Daily Life During The Reformation (42 page)

In some places, extreme unction and confirmation remained
nearly unknown as few peasants requested it, especially when the priest charged
a fee. Group confession was also the norm in some places although officially
not allowed. Priests and villages in some parishes ignored the new marriage
ordinances ordered by the Council of Trent concerning mandatory posting of
banns and a Church register.

In the diocese of Speyer in the region of the middle Rhine,
however, it appears that peasants were mostly content with their priests,
favoring reforms that improved local church services; but they firmly resisted
those Catholic reforms that interfered with the running of the communal churches
over which they had control.

Because Catholic reform had to come from outside and local
communities did not welcome foreigners, new problems arose. The local
population maintained zealous control of church finances and had a large say in
appointing or dismissing the local priest.

The priest they were used to was a member of the community,
often lived with a local woman, worked his own fields, and wore peasant dress
except when officiating. His duties were to perform Sunday services, baptize
children, and preside over marriages and funerals. If he was liked, he stayed;
if not, he was sent away. People expected the priest to live according to their
rules and standards. Some priests married their women and had children, but
such matters were of little importance to the villagers. In the Bishopric of
Speyer, attempts by higher church authorities to eradicate such priestly
misbehavior alienated Church and peasants. The dictates of the Council of Trent
expected priests to be celibate, morally upright, sober, and remain aloof from
community conflicts. The villages did not share these impositions. They
expected the priest to behave in a similar manner to themselves.

COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE CLERGY

When visited by Church officials in 1583, 12 out of 22
clergymen were living with women. Some priests were prosecuted and imprisoned
by officials of the bishop for that reason, but it appears not to have been
effective enough to stop the practice. The peasants had no objection. Nor did
villagers mind their priest drinking with them even when he overdid it. In
general, complaints against a priest were similar to those that might be
brought up against a neighbor. One priest allowed his cows to wander through
people’s fields; another shouted too loudly at his mistress and two sons,
disturbing the neighborhood. The fact that Catechism lessons were ordered by
the bishop, did not appeal to many, and the local youths did not bother to
attend. There was some talk in one of the villages when a priest, in his last
will and testament, left all his property to his nine grandchildren.

A BAD EXAMPLE

The case against the cleric of Wiesental embodies the
behavior of others that the Council of Trent hoped to correct. Not only was he
living with a woman whom he had promised to marry, but he did not teach the
catechism and heard confession in groups, not privately. He drank too much,
including before Easter services, entered into disputes with neighbors while
intoxicated, accepted wine in lieu of his burial fee, and consumed meat during
Lent. He also reputedly stole some flour set aside for a hospice.

NEW PRIESTS AND PEASANTS

After about 1580, the Counter-Reformation arrived in the
region of the diocese of Speyer with the newly ordained and better educated
priests who were very different and more austere than the old traditional
peasant priests whom they replaced. The village people found them arrogant,
while the priests complained that the peasants did not perform their religious
duties.

These men insisted on following to the letter the mandates
of the Council of Trent, but local people were not impressed. When fines were
issued for not attending church on Sundays or for dancing on that holy day,
people became angry and ignored the regulations. Peasants were used to making
use of their free time as they wished and were not pleased to be told how to
use it.

People were ordered to avoid contact with Protestants with
whom they traded in neighboring villages and to allow memberships in their
communes only to Catholics. Once again, these measures failed and commerce
continued as before.

Fines for hunting and fishing on Sundays, the closing of
inns during church services, and rules that allowed dancing only on Saturday
afternoons brought on the wrath of the populace. Church leaders complained that
more people were in the inn than in the church during vespers and ordered fines
to be given to anyone found there.

In one village no one could be married without parental
permission and a ceremony had to be held. It was argued that the poor could ill
afford it.

JESUITS IN SPEYER

Jesuits arrived in Speyer in the 1560s much to the
consternation of the city council and the bishop, all of whom heartily disliked
them. The bishop was reported as saying he wished the devil would take them
all. One of the arguments against them was that they would arouse serious
conflict with Protestant neighbors in nearby villages, which could lead to a
breakdown in the so-far peaceful relations. Jesuits were also foreigners in the
Catholic villages with no respect for local traditions. Their high degree of
education and their moral comportment would also be an affront to the
traditional clergy of the region.

PRINTING AND CENSORSHIP

Censorship of reading material was established by the
Congregation of the Index that denounced books at variance with the views of
the Catholic faith, and it was made a sin to read or possess them. Because the
new art of printing made it possible to widely disseminate the works of
heretical authors and their Humanistic imitators, immoral poems, romances,
satires on ecclesiastical persons and institutions, revolutionary works, and
songs were circulated everywhere and wrought incalculable harm, according to
the Vatican. The worst kinds of lampoons and libels were disseminated in
pamphlets against the pope, the Roman curia, bishops, priests, monks, and nuns
who remained true to their Catholic convictions. In vulgar language, Catholic
doctrines were ridiculed; while among the lower, uneducated classes, the Church
asserted the most base passions were stimulated.

COUNTER-REFORMATION AND THE COMMON PEOPLE

The reaffirmation of Church institutions and procedures
helped inspire Catholics to cling to their beliefs. Emphasis on better
education for priests, especially those in the villages (many of whom had only
the rudiments of Latin, the language of the Church, and a shallow knowledge of
scripture), improved relationships between the priest and his flock.

The Counter-Reformation also brought about a steady
improvement in popular piety and the foundation of new orders such as the
Jesuits who carried the Church’s message to the far corners of the globe. The
Catholic reformation was not successful in its attempts to recapture many of
the converted Protestants of northern Europe.

STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY

The Church believed the entire Reformation was based on
human rather than divine authority. Controversies, debates, executions,
cruelty, wars, and destruction accompanied the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation between 1517 and 1648. Catholics saw the Reformation as
leading to enslavement under the authority of false prophets. Individual means
of salvation associated with the new sects was a sham. Egotistical,
power-greedy, land-hungry secular princes and officials found the Protestant
movement to their advantage to snap up Church property, buildings, and
revenues.

For Catholics, the Protestant Reformation was an
unmitigated disaster causing great harm to the social, political, and religious
unity of Christian Europe. Freedom of religious belief advocated by reformers
did not exist according to the Church, who claimed that Protestantism gave rise
to evil tyranny and anarchy in matters of conscience. Catholic sources blamed
the Reformation as the cause of indescribable suffering among the people, for
civil wars lasting decades, the destruction of countless treasures of art and
priceless manuscripts, and rampant hatred between people of the same region and
language. Further, Protestants were seen to be responsible for the Thirty
Years’ War that devastated Germany, and in which the Holy Roman Empire lost the
leading position it had held for centuries.

The Reformation, it was believed, promoted absolutist
designs of princes and kings repudiating papal authority. For many Catholics,
it had led to terrible abuses by twisting and distorting what was good in the
eyes of God into a degenerate view of religion and society by encouraging
subservience of Church to state, fostering carnal desires through marriage of
the clergy and by reckless, gross errors of doctrine.

The Church, in its own view had continued on its benevolent
course for many centuries, undertaking prodigious works of education and
charity. Hostility that arose toward its holy deeds and compassionate nature
was due to impious civil influences and greed. As in all large organizations
there were always a few immoral individuals, but the Church was hindered in its
own internal reforms in the sixteenth century due to the antagonism of civil
and Protestant interference, allowing misguided men to engross themselves in
heresy and schism.

The secular leaders of town councils such as in Augsburg,
permitted Protestants to take over, allowing them to forbid the celebration of
Mass, and all Catholic ecclesiastical ceremonies, while giving Catholic clergy
no alternative but to reform or depart the city.

INDULGENCES

According to the Catholic Church the war against the Turks,
construction of churches and monasteries, aid to the poor, and numerous other
good causes led to the selling of indulgences in the fifteenth century. When
secular rulers demanded that a portion of the money collected in their
territories be given to them, abuse became flagrant; and in the public mind,
indulgences represented another oppressive tax. The use of indulgences for the
new Saint Peter’s church in Rome gave Luther an opportunity to attack them in
general, and this assault brought on the Reformation in Germany. It may not
have happened if he had not been protected by the unwise Elector, Frederick the
Wise.

Similar motives had led Zwingli to propagate his erroneous
teachings, thereby inaugurating the Reformation in German Switzerland. Both he
and Luther asserted they were attacking indulgences, but they soon propagated
doctrine contrary to that of the Church. Their errors led to rebellion against
Church authority and to apostasy and schism. Political considerations played a
large role in the development of Zwingli’s control in Zurich. Arbitrary
decrees, issued by the magistrates, concerned ecclesiastical organization;
while members of the city council who remained true to the Catholic faith were
expelled. Catholic services were soon forbidden in the city.

FALSE DOCTRINES

Proclaiming the false doctrine of "justification by
faith alone," by denying the merit of good works, and the condemnation of
monastic vows, Luther obviously intended to subvert the true fundamental
institutions of the Church. His doctrine of the Bible as the only guide in
religious questions, along with his rejection of Church authority, seduced a
large number of priests, monks, and nuns into breaking their vows.

FRENCH SWITZERLAND

French Switzerland developed its own heretical point of
view, organized in Geneva by Calvin who regulated all aspects of life of the
citizens, supported by the authorities. Calvin’s word was law, and he tolerated
no contradiction of his views, introduced by means of violence. Catholic
priests were banished, and the people oppressed and compelled to attend
Calvinistic sermons.

SENSUALITY

The ideas that many reformers advocated, including Christian
freedom of thought and the ability of individuals to seek and find their own
salvation in the Bible, appealed to the base and morally corrupt. The abolition
of religious institutions, which had functioned to constrain sinful human
nature (confession, penance, fasting, abstinence, vows), appealed to the carnal
desires and to the malleable, superficial, and unlettered. Hostility toward
religious orders, to virginity, and to celibacy, attracted many people who
preferred to be free from obligation to God and indulge their sensual cravings.

NORTHERN COUNTRIES

In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the Reformation found
approval due to royal influence when King Christian II of Denmark welcomed it
as an instrument to weaken the clergy and confiscate their extensive property.
The barons and prelates deposed him, however, and elected his uncle, duke
Frederick of Schleswig and Holstein to the throne. A secret follower of Luther,
Frederick deceived the bishops and nobility when he swore at his coronation in
1523 to maintain the Catholic religion. Once on the throne, he granted the
reformers freedom of belief, permitted the clergy to marry, and reserved for
the king the confirmation of numerous, eventually Episcopal, appointments. His
son, Christian III, who had already reformed Holstein, threw the Danish bishops
into prison where they agreed to resign and to refrain from opposing the new
doctrine. Priests who opposed the Reformation were expelled, monasteries were
closed, and the new Church introduced everywhere by force. At the Diet of
Copenhagen in 1546 all rights of Catholics were nullified including the right
of inheritance and eligibility for office. Catholic priests were forbidden to
reside in the country under pain of death. Christian III also introduced the Reformation
into Norway and Iceland by violent means.