Reformation: Politics/Religion:
Reformation:
The End of Papal Hegemony and the Advent of Protestantism:
Also known as the "Protestant Revolution". Generally speaking, the Reformation
begins when in 1517 the German, Catholic priest
Martin Luther nails his famous "95 Theses" to the Castle Church door,
in Wittenberg Germany. The "Theses" generally condemned priests for acting
immorally and, most importantly, for selling indulgences; that is, for a price,
forgiving people's sins.
In short, Luther challenged the theology of the Papacy, and although he
initially only meant to reform its theology, he helped spark (and in Germany
led) a complete revolution against its religious and political authority.
This challenge was amplified when, in England, Henry VIII fought the Catholic
Church for the right to divorce and remarry. Although the Church granted
him this right the first time around, when it refused the second time, he
created the Anglican Church/Church of England (1534) (leading to the
English Civil War
as Anglicans, Catholics and Puritans all fight for dominance). Note: marital
freedom is also a key theme in Tartuffe and Candide. (Henry
VIII's wives)
Similar breaks from Catholicism soon occur throughout Northern Europe.
Reformation: Four Levels of Change:
1) Religious: Personal relationship with Biblical word, word of God,
Bible translated into vernaculars, beginning with Luther's translation of the
bible into German (Note relationship to spread of literacy; technology: printing
press; philosophy: individualism and freedom) etc.
2) Political And Social: The rise of the Nation State. Rise of
Absolutist Kings: Freed from Papal control, Kings had vastly more power. Like
Catholic kings before them, Protestant monarchs still rooted their power in
"Divine Right": a king answers to no one but God.
3) Economic: Freed from Rome, nation-states develop new economic models,
competition among countries to control/exploit colonies, death of "money-lender
taboo (usury) and growth of capitalism. Until this time, money lending was
the domain of families or the Church (or those outside of the Church: Jews); the
Reformation clears the way for what we now call banking.
4) Aesthetic/Cultural: Northern European cultural Revolt Against Papal, Italian,
Renaissance Splendor. Move toward Simplicity, Sparseness, Puritanism.
Religious War
As is often the case when a single, strong ruler or ruling system is eliminated,
the Reformation leads to a violently swinging Intolerance/Tolerance pendulum:
Catholics and Protestants (as well as struggles between Catholic sects, and
between Protestant denominations etc.) denounce each other as
heretics and/or followers of Satan (and of course Jews are routinely burned by
both); Europe plunged into a varied series of wars that cost hundreds of
thousands of lives, cripples it economically and will greatly influence that
colonization of the New World. (This is the chaotic, violent, brutal political
and civil landscape upon which Tartuffe and Candide set.)
Consider the Thirty Years War, between Catholics and Protestants, in what
is essentially now modern Germany, Austria and Bavaria: killed between 1/5 to
1/3 of the entire population, largely thru direct genocide of unarmed civilians.
This constituted the largest civilian slaughter in Europe, for all time, until
WWI and WWII.
How
the Conservative Reformation Spawned the Liberal Enlightenment