed politically to the developments of the consolidation of
the early modern state and its imposition of social discipline and intellectually
to the rationalism that fed the Enlightenment of the 18​th​ and 19​th​ centuries.

Lindberg argues that Protestant triumphalism, in some cases, contributed too

the development of a “chosen nation” syndrome, for instance England’s
overcoming of the threats of Spanish Armada in 1588 and the failure of
catholic conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament and the king were
interpreted in terms of God’s election and blessing of the nation.
Protestantism has been interpreted by others as both a product of the rising
nation state concept as well as a catalyst to emerging national identity. On the
other hand, Protestantism influenced political resistance as expressed in the
Lutheran Magdeburg Confession, which in turn had a direct impact on French
Calvinist political thought. Huguenot arguments for a constitutionalism that
limited royal power and defended individual conscience were advanced by
Francois Hotman, Theodore Beza and Phippe du Plessis-Mornay who
authorized individual rebellion on the explicitly religious grounds that God
may “raise up new liberators” outside the constitutional framework. In
England, John Poynet’s ‘A Short Treatise of Politic Power’ was also similarly
influenced by Luther. Further, the Calvinist idea of the church as a covenanted
community contributed to the idea of social contract. The anti-hierarchical,
leveling processes were corrosive of political as well as ecclesiastical
structures. Witte’s magisterial study ‘Law and Protestantism’ makes clear, the
fundamental legal institutions and modern understanding of human rights
have been profoundly shaped by Luther’s theological teachings.
Hickerson explores the role of gender in her study of the account of women
martyrs in Tudor England. In Foxe’s work, they are “models of disobedience-
they are politically dangerous symbols.” His catholic critics found them
troubling, so apparently, did a number of his admirers. There was a pressure
from preachers on women to leave their convents and it has been argued that
the closing of this monastic option restricted their choices to spouse whereas
in the convent, women had opportunities to engage in management and
education.

The Protestant Reformation had an important impact on the rise of literacy in

some parts of England. Reformers successfully used and implemented
humanist methods in their schools and universities. Martin Luther advocated
education for all children and expenses to be provided by the state. There was
great stress on individual’s relationship with God as the central aspect of
Christianity. Puritanism is seen in historical literature as one of the great
factors leading to modernization. Interest aroused in the history of religion
and the first comprehensive history of Church was written under editorship of
Matthew Flacius. The rise of a national church in various states played a role
in this and promoted national literatures.

The question whether Lutheran view and Calvinism was responsible for an
emergent capitalism or whether a connection already existed between
business and religious zeal remains a major issue of contention among
scholars. It is claimed that the most dynamic businessmen lived in the most
industrialized regions of Anglican England and the Huguenots as business
community dominated Catholic France. Karl Marx suggested that
Protestantism succeeded because it gave expression to the new capitalist
values of thrift, hard work, self-discipline and rationality. Engels agrees that
Calvinism was the faith suitable for the boldly aspiring bourgeois or early
capitalists. Max Weber believes that Calvin and his followers influenced the
capitalist spirit through the idea that every man’s worldly ‘calling’ was
assigned to him by God and emphasis on hard work instilled a profit-making
ethos into the society. Felix Rachfahl criticizes this view through his claims
that free-for-all capitalism was not tolerated even in Calvinism and Catholic
Antwerp remained an important trading centre. H.M. Robertson rejects the
importance of ‘calling’ which he argues existed in the Catholic Church also.
R.H. Tawney turned the thesis round and argued that Calvinists in 17​th
Century adapted itself to the capitalist ethos of commercial classes and
encouraged entrepreneurs. Hence, they were welcomed in the Netherlands
and England where they contributed to the economic development.

The Reformations from the outset were literary events stimulating and
building upon the vernaculars of the day. Elizabethan dramatist William
Shakespeare’s literary brilliance and insight into human life remains
unequaled. A.G. Dickens feels that the vernacular Bible “worked as a midwife
to bring forth a whole great literature and fortified the spirit of the pioneers in
New England”. Similarly, King James Bible commissioned by James I in 1604
has influenced English language and expressions up to today. Reformation
also stimulated passionate controversies over religious art informed by the
various participants’ theologies. The Reformers’ critique of images of saints
shifted the subject matter from mediators with God to portraits of the living,
hence lack of church patronage and need for artists to find secular ones. In
music, too, it stimulated compositions that continue to enrich modern life
despite all Protestants not complementing the liturgy with art and music as
glorious gifts of God. The well known themes of justification by faith alone,
law and gospel and the theology of the cross echo through Johann Sebastian
Bach’s works in both music and words. The tunes and texts of Calvin’s ‘Geneva
Psalter’ made a memorable musical contribution. Reformed churches were to
be completely free of images and it was emphasized through the restructured
Ten Commandments. Hence the Reformed artists had to at times accept
Roman Catholic commissions.

Despite limitations, the Reformation beliefs attracted progressively wider

support from the clerical and intellectual elite of the 16​th century. Roman
Catholicism could only after several decades muster an effective
counter-attack or inspire its priests with the same combative and
proselytizing fervour. Historians have stressed on a harmony between the
values of the reformers and the ambitions of other classes and groups of
European society. However, Euan Cameron has suggested contrarily that
instead the reformation message reduced the scope of available religious
comfort and reassurance, while raising both the professional standards of the
clergy and the moral or intellectual demands which they made of the laity.
When it stirred up enthusiasm and uproar and demolished the old order as in
England, it showed its populist side but when it rebuilt its own vision of the
‘godly communities’ and claimed the right to educate, discipline and to erect
its own institutions, its clericalist colors emerged. Nevertheless, its unique
quality is in the fact that it took a single core idea, presented it to everyone
and encouraged public discussion everywhere; it then deduced the rest of the
changes to teaching and worship from that idea. The Reformation gave large
groups of people in both France and England their first lessons in political
commitment to a universal ideology.

Reformation thus not only changed the composition and nature of the
population but significantly altered deep set beliefs and ideologies and
according to the present writer it is the new determination and dynamism of
the Humanism era that gets credit for the same. It also highlighted the
relationship between the crown and nobility and the power struggle between
the two. Reformation also led to development of new literature, including new
forms of writing i.e. the psalms. Also, reformation in Europe as whole,
integrated different nations together in a common thread of ideological
similarity of a unique character – it was the common link that people held on
to in times of political strife. Moreover, this bond led to integration of
economies leading to travelling of commodities as well as people. Though
Reformation concluded differently in different regions and did not necessarily
lead to the establishment of a new order but it changed the way the people
lived, thought and perceived changes, things as well as life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

* ​ larendon Press:
Cameron, Euan.1991. ​The European Reformation. C
Oxford.
* Carter, Lindeberg. 1996. ​The European Reformations.​ Wiley-Blackwell.
* Phukan, Meenaxi. 1998. ​Rise of the Modern West: Social and Economic
History of Early Modern Europe. M ​ acmillan.
* Sinha, Arvind. 2010. ​Europe in Transition: From Feudalism to
Industrialization.​ M
​ anohar Publishers: New Delhi.