Daily Life During The Reformation (27 page)

In Scotland, music was becoming popular in the homes by the
beginning of the sixteenth century; the harp, fiddle, lute, spinet, and various
other instruments were all used domestically. Groups of musical people sprung
up, especially in the towns, where both players and singers enjoyed getting
together.

The Swiss, Felix Platter, studied the lute when he was
eight years old. When other boys also learned to play the instrument, they
formed a sort of musical circle. Although in other parts of Europe the lute was
considered an instrument of the court until the seventeenth century, it was
pervasive among the middle and lower-middle classes of Switzerland. Also
popular at this time were the clavichord, harp, viola, Jew’s harp, dulcimer,
and spinet.

Religious Music

Unlike some religious fanatics, Luther viewed music with
high esteem. He himself was an accomplished musician and composed hymns. He
further believed that music should be taught in schools as part of the training
of young men entering the priesthood. He advocated that common people needed to
hear the Word of God and to sing His praises in their own languages not, as
before the Reformation, only in Latin as it was sung by church choirs. German
pastors writing hymns based on the psalms were advised by Luther to use the
most simple, common words but keeping to the meaning of the psalms as closely
as possible. In Protestant churches, Luther dispensed with the choir and
allocated singing to the congregation. Johann Sebastian Bach, a Lutheran,
taught his students that music was an act of worship. He said all musicians
should commit their talents to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peasant Dance. Pieter Brueghel
the Elder, 1568. A festive scene of peasants dancing, drinking, and eating. The
painting depicts a couple kissing, a young girl being pulled to join in the
dancing, and children imitating the adults.

David Teniers, 1633. Music in
the kitchen.

ART AND THE REFORMATION

Religious art thrived throughout the middle ages, and the
popes were often its patrons. Papal support continued in Catholic countries
after the Reformation. Protestant countries, on the other hand, did not
construct large cathedral buildings for their simplified religious activities.
They denounced ecclesiastical painting and sculpture and shunned religious
trappings.

The Reformation initiated a new tradition that redirected
artistic efforts into secular forms such as landscape and portrait painting.
Religious art continued much longer in Catholic countries. Iconic images of
Christ, the Virgin, the saints, and scenes from the Passion as subject matter
became less frequent as biblical portrayals of contemporary life with moral
overtones became preferred subjects. Some works displayed sinners accepted by
Christ, in sympathy with the Protestant orientation that salvation comes only
through God’s grace.

The Reformation prompted a surge of iconoclasm since many
Protestant sects regarded religious paintings and sculpture as idolatrous.
Zwingli and Calvin took all religious images from the churches, while Luther
permitted them to remain as long as the congregation was made to understand
that such imagery was simply symbolic and of little significance.

Since one of the principal theological differences between
Protestantism and Catholicism concerned transubstantiation (or literal
transformation of the Communion wafer and wine into the body and blood of
Christ); Protestant churches often selected altar piece scenes portraying the
last supper, a reminder to the congregation of the purely symbolic message of
the Eucharist. Catholics, wishing to stress the actual transformation of the
bread and wine into the body of Christ preferred to see crucifixion scenes
above the altar.

Perhaps more than Catholics, Protestants took advantage of
printmaking in northern Europe to mass produce visual images of religious
opponents and their beliefs in the form of caricatures that were often violent,
vulgar, and defamatory.

Among Protestants, portraits of reformers were in demand;
and their likenesses were sometimes painted into biblical scenes. After the
first years of the Reformation, however, Northern European artists concentrated
less and less on religious art.

The great genre painter of his time, Pieter Brueghel of
Flanders, was employed by both Catholic and Protestant patrons. He devoted much
of his paintings to landscape and to sixteenth-century peasant life in
Flanders. His
Wedding Feast
, depicting a peasant wedding dinner held in
a barn, does not refer in any way to events of religious, historical, or
classical import. Brueghel’s work gave impetus to many future northern
landscape artists who painted in a similar genre.

In Catholic Italy, the painting of the Last Judgment by
Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel came under attack during the
Counter-Reformation for nudity, for a depiction of a clean-shaven Christ
standing, and for including the pagan figure of Charon.

Peasant Feast by Pieter Aertsen,
1550.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION AND ART

Protestants, in recognizing that the division between
sacred and secular was artificial, felt they could approach God directly
without the use of intermediaries; Catholics, on the other hand, maintained the
tradition of separation, seeing a need for intermediaries. In so doing, they
showed reverence to images. The art produced at this time by each side focused
on such differences, especially in the case of artists in Catholic countries
who were forced by the Church to adhere to the medieval tradition of turning
out only paintings with religious themes. Artists in Protestant countries, by
contrast, generally painted ordinary people. Subject matter thus provided the
main distinction between Reformation and Counter-Reformation art.

At the time, portrait painting became popular in northern
Europe; and Protestant works showed more realism. In the south, during the
Counter-Reformation, artists were still bound to the glorification of Catholic
traditions, graphically portraying immaculate-looking saints undergoing
martyrdom or Christ and the Virgin Mary.

To encourage piety, decrees emanating from the Council of
Trent demanded that art provide an accurate account of a biblical story or the
life of a saint. In 1563, the Council instructed that paintings should not
include anything profane or lustful and could not be placed in churches unless
approved by the bishop.

The reforms resulting from the Council set the tone for the
Counter-Reformation, and pictures of Christ were now promoted that only showed
Mary on bended knee before her child. She no longer was permitted to be shown
swooning at the foot of the cross; in scenes of the last judgment she had to be
portrayed sternly sitting beside Christ. There was no room for artistic
imagination.

The Venetian artist Paolo Veronese was summoned by the
Inquisition to explain why his Last Supper, a huge canvas designated for the
refectory of a monastery, contained, according to the inquisitors, “buffoons,
drunken Germans, dwarfs and other such scurrilities” as well as extravagant
costumes and settings. Veronese was ordered to change his painting within three
months. He only changed the title to
The Feast in the House of Levi
, still an event from the
Gospels but less central to doctrine, and the matter was closed.

As the Counter-Reformation progressed in strength, the
Catholic Church grew more confident; and Rome again asserted its universality
in nations around the world. The Jesuits spread the “true” faith sending
missionaries to Asia, the New World, and Africa and made use of the arts to
spread their message, all of which had a profound impact.

In producing secular art, the Reformation artists glorified
God by portraying the natural beauty of His creation. Catholics of the
Counter-Reformation did not share this view, believing that art must have a
didactic religious content.

12 - CLOTHING AND FASHION

Wherever
the Reformation became entrenched, fashions changed, often reflecting the
Protestant ethic with less flamboyant styles than those worn in the Renaissance.
At the same time, while the Catholics stressed imagery and ceremony, the
Protestant view was that faith should be expressed privately with more emphasis
on the spiritual than the material.

Class differences were primarily shown by the style and
quality of fabric, and the influx into the towns of a large variety of people
from other lands and different levels of society permitted the citizenry to
evaluate and judge one another’s relative wealth and status as reflected in
their dress.

Poor people throughout Europe wore clothes of coarse cloth,
and this did not change much during the century. But fashion for those who were
better off was very diverse. The dramatist, Thomas Dekker, reflected on the
clothes worn by friends:

‘his Codpeece is in Denmarke,
the collar, his Duble

and the belly in France, the
wing and narrow sleeve

in Italy: the short waste hangs
over a Dutch Botchers

stall in Utrich: his huge
Sloppes speakes Spanish:

Polonia give him the Bootes.’

SPAIN

In the middle of the sixteenth century, many western
European countries, both Protestant and Catholic, adopted the styles of the
Spanish nobility. The cut of the clothes and their rigid and formal elegance,
along with perfect distinction of line caught the attention of everyone
interested in fastidious dressing. Red, green, and yellow were popular colors,
although the symbol of the elegance of Spain was always black. Italy and
France, in particular, took on the predilection for black.

Women

Spaniards believed woman was the instrument for seduction,
and that besides her face, the principal symbols of temptation and sin were the
signals of her fertility, her hips and breasts. These were kept well covered,
although the face remained exposed. Skirts fell right to the ground and shoes,
made of wood or cork with high soles, were worn, so the skirts would not drag
in the dirt.