35. Chapter 32: The Protestant Churches Fight for Their Life, 1546-1648

CHAPTER 32 The Protestant Churches Fight for Their Life, 1546-1648

1. Charles V Tries to Uproot the Reformation As we begin this chapter we shall have to review some of the things we already know. That will be necessary if we are to under­stand the bitter struggle which is about to take place between the Catholics and the Protestants.

Luther was a great talker. The emperor Charles never said much. Once Luther said, "I talk more in a day than the emperor in a whole year." Luther wore his heart on his sleeve. He would blurt out whatever was in his mind. The emperor was always very cautious. He would think carefully before he spoke. But once, and perhaps only once in his life, he spoke right from the heart. That was immediately after the Diet of Worms, where Luther had defied the pope and em­peror. Then the emperor vowed, "To root out heresy I shall stake my crown and my life." He kept his vow. The emperor issued against Lu­ther the edict of Worms. That edict ordered his arrest and death. Lu­ther would have been burned at the stake, as so many heretics before him had been, had not his prince, the elector Frederick the Wise, protected him (ch. 24, sec. 19).

Immediately after the Diet of Worms the Reformation move­ment was still only a small and tender sapling. If the emperor had had his hands free he could have pulled it up by the roots. But he had a war with France on his hands. Later he had to defend the Empire against the Turks. At last, having defeated all his enemies, Charles was free to give his attention to the followers of Luther in Germany. In 1546, the year that Luther died, Charles launched his attack on the Protes­tants. But twenty-five years had passed since the Diet of Worms, and the Reformation had had time to grow. The sapling had become a tree. It would require lusty blows with an axe, now, to cut it down. At first the emperor won some vic­tories. It looked very dark for the cause of the Reformation. Charles even captured Wittenberg, the place where Luther had started the Reformation, and where he had lived and labored. Some members of the emperor’s party urged him to have the body of Luther, which was buried in the Castle Church, dug up and burned. But the em­peror would not hear of it, even though this had been done to the bodies of many heretics.

Just as the emperor was begin­ning to make progress against the Lutherans he suffered a sudden change of fortune. Maurice of Sax­ony, who was at first one of his staunchest supporters, turned against him. He might have made the emperor prisoner, but he let him escape. Asked why he did that, Maurice answered, "I did not have a cage good enough for so fine a bird." In 1555 the emperor found him­self in such straits that he was forced to make the Peace of Augs­burg with the Lutherans. The Ger­man Empire consisted of a large number of countries ruled over by princes. By the Peace of Augsburg each prince in Germany received the right to choose between Luther­anism and Catholicism. The people in each country had to accept the religion chosen by their prince.

2. The Reformation Movement Comes to a Stand-still For a time Protestantism swept everything before it. This was in large part due to the furious head­long attack of Luther, aided by Zwingli, Calvin, and a host of less­er Reformers and also by the care­lessness of the popes and the con­tinuing corruption of the Roman Church. As a result the gigantic old edifice of the Roman Church was rocking on its foundations. For a while it seemed that it might collapse in utter ruin.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the Reformation move­ment was brought to a dead stand­still. There were several causes for this. The first was Luther’s stand in e Peasants’ War of 1525. The peasants in Germany were heavily oppressed by the nobles and higher clergy. They rose up in protest in the name of "God’s justice." They had a right to protest, and Luther was in sympathy with them. But when under the leadership of fana­tics they began to kill and destroy, Luther turned against them and urged the government to put down their uprising with a firm hand. From that moment the lower classes turned their backs upon Lu­ther and the Reformation. There­after the Reformation was confined to the middle and upper classes in Germany. The second cause was the ap­pearance of the sect of the Ana­baptists. Many of the early Ana­baptists were fanatics. They went much further in their opposition to Catholic doctrine and practice than either Luther or Calvin. They suddenly appeared in almost every country of western Europe. Soon they threatened to upset not only the old ecclesiastical order, but also the social and political order. The Romanists were not slow to see their opportunity. They said that the doctrines of the Reforma­tion would upset all order and au­thority not only in the Church but in the State and society as well. This caused many of the upper classes to remain in the Roman Church. A third cause was the division among the Protestants. Again the Romanists were not slow to take advantage of this development. To choose intelligently and sincerely between Luther, Zwingli, and Cal­vin required prayerful study and thinking. The Romanists induced many who were too lazy and in­different or unable to think for themselves to stay in the Roman Church, and let the Church do the thinking for them. A fourth cause was the misap­plication of Luther’s central doc­trine of justification by faith alone without good works. This misap­plication led to moral conditions even worse than they had been under Rome. Many turned the "liberty of a Christian man" (ch. 25, sec. 3) into license. They reasoned that if salvation was not earned by good works there was no need to live a good life. The Romanists used this sad develop­ment as an argument against Luther’s doctrine. This develop­ment was a bitter disappointment to Luther himself. It was one of the things that saddened his last years. This development in the land of Luther may have been one of the things that steeled Calvin’s hand when he introduced his strict church discipline in Geneva. His reason for doing this may partly have been his desire to prevent German conditions in Geneva, and thereby ward off moral reproach against the Reformation (ch. 27, sec. 6).

3. Other Forces Affect Protestant­ism The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563 (from one year be­fore the death of Luther to one year before the death of Calvin) profoundly affected the Protestant position. As a result the Protestant position was tremendously weak­ened. The Protestants in France, the Netherlands, and Scotland were doctrinally united. What united them was their Calvinistic creeds or confessions. But Scotland was a poor and weak country, and in the days of slow and uncertain sailing vessels it was geographically far separated from France and the Netherlands. England, as an island and because of its peculiar position with regard to doctrine and church government and liturgy, was also set off from France and the Neth­erlands. The Lutheran Protestants were doctrinally separated from the Calvinistic Protestants.

Now the Peace of Augsburg (sec. 1) separated the Lutheran Protestants also politically from the Calvinistic Protestants. That Peace Treaty applied only to the Lutheran Protestants in Germany. It left the Calvinistic Protestants in other countries out in the cold. The Council of Trent had re­formed and revitalized the Roman Church. This Church was once more ready to move forward. It had equipped itself with three new and powerful weapons: the Span­ish Inquisition, the Index, and the Order of Jesuits, organized by the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola.

Divided and inwardly weakened Protestantism was now opposed by this unified Catholicism which had recovered from the shock of the Reformation movement. The In­quisition quickly put out the feeble sparks of Protestantism in Italy and Spain. The missionary zeal and skillful tactics of the Jesuits re­gained Poland, Austria, and parts of southern Germany for Rome. In the early days of the Reformation Luther’s and Calvin’s writings had circulated freely throughout Eu­rope, and had made many converts to Protestantism. Now Protestant writings were put on the Index of forbidden books. In this way Catholics were shut off from Prot­estant propaganda and the spread of Protestantism was brought to a complete standstill. The Roman Church now set about regaining what it had lost. The protecting shield of the Peace of Augsburg covered only the Lutheran Protestants in Ger­many. It did not cover the Calvin­istic Protestants in France and the Netherlands. These now had to bear the brunt of Catholic attack. And Calvin, their great and in­spiring leader, was dead.

4. Protestantism Fights for Its Life in France, 1562-1629

France, like Germany, was di­vided between Catholics and Prot­estants. The Huguenots formed a strong party, but they were in the minority. Civil war broke out be­tween the two religious parties in 1562. The Huguenots defended themselves with varying success. In the early morning of August 24, 1572, they were dealt a heavy blow. This was the date secretly set for the massacre of St. Bar­tholomew. A little past the hour of midnight a bell tolled in the city of Paris. It was the signal for the massacre to begin. For three days and nights the massacre went on in Paris. It was extended to other cities in France, and thousands of Huguenots were killed. One of the first victims was the noble leader of the Huguenots, Gaspard de Co­ligny. It was one of the foulest crimes recorded in history.

WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE

"THE LILY AMONG THE THORNS"
The Church Herald
A symbol used by the Reformed Church in the 16th century. The quotation around the margin is from the Song of Solomon. With intermissions the war went on until 1629, when the capture of La Rochelle, the last Protestant stronghold, broke the political power of the Huguenots in France. The Huguenots continued to exist, however, as a religious Protestant body.

5. The Protestants in the Nether­lands Revolt against Spain, 1568-1609

Protestants were burned at the stake as heretics in Italy, Spain, France, England, and Scotland. But in no country did so many persons suffer a martyr’s death for their faith as in the Netherlands.

Charles V, emperor of Germany, was also king of Spain and lord of the Netherlands. In his reign and the first years of the reign of his son Philip II, king of Spain, more than 18,000 persons in the Netherlands fell victim to the Spanish Inquisition. In an attempt to force them to a confession of heresy both men and women were horribly tortured. Then the men were burned, the women were drowned or buried alive. The tyranny and cruelty of King Philip II of Spain became unbear­able. Spain was at that time the most powerful country in Europe. Holland was a very small country. But at last in 1568 the people of the Netherlands under the leader­ship of one of the greatest heroes of the Reformation, William the Silent, prince of Orange, rose in revolt against Spain. The Calvin­ists of Holland became the cham­pions of Protestantism for all the world. Through long dark days the Dutch went on fighting in the face of terrific odds. In 1584 William the Silent fell victim to an assassin’s bullet.

Elizabeth, queen of England, was friendly to the Protestant cause (ch. 30, sec. 7). Without declaring war against Spain, she had been lending aid to the Dutch. The Catholics laid many plots to assas­sinate her, but all were in vain.

Now King Philip II of Spain formed a grandiose plan. He built an enormous fleet, which the Span­iards called the "Invincible Arma­da." With this fleet Philip would invade England. And with that country conquered, so he thought, it would be easy to put down the rebellion in the Netherlands. But the English with the help of the Dutch defeated the Spanish Ar­mada. Most of what was left of it was wrecked by storms on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Only a miserable remnant of the once proud Armada returned to the ports of Spain. The power of Spain had suffered a terrible blow. The Dutch under Prince Maurice, son of William the Silent, continued the war until 1609 when Spain, in a Twelve Years Truce, practically acknowl­edged the independence of the Northern Netherlands, the Dutch Republic.

6. German Protestants Wage War for Thirty Years, 1618-1648

Since 1555 Germany, under the terms of the Peace of Augsburg, had been enjoying comparative peace. Then, in 1618, the Peace of Augsburg was broken. More than once the struggle looked hopeless for the Protestants. At the most critical moment Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, another great hero of the Reformation, stepped in to save the day for Prot­estantism. After thirty years of the most savage fighting the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648. The terms of this treaty were much like those of the Peace of Augsburg, except that religious toleration in Germany was now ex­tended to include the Calvinists as well as the Lutherans. As under the former treaty, each ruler was to determine the religion of his own realm. It had been a devastating war, and at the end Germany lay bleeding from a thousand wounds.

7. The Wars of the Reformation Carve Out Territory for Prot­estantism As we look back over the period we have just studied, we see that the churches of the Reformation passed through a period of bloody martyrdom between the years 1520 and 1562. And following that, from 1562 to 1648, the Protestants had to wage war for their very existence. Martyrdom was suffered mainly by the Calvinistic Protes­tants, and it was they who from 1562 to 1618 bore the brunt of the war against the Catholics. Then from 1618 to 1648 the Lutherans were also forced into war. During these years German, Danish, and Swedish Lutherans and the Dutch Calvinists defended the Protestant cause.

Individual Englishmen fought with Scotchmen and Germans as volunteers in the Netherlands alongside the Dutch in their war against Spain. As a nation England took part in the wars of the Ref­ormation only in defeating the Spanish Armada; but that was a very important action. When the wars between Catho­lics and Protestants came to an end with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the geographical extent of the Roman and Protestant churches had become fairly well fixed. There have been no major changes since, and the boundaries are today pretty much what they became at that time. (See map.)

Entirely Catholic were Poland, Austria, Italy, Spain, the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium), and Ireland. In France the majority of the people were Catholic.

Entirely Protestant were the three Scandinavian countries, Den­mark, Norway, and Sweden. Prot­estants were in the majority in Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, the Northern Netherlands (the Dutch Republic), England, and Scotland. At this time little was heard of the Church in the East. Under the Turks the members of the Greek Church in Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula (ch. 22, sec. 9) were heavily oppressed. In spite of persecution, however, which was met with heroic resistance (ch. 42, sec. 2), the church continued to exist in the Balkan countries through the centuries and down to the present time. But although the Greek Orthodox Church was heavily oppressed in the countries of its origin, in Russia it grew un­til it embraced nearly the entire population. The storm of the Reformation which lashed the waters of the Latin Church in the West into angry mountainous waves, caused not even a ripple on the surface of the waters of the Greek Church in the East. The Church continued to stagnate (ch. 10, sec. 5). The Reformation did not affect it at all.