Nationalism and Culture (18 page)

It was in furtherance of tJie_political aims of the national jtate^ that its princely founders set up differences in principles between thefr own and foreign peoples and strove to deepen and confirm them, for their whole existence depended upon these artificially created difFerences. Therefore they attached importance to the development of different languages in the different countries, and they had a love for definite traditions, which they enveloped in a veil of mysticism and tried to keep alive among the people J for the inability to forget is one of the first requisites of "national consciousness." And since among the people only the "holy" took root, it behooved them to give to national institutions the appearance of holiness and in particular to surround the person of the ruler with the glamour of divinity.

In this matter also Machiavelli served as a pioneer, for he understood that a new era had arrived and he could indicate its trend. He was the first decided supporter of the national state against the political ambitions of the church. Because the church stood as the strongest barrier in the way of the national unity of Italy, and therefore of "freeing the land from the Barbarians," he fought it most determinedly and promoted the separation of church and state. At the same time he tried to raise the state on the

^ Novalis had clearly grasped the deeper meaning of this tremendous political change when he wrote:

"Unfortunately the princes had interfered in this schism, and many used it for the confirmation and extension of their temporal power and income. They were glad to be relieved of that high influence, and took the new consistoria under their fatherly protection. They were most eagerly concerned to prevent the complete union of the Protestant churches, and thus religion was most irreligiously enclosed within state boundaries; whereby the ground was laid for the gradual undermining of religious cosmopolitan interests. Thus religion lost its great political peace-making influence, its peculiar role as the unifying individualizing principle of Christianity." (Novalis, Christianity or Europe. Fragment written in 1799-)

NATIONALISM AND CULTURE lOI

pedestal of divinity, although he was no Christian and had definitely broken with all belief in the supernatural. But he felt deeply the implicit connection between religion and politics and knew that temporal power could only prosper when it stood close to the source of all authority, so that it might shine with the light of divinity. For reasons of state, then, Machiavelli wished to preserve religion among the people, not as a power 'outside~tHe state, but as an instrumentum regni, as a tool of government by statecraft. Therefore he wrote with cold-blooded realism in the eleventh chapter of the second book of his Discourses:

In reality no one has ever introduced new laws among the people without referring therein to God. The doctrines would otherwise not have been accepted, for a wise man can recognize as good much of whose excellence /

he cannot convince other men. Therefore do governments take their refuge in divine authority.

The high priests of monarchistic politics continued to work in this direction. They created a new political religious feeling which gradually took shape as "national consciousness" and, fertilized by man's inner urge for a formula, bore, later, the same strange fruit as did formerly the belief in God's eternal providence.

THE REFORMATION AND THE SOCIAL FOLK MOVEMENTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. THE CHURCH AND THE PRINCES IN THE NORTH. LUTHER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE STATE. PROTESTANTISM AS A PHASE OF PRINCELY ABSOLUTISM. NATIONALISM AS INNER ENSLAVEMENT. THE PEASANT REVOLT. WYCLIFFE AND THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. THE HUSSITE MOVEMENT. CALIXTINES AND TABORITES. WAR AS A SOURCE OF DESPOTISM. CHELCICKY, A REFORMER OF CHURCH AND STATE. PROTESTANTISM IN SWEDEN. THE DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH. CALVINISM. THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. THE REIGN OF TERROR IN GENEVA. PROTESTANTISM AND SCIENCE.

IN the Reformation of the northern countries, readily distinguishable by its religious concepts from the Renaissance of the Latin people, where the concepts were dominantly pagan, two different tendencies must be carefully distinguished j the mass revolution of the peasants and of the lower sections of society in the cities, and the so-called Protestantism, which in Bohemia as well as in England and in Germany and the Scandinavian countries worked toward a separation of the church and state and strove to concentrate all power in the hands of the state. The memory of the popular revolution, drowned in blood by the rising Protestantism and its princely and priestly representatives, was later (as usual) defamed and belittled by the victors. And as in the writing of current history the success or failure of a cause are the determining factors, it was inevitable that in later times the Reformation should be regarded as nothing more than the movement of Protestantism.

The revolutionary urge of the masses was directed not only against the Roman Papacy, but was meant to abolish social inequalities and the prerogatives of the rich and powerful. The leaders of the popular movement felt that these were a mockery of the pure Christian teaching of the equality of men. Even after the church had achieved its power the spirit of the early Christian congregations, with their communal mode of life and the feeling of brotherhood animating them, had never been quite forgotten among the people. The origin of monasticism was to be traced to this causei likewise, the spirit of millennialism, the belief in a thousand

year reign of peace, freedom and common possessions. This found an echo also in the speeches of Joachim of Floris and Almarich of Bena.

These traditions remained alive among the Bogomili in Bulgaria and Servia, and among the Cathari of the Latin countries. They kindled the courage of their faith among the Waldenses and the heretical sects of Languedoc and among the Humiliati and the Apostolic Brethren in Northern Italy, with their inner light. We find them among the Beguines and Beghardes in Flanders, among the Anabaptists of Holland and of Switzerland and the Lollards in England. They lived in the revolutionary popular movements in Bohemia and in the confederacies of the German peasants, who united in the Bundsc huh and the Poor Conrad to break the yoke_o?_serfdom. It was the spirit oFthese traditions which descended upon the Enthusiasts of Zwickau and gave to the revolutionary action of Thomas Miinzer so powerful an impulse.

Against some of these movements the church with the help of the temporal powers organized regular crusades, as against the Bogomili and Aibigenses, whereby whole countries were for decades filled with murder and rapine and thousands were slaughtered. But these bloody persecutions only contributed to the spread of those movements. Thousands of fugitives roamed through other lands and carried their doctrines to new groups. That between most of the heretical sects of the M iddle Ages international relations existed has been 7uI Iy~proved by historical research. Such relationships can be shown between the Bogomili and certain sects in Russia and Northern Italy, between the Waldenses and similar sects in Germany and Bohemia, between the Baptists in Holland, England, Germany and Switzerland.

All the peasant revolts in Northern Italy, Flanders, France, England, Germany, Bohemia, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, were inspired by these movements, and give us today a fairly clear picture of the feeling and thinking of large sections of the people of that period. While we cannot speak of a unified movement, we notice a whole series of movements which preceded the great Reformation, and produced it. The well-known derisive song of the English Lollards,

When Adam delved and Eva span Who was then the gentleman?

could well have served most of these movements as a leitmotif. The real popular movement of the Reformation period sought no alliance with princes and nobles, for with sure instinct its leaders recognized them as implacable enemies of the people, who would march not with them but against them. And since most of the great reformers, like Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, and others had first taken root among the movements of the people, the rising Protestantism was originally very closely connected with

these. This situation changed very rapidly, however, as the social antithesis between the two objectives became ever more sharply accentuated and it was shown that large sections of the people would not be content with merely "away from Rome."

Separation from the Roman church could only be desirable to the princes of the northern countries as long as this separation involved no further consequences, and left their political and economic prerogatives untouched. The break with Rome not only increased their own authority, it also prevented the regular export of great sums of money from the land, for which they had such need at home. Furthermore, it gave them the opportunity to seize the church estates and to put the rich returns into their own treasury. It was these considerations which induced the princes and nobles of the northern countries to lead the Reformation. The petty quarrels of theologians hardly interested them, but the separation from Rome showed them definite advantages in prospect which were not to be despised. Hence it was profitable to follow the "voice of conscience" and to patronize the new prophets. Moreover the theological spokesmen of the Reformation did not make too great religious demands upon the Protestant princes. Instead, they endeavored earnestly to show the rulers the temporal advantages of the matter. Thus Huss spoke to them in the language they best understood: "O ye faithful kings, princes, lords, and knights, awake from the lethargic dreams with which the priests have put a spell on you. Exterminate in your dominions the Simonist heresy—do not permit them in your lands to extort money to your disadvantage." ^

The spiritual leaders of Protestantism turned from the very beginning to the temporal rulers of their lands, whose assistance seemed to them absolutely necessary to secure victory for their cause. But as they also had to be careful not to break with the enraged people, they strove, although vainly, to reconcile the popular movement with the selfish aims of the princes and nobles. This attempt was doomed to failure, as the social cleft had become too wide to be bridged by a few petty concessions. The more compliant the Reformers showed themselves to the masters, the further they became removed from the revolutionary movement of the people and definitely arrayed against them. This was especially the case with Luther, who possessed the least social feeling of all of them, and whose spiritual vision was so narrow that he actually imagined the great movement could be brought to a close by the foundation of a new church.

Like Huss, Luther quoted Paul to prove that princes are not subject to the guardianship oFtKeThurch l)ut are called of God to rule over priest and bishop. In his appeal, "To the Christian Nobility of the German

^ Carl Vogl, Peter Chelcicky: A Profhet at the Turn of the Time.

Nation," he tried to prove that according to the doctrines of Holy Writ there was in reality no priestly caste but only a priestly function which anyone could serve who possessed the necessary ability and the confidence of his congregation. From this it followed that the church had no right to exercise temporal power j that belonged to the state. According to Luther's concept all power should be vested in the state, which was appointed by God himself to guard the public order. In effect, in this concept the whole political significance of Protestantism exhausted itself.

^ Protestantism had freed the conscience of man from the guardianship \ ^Gf^the church only to barter it to the state. In this the "Protestant mission" \ of Martin Luther, who called himself God's servant, but was in reality only the servant of the state and its minion, completely exhausted itself. It was this innate servility which enabled him to betray the German people to the princes, and together with them to lay the foundation stones of a new church which in private agreement sold itself body and soul to the state and proclaimed the will of the princes and nobles as God's commandment. Luther accomplished the unholy union of religion with the / interests of the state. He locked the living spirit into the prison of the ' word and thus became the herald of that dead-letter learning which j interprets Christ's revelations to suit the state j which makes of men [ humble galley slaves, led to the portal of Paradise to compensate them \ by the life eternal for the slavery of this world.

Medieval man had not yet known the state in the real sense of the word. The concept of a central power which forces every vital activity into definite forms and guides men from the cradle to the grave upon the leading strings of a higher authority was strange to him. His ideas of right were based on custom transmitted to him by tradition. His religious feeling recognized the incompleteness of all human systems and made him inclined to follow his own counsel, and to help himself and to shape his relations with his fellowmen in conformity with the ancient customs of mutual agreement. When the rising state began to undermine these rights and raised its cause to the cause of God, he fought against the injustice which was being done to him. This is the real meaning of the great popular movements of the age of the Reformation, which endeavored to give to the "freedom of the Evangelical Christian man"—as Luther called it—a social significance.

Only after the popular movement had been drowned in seas of blood,' while Luther, "the beloved man of God," blessed the butchers of the insurgent German peasants, did victorious Protestantism raise its head and give the state and its legal control of affairs a religious sanction, bloodily purchased with the gruesome slaughter of a hundred and thirty thousand men. Thus was accomplished the "reconciliation between religion and law," as Hegel later chose to call it. The new theology was taught by the

lawyers. The dead-letter learning of the law killed conscience or invented a cheap substitute. The throne was transformed into an altar on which man was sacrificed to the new idols. "Positive law" became divine revelation j the state, the representative of God on earth.

In the other countries, too. Protestantism pursued the same endsj everywhere it betrayed the people and made of the Reformation an affair of the princes and the privileged sections of society. The movement started by Wycliffe in England, which spread to other countries, especially to Bohemia, was primarily of political character. Wycliffe fought the pope because the pope had embraced the cause of France, England's mortal enemy, and had demanded of the English government that the kingdom should continue to regard itself as a vassal of the Holy See and pay tribute to it, as John Lackland had done to Innocent III. But those times were passed. When Philip III of France braved the ban of Boniface VIII and compelled his successor to take up his residence at Avignon, the unlimited rulership of the Papacy received a blow from which it never recovered. Consequently, the English parliament could calmly dare to answer the pope's demands with the declaration that no king was ever empowered to surrender the country's independence to the pope.