Europe: A History (100 page)
In 1541, at the second attempt, Jean Calvin (1509–64) was persuaded to take control of the church in Geneva. A fugitive Frenchman, more radical than Luther, Calvin founded the most widely influential branch of Protestantism. A scholar raised in the spirit of Lefèvre d’Étaples and a sometime Catholic lawyer, he had been protected by the circle of Marguerite d’Angoulême. He was converted to the new thinking after hearing a homily on the sovereignty of the Scriptures by the Rector of the Sorbonne, Nicholas Cop. Fearing repressions, he resigned his benefice in his native Noyon and fled to Basle. There, in 1535, he published his seminal
Institution de la religion chrétienne
.
Calvin expressed original ideas on theology, on the relations of Church and State, and especially on private morality. He was nearer to Luther than to Zwingli on the Eucharist; but his revival of the doctrine of predestination proved shocking. He saw humanity to be divided into the Damned and the Elect. By this, he taught his disciples to think of themselves as an embattled minority, a band of righteous brothers surrounded by a hostile world, ‘Strangers among Sinners’:
Ainsi les Bourgeois du Ciel n’aiment point le Monde, ni les choses qui sont au Monde … il s’écrient avec le Sage: ‘Vanité des Vanités; tout n’est que vanité et rongement d’Esprit’. (The inhabitants of the city of Heaven do not love the World, nor the things of the World … They cry with the Prophet, ‘Vanity of vanities; everything is nothing but vanity and the devouring of the spirit.’)
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On Church organization, too, Calvin’s innovations far exceeded those of Zwingli. He insisted not only on the separation of Church and State but also on
the competence of local congregations. On the other hand, he also expected that the temporal power would be inspired by religious precepts, and by a desire to enforce all judgements of the Church organs. In matters of toleration, therefore, he was no more flexible than the Inquisition or Henry VIII.
[SYROP]
UTOPIA
U
TOPIA,
meaning ‘No Place’, was the name coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More for his book describing his search for an ideal form of government. Translated into English in 1551, after the author’s martyrdom, as
A Frutefull, pleasant and wittie worke of the beste state of a publique weale, and of the new yle called Utopia
, and also into French, German, Spanish, and Italian, it became a bestseller. In it More described a land where property was held in common, both men and women benefited from universal education, and all religions were tolerated.
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Utopian thinking supplies a deep human need for an ideal vision of a better world. The genre has attracted many practitioners, from Plato’s
Republic
to Bacon’s
New Atlantis
and Harrington’s
Oceana
. Similar effects may be gained by imagining the horrors of
Dystopia
or ‘Bad Place’. Such was the intent of Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World
(1932) or of George Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949). In the twentieth century, utopianism has generally been associated with left-wing thinking. Soviet Russia was widely thought by its admirers to have been a modern utopia, free of the evils of capitalist democracy. ‘I have seen the future,’ said an American visitor in 1919, ‘and it works.’ Such opinions have since been disgraced by knowledge of the mass murders committed in the name of ‘socialism’ and ‘progress’. Modern liberals have moved on to the more humdrum task of bettering the lot of individuals.
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[HARVEST] [VORKUTA]
What is not so readily accepted is that Fascism too had its utopias. After the initial phase of brutal conquest, many Nazis, like many Communists, dreamed of a beautiful, harmonious future. The French writer ‘Vercors’, for example, recounts the musings of a German officer in occupied France, who looks forward to the glorious future of Franco-German union. ‘It will be a replay of Beauty and the Beast’.
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After the war, in Eastern Europe’s Communist prisons, many democrats imprisoned for opposition to Communism had to listen to the broken dreams of their convicted Nazi cell-mates.
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The Fascist utopia, like that of the Communists, was false, and generated immense suffering. But there were those who dreamed it sincerely,
[LETTLAND]
In ethical matters, Calvin established a new and inimitable code which made his followers instantly recognizable. The good Calvinist family was to abhor all forms of pleasure and frivolity—dancing, songs, drinking, gaming, flirtation, bright clothes, entertaining books, loud language, even vivacious gestures. Their life was to be marked by sobriety, self-restraint, hard work, thrift, and, above all, godliness. Their membership of the Elect was to be manifest in their appearance, in their conduct, in their church-going, and in their worldly success. To the old Catholic burden of sin they added the new burden of keeping up appearances. In art, they were to avoid all direct portrayal of the Deity, all mystical symbols and allegories. They were to find the sole source of joy and guidance in the daily reading of the Bible. Here was what the English-speaking world would come to know as the Puritan.
The full formation of Calvinist principles had to await the definitive publication of the
Institution
in 1559 and the second Helvetic Confession, drawn up by H. Bullinger (1504–75), Zwingli’s successor at Zurich, in 1566.
Calvin’s successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza (1519–1605), a Greek scholar and theologian, introduced a rigid, determinist view of predestination that was vigorously opposed by the followers of Jakub Hermans (Arminius, 1560–1609), Professor at Leyden in Holland. The Arminians emphasized the doctrine of free will, and the efficacy of Christ’s death for all believers, not just for the Elect.
The spread of Protestantism has to be described both in socio-political as well as in geographical terms.
Lutheranism appealed directly to independent-minded princes. It confirmed the legitimacy of their rule whilst maintaining the existing social order. It was quickly adopted in several states—notably in Wurtemberg, Hesse, Anhalt, electoral and ducal Saxony, Neumark, and Pomerania—and in most north German cities from Bremen to Riga. It entered a prolonged crisis in 1540, when Luther condoned the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hesse by advising the new faith’s leading patron ‘to tell a good strong lie’. Until the Formula of Concord (1580), it survived several decades of schism between the strict ‘Gnesio-Lutherans’ and the more liberal ‘Melanchthonians’. In Denmark and Norway, through the preaching of’the Danish Luther’, Hans Tausen, it became the state religion in 1537. It helped perpetuate Denmark’s loss of Sweden, where it was not fully established until 1593; and it accelerated the collapse of the Teutonic States in Prussia (1525) and in Livonia (1561).
Calvinism, in contrast, coincided less with state politics than with the inclinations of particular social groups. In Western Europe it often appealed to the rising urban bourgeoisie, and in France to an impressive cross-section of the nobility. In Eastern Europe, also, it appealed both to the landed gentry and to the magnates. In the kingdom of England, Calvinism began to make an impact after the death
of Henry VIII in 1547. The reign of the boy king Edward VI produced much confusion, and the interval of the ultra-Catholic Queen Mary, a crop of Protestant martyrs, notably at Oxford. Thereafter, under Elizabeth I, the Church Settlement enshrined in the Act of Uniformity (1559) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) reached a judicious synthesis of Erastian, Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, and traditional Catholic influences. From then on, Anglicanism has always provided an umbrella for two main political and theological tendencies—the ‘High Church’ of Anglo-Catholicism and the ‘Low Church’ of the Calvinistic evangelicals. Despite merciless persecution under Elizabeth, both recusant Catholics and non-conformist puritans survived underground. The latter re-emerged in force in the seventeenth century and, under Cromwell’s Commonwealth (1649–58), briefly controlled the state.
SYROP
O
N
Saturday, 12 August 1553 a fugitive from the Holy Inquisition rode into the village of Louyset on the French side of Geneva. Four months earlier he had been arrested in Lyons on charges of heresy and, after interrogation by the Inquisitor General, condemned to death. He had escaped from prison, and had been wandering ever since. His aim was to take a boat across the lake from Geneva, and to make for Zurich. Geneva was the stronghold of Calvin, Zurich of the Zwinglians.
Prior to his arrest, the fugitive had been employed as physician to the Archbishop of Vienne. A native of Navarre, he had studied at Toulouse, Paris, Louvain, and Montpellier. He was the author of several medical treatises, of a study of Ptolemy’s
Geography
, and of two anti-trinitarian theological works—
De Trinitatis Erroribus
(1521) and the anonymous
Christianismi restitutio
(1553). For the past eight years he had corresponded with some animosity with Calvin, whom he had once met.
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On the Sunday, having sold his horse, he walked into Geneva, found a room at La Rose, and went to an afternoon service. In church, he was recognized by someone and denounced to the city authorities. By the next morning he was facing the same questions from a Calvinist interrogator that he had faced from the Catholic Inquisitor. He was Fr. Miguel Serveto de Villanova, otherwise ‘Servetus’ (1511–53).
Calvin’s conduct towards Servetus was, to put it mildly, unchristian. He had once warned him against coming to Geneva. He had even supplied the Inquisition at Lyons with a specimen of his correspondent’s handwriting. He now set aside Geneva’s laws concerning religious toleration, and recommended that Servetus be beheaded. Instead, by order of the court, he was burned alive at Champel on 27 October.
Nowhere in Europe could radical thinkers feel really safe. The Russian Orthodox Church had burned its ‘Judaizers’. Byzantium, too, had its Inquisition. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), philosopher and renegade Dominican, who was burned at the stake in Rome, was also, it seems, an English spy.
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Poland-Lithuania was an isolated haven, where from 1565 episcopal courts could not enforce their verdicts. The anti-trinitarians tarried in Transylvania before moving on to Poland. Their leader, the Siennese Fausto Sozzini (1539–1604) to whom Servetus is sometimes compared, had also lived in Lyons and Geneva, where, enrolled in the Italian Church, he had kept quiet.
Long after his death, Servetus was remembered as a symbol of the interdependence of Protestant and Catholic bigotry. Monuments to his memory would be erected in Madrid (1876), Paris (1907), and Vienne (1910). Had he lived longer, he would have enjoyed the success of the four editions of his work on medicinal syrops,
Syroporum universa ratio
(1537).
Thanks to the efforts of John Knox (1513–72), Calvinism became the sole established religion in Scotland in 1560, in a form known as Presbyterianism. Though subject to Anglican influences, the Scottish Kirk stayed apart.
In France the Calvinists were dubbed Huguenots. They spread rapidly in the former Albigensian lands in the south and west, and in the urban populations of all provinces. They formed the backbone of the Bourbon Party during the Wars of Religion, and an essential feature of the French religious scene until their ultimate expulsion in 1685.
In the Netherlands the rise of Calvinism, especially among the burghers of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Leyden, provided a basic factor in the split between the Catholic provinces to the west and the United Provinces to the east. The Dutch Reformed Church has played a central role in the country since its establishment as the state religion in 1622.
In Germany Calvinism was long opposed both by Lutherans and Catholics. It received its major support from the adherence in 1563 of the Elector-Palatine, Frederick III, who imposed the Heidelberg Catechism on all his subjects; from Christian I of Saxony (d. 1591), and in 1613 from the conversion of the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg. Brandenburg-Prussia was unusual in tolerating both Calvinism and Lutheranism.
[FAUSTUS]
In Poland-Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary Calvinism appealed to a wide section of the landed gentry. In some parts, such as Transylvania or the Duchy of Cieszyn, its presence proved durable. The Hungarian city of Debrecen has been ‘the Calvinist Rome’ ever since. In Lithuania it claimed the allegiance of many magnates, including Europe’s largest landowners—the Radziwills.
The effects of Protestantism can be observed in every sphere of European life. By emphasizing the necessity of Bible-reading, it made a major impact on education in the Protestant countries, and hence on popular literacy. In the economic sphere it made a major contribution to enterprise culture, and hence to the rise of capitalism. In politics it proved a major bone of contention both between states and between rival groupings within states. By dividing the Catholic world in two, it spurred the Roman Church into the Reform which it had repeatedly postponed. Above all, it dealt a fatal blow to the ideal of a united Christendom. Until the
1530s, Christendom had been split into two halves—Orthodox and Catholic. From the 1530s onwards it was split into three: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. And the Protestants themselves were split into ever more rival factions. The scandal was so great, and the fragmentation was so widespread, that people stopped talking about Christendom, and began to talk instead about ‘Europe’.
FAUSTUS
T
HE
real-life ‘Dr Faustus’ was a vagabond mountebank and fairground conjurer, who died at Staufen in Breisgau in 1541. Supposedly a graduate of Cracow like Copernicus, he frequented numerous German universities, presenting himself as Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior. He became notorious for his blasphemies, for his ‘miracles’ such as changing water into wine, and for his claim to be in league with the Devil. His exploits inspired a stream of so-called
Faustbuchs
. The first of them, compiled at Frankfurt in 1587, was translated into Danish in 1588, into French and Dutch in 1592, into English before 1594, and into Czech in 1602.
As a fictional figure, Faust made his debut in 1594 in the play by Christopher Marlowe, where he appears as a man of overweening ambition, striving to become ‘great Emperor of the world’. He enjoys a season of power before the Devil reclaims his own. In Germany he featured in a lost drama by Lessing, and in a novel by F. M. Klinger (1791), before being adopted as the central protagonist of Goethe’s two-part verse tragedy (1808, 1832). Ferruccio Busoni’s opera,
Doktor Faust (1916)
remained unfinished.
Goethe’s
Faust
defies easy summary. Faust’s pact with Mephisto promises him rejuvenation, and he lives to be a hundred.
Gib meine Jugend mir zurück!
In Part I, which deals with the ‘smaller world’ of private emotion, Faust wrestles with the conflict between his duty to the Devil and his love for Gretchen. In Part II, which treats the grosse
Welt
of society and politics, he is the minister of a wastrel Emperor. When he dies, Gretchen intervenes, and the Devil is cheated; Heavenly choirs greet the progress of a redeemed soul, as Love triumphs:
Der früh Geliebte,
Nicht mehrGetrübt,
Er kommt zurück!
(The beloved of long ago, no more befogged, is coming back!)
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Goethe’s masterpiece inspired two operas, by Gounod and Berlioz, and the Faust Symphony (1857) by Liszt. In more recent times, Thomas Mann’s novel
Doktor Faustus
(1947) revived the legend for a grim judgement on contemporary Germany. A musician, Adrian Leverkühn, seduced by the works of Wagner and Nietzsche, contracts the diabolical curse of syphilis from a
femme fatale
, and expires after composing a nihilistic cantata,
D. Fausti Weheklag
. At its close, a sustained diminuendo from a solo cello recalls ‘the light in the night’, hinting that German civilization may not, after all, engender total despair.
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