In the first quarter of 1547 the ruling class of Europe lost two members who each had a stormy relationship with church reform. The first was Henry VIII of England, who died on January 28, 1547, in all likelihood from symptoms related to obesity and gout. (Later stories about syphilis gratified those who disapproved of his womanizing and revolving marriage bed but were likely untrue.) The second loss from Europe’s royal ranks was Francis I, king of France, who died on March 31 at the age of thirty-two, the husband of only one wife. Both kings had dabbled in the trappings of learning and the arts made attractive to European nobility through the extension of humanism to northern Europe. Henry and Francis also had first-hand experience with the new teachings and practices that pastors and theologians like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were proposing in cities and territories within their jurisdiction. Despite different consequences for the churches in their realms, their religious policies reflected a sensible political strategy of maintaining stability.
After 1519 Luther’s writings crossed the Channel and began to sell well in England. Henry VIII took an immediate dislike and commissioned a group of theologians to write under his name The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments (1521). This book was so effective in rejecting Lutheran teaching that it not only earned for Henry from the pope the title Defender of the Faith, but also signaled to the king’s subjects how serious the Protestant heresy was. Throughout the 1520s the number of executions for heresy in England plummeted to zero thanks to the regime’s ban and the exodus of leading dissenters, such as William Tyndale and John Frith, to the Continent. But by the 1530s the demands of the Tudor dynasty and Henry’s need for a male heir would force him to change course. Unable to secure from Rome an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry looked for help from scholars who could argue that the king of England was the most superior ruler on the planet. The legend of King Arthur
provided some of the intellectual calculation, while Thomas Cromwell, a former staff member of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, supplied the legal rationale for Henry’s declaration in 1534 that the king was the head of the Church of England. Henry’s determination had no precedent; he was the first king in Europe to sever ties with the pope. As archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, at first hostile to Lutheranism and then a committed Protestant, became the king’s agent of reform. Cromwell drove domestic policy (especially the dissolution of monasteries) under the spell of reform, while Cranmer worked to implement changes within the church proper. Only when resistance to reformation took the form of open rebellion did Henry begin to listen to Cromwell’s opponents and opt for a “middle way.” On July 28, 1540, Cromwell was executed on charges of treason and heresy, and two days later three Roman Catholic loyalists and three Protestants followed Cromwell’s fate. Cranmer was able to evade Henry’s displeasure, and in so doing insured a Church of England that had a more Protestant than Roman Catholic tilt.
Across the Channel, Francis I had less room to maneuver than Henry thanks to domestic, international, and personal relations. He was able to reach agreement with the papacy in 1516 to limit Rome’s interference in French affairs (Concordat of Bologna), but the theologians in Paris were among the most conservative of churchmen in Europe and were no fans of the consolidation of royal power. Even if the pope gave Francis greater freedom than Paris’ theologians did to defend the faith, the king was powerless in 1525 to do anything when taken prisoner by the Habsburgs after France’s defeat in the battle of Pavia. During his absence, Francis’ queen, Louise of Savoy, instituted heresy proceedings against Protestants in the village of Meaux, a town where the local bishop had begun to implement reforms. Among the persecuted was Guillaume Farel, who with other Protestants sought refuge in Strasbourg. Francis, not a prisoner for long, was inclined to tolerate the reformers and allowed Protestants to return. One explanation may be the king’s close relationship to Marguerite d’Angouleme, his sister, who put him in touch with the writings and arguments of French humanists who were initially attracted to Luther’s arguments. But soon protests against Roman Catholicism became violent and threatened social order. In 1528, Parisians smashed a statue of the Virgin Mary on a street corner, and from this point Francis paid greater heed to counselors who warned about the threat of Protestantism. Then the Affair of the Placards in the fall of 1534 prompted the king to crack down. The display of posters in prominent places throughout the kingdom which objected to the Mass was a turning point for France. (It was also the incident that forced Calvin into exile.) Despite a brief dalliance in 1536 with German Protestants to form a political alliance against the emperor, Reformed Protestantism under Francis would be a clandestine affair.
The examples of England and France indicate again that the success of the Reformation initially depended on the disposition of ruling authorities. In eastern and western Europe Luther’s ideas received a warm reception from the usual suspects of academics and conflicted religious leaders. As the Protestant leaders in Zurich, Geneva, Basel, and Strasbourg circulated their own ideas about church reform and developed relationships with churchmen in other lands, the Reformed model of church government and worship became more attractive than Lutheranism to local Protestants. Historians estimate that the number of Reformed church adherents in Europe increased from roughly half a million in 1554 to as many as ten million by 1600, in places as diverse as Britain and Transylvania. In some cases, such as England and France, opposition from rulers to the new faith was a boon to Reformed Protestantism’s appeal; in those same instances the nature of the opposition from the monarchy would produce a different kind of resolve among the adherents of the new faith. In other situations, such as in Poland-Lithuania and Hungary, local nobles could stand up to a weakened monarch by asserting religious independence; at the same time, without political order the new churches, as the example of eastern Europe attests, could easily verge into disorder.
In effect, the Reformed church became a vehicle for political dissent. At the same time, restricting or abolishing the faith of Protestants could be a way to preserve a regime’s stability. In other words, among Europe’s kings and nobility, Calvinism would face a markedly different environment than Switzerland’s cities. Some kingdoms were supportive, some hostile, and some equivocated. Either way, Reformed Protestantism could not live without the state’s support. Even so, beneath political maneuvering the spread of Reformed Protestantism reflected genuine desire for a more accessible and less arbitrary form of Christianity than Rome’s apparently bloated and worldly faith. The test for the growth of Reformed Protestantism was to adjust the changes in church life, initiated by Zwingli and developed by Bullinger and Calvin, to diverse political and cultural settings.
The Reformation Comes to France
The initial French interest in church reform, naturally enough, came through the circulation of Luther’s writings. Humanists concerned about defects in church practices, especially regarding the sacraments, read Luther’s early writings enthusiastically and began to study the Church Fathers as part of an effort to recover a more pristine and less complicated Christian expression than Rome’s. Although books were expensive and not printed in large quantities, Luther’s works sold well in Paris. As many as six Frenchmen also traveled to Wittenberg to study with
the reformer. A further sign of Protestantism’s appeal around 1520 was a Grenoble priest’s advocacy of administering the Mass in a way that would enable the laity to receive both elements (i.e., wine in addition to bread). He also promoted marriage for clergy. In Meaux, a village about halfway between Paris and Noyon (Calvin’s hometown), the bishop Guillaume Brigonnet also appointed a number of priests who were inclined to reform.
By 1524 this group in Meaux had turned for advice and support to the Reformed Protestant leaders in Switzerland, Zwingli and Oecolampadius. One reason for consulting them instead of Luther may have been the University of Paris’ 1521 condemnation of the German’s works. (Thanks to linguistic barriers and state regulations, only 22 editions of Luther’s were published in France during his lifetime, compared to 2,946 editions in Germany.) A related consideration is that the French authorities were generally unaware of Swiss developments. Either way, the French who would be Protestant gradually opened their intellectual horizons to leaders of reform. The refuge that Switzerland provided to persecuted French Protestant exiles was also significant. Guillaume Farel, one of those initially within the circle of reform-minded French humanists and a member of the circle of evangelicals at Meaux, escaped to Basel in 1524 when Francis I began to restrict religious dissent. Farel studied with Oecolampadius before conducting evangelistic work between 1526 and 1529 on the east side of Lake Leman, with the town of Aigle as his base of operation. During this time he also composed a Summary and Brief Declaration (1529), a work that was the best outline of Protestant convictions in French before Calvin’s Institutes. Farel showed the influence of Zwingli and Oecolampadius by rendering the Lord’s Supper more as a symbolic representation of Christ’s death than an instance, as Luther had it, of Christ’s real presence.
French Protestants benefited from Francophone Switzerland as an outlet even if political exile did nothing for reforming France’s churches. The number of heresy trials in France for heterodox views (which could include more than Protestantism) increased steadily between the 1520s and 1540s. The Parlement of Toulouse, the jurisdiction of which accounted for about one-fifth of the nation’s population (roughly 13 million), conducted 8 heresy trials in the 1520s, 121 in the 1530s, and 257 in the 1540s. At the time of France’s greatest political instability after the death of Francis I, the 1550s, the number jumped to 684. For the Parlement of Paris, which oversaw the rest of France, the 1540s witnessed the greatest number of heresy trials - 797 - a figure that declined to 290 a decade later. In addition to legislative and judicial proceedings against Protestants, Francis I called for the Sorbonne faculty to draft articles of the faith that specified the boundary between Roman Catholic orthodoxy and its false upstart. The statement of faith affirmed transubstantiation and papal supremacy, and rejected
Reformed teaching in a manner and wording that likely informed the later condemnation of Protestantism at the Council of Trent.
This opposition underlined regional differences in the French contest with Protestants. On the one hand, the Parlement of Paris was most effective in countering Protestantism in northern and central France, thus making a city like Geneva appealing as a place of refuge. By 1549 the city of Geneva did, in fact, establish procedures for keeping track of all the refugees. On the other hand, the increase of heresy trials conducted by Toulouse indicates that Protestantism was spreading relatively successfully in the semi-circle of regions in southern France between La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nimes. Differences between the two French parlements also reveal divergences in rates of execution for bad faith. Of those tried in Paris, 14 percent received the death penalty; the same was true for 6 percent of those prosecuted in Toulouse. If Paris was twice as hard on Protestant crime as the French authorities in the South, French Protestants would be more inclined to leave the northern and central parts of the kingdom and settle either in French cities closer to Geneva or simply to leave the country altogether. Whatever inferences these statistics allow, political repression of Protestantism did not make it go away. In 1525 approximately ten cities experienced instances of the Protestant heresy; by 1540 the new faith was attracting followers in every part of France, except for Brittany (northwest) and Auvergne (south central) where Protestant convictions were sparse.
From 1540 to 1555 efforts to give stability to Protestant convictions took different forms. In 1546 the Protestants in Meaux, who sought to emulate Calvin’s worship, decided to start their own services. They designated a wool carder known to be well versed in Scripture to preach and administer the sacraments, and met clandestinely in a private home. Because as many as four hundred believers participated in services that were supposed to be secret, this group could hardly escape notice. Local officials eventually put a stop to the proceedings and arrested sixty Protestants, fourteen of whom received the death penalty.
More typical than gathering for public worship was the decision by Reformed adherents to meet for Bible study and mutual edification. Two notable examples emerged in 1551 in Lyon. One met privately while members still went through the motions of attending Roman Catholic services. The other, composed of artisans, was more public and showed defiance of traditional religion by marching through the streets while singing psalms. The policies of government officials insured that the best chance for Protestantism to survive was through clandestine meetings. For espousing the wrong religious ideas Protestants would only need to confess guilt publicly to escape the death penalty. The more defiant were their actions, such as iconoclastic destruction of images or statues, the greater their chance of execution.
Only around 1555, with Calvin’s approval, did Protestants begin to create congregations and move beyond undercover operations. In Paris and Poitiers, Reformed believers established churches according to the forms that Calvin had prescribed for Geneva: a ruling body of elders as the consistory, a minister, and the regular administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. By 1559 Protestants in seventy-two other French cities or towns followed suit. One explanation for Protestant boldness during this time was the monarch’s (Henry II, 1547-59) preoccupation with war against the emperor in Italy. The king’s death during a jousting match in 1559 threw the French government into additional turmoil as Henry’s teenage sons succeeded him to the throne. The first, Francis II, a sickly fifteen-year-old, ruled for only eighteen months between 1559 and 1560. His brother, Charles IX, a ten-year-old, lasted until 1574. The instability of the monarchy created rivalries among France’s elites for control of the young monarchs. It is no coincidence that the Reformed churches in the country during this period were beginning to proliferate and establish national structures of ecclesiastical assemblies. Between 1555 and 1570, over 1,200 churches were formed. Meanwhile, Protestant literature, mainly from francophone Switzerland, gained a wide distribution. Geneva sent as many as 220 pastors to help the Reformed cause. One of Calvin’s closest colleagues, Pierre Viret, left Geneva to pastor in Nimes, Lyon, and Bearn. Calvin’s successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza, visited France periodically to offer advice.
The most visible evidence of Geneva’s influence and the most vigorous effort of the French was the first national assembly of Reformed churches, held in 1559 in Paris. At this synod the French church, with small revisions, adopted the Gallican Confession, “in one accord by the French people, who desire to live according to the purity of the gospel, of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 The creed, written in Geneva with significant input from Calvin, started with affirmations about the sufficiency of Scripture and the Trinity before moving on to standard Protestant assertions about salvation and the church. In Article Eighteen, for instance, the French churches confessed that “all our justification rests upon the remission of our sins, in which also is our only blessedness,” and rejected “all other means of justification before God, and without claiming any virtue or merit [other than] the obedience of Jesus Christ.” The article that distinguished the true from the false church stressed the necessity of teaching only the word of God and administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It also condemned “the papal assemblies” since “the pure Word of God is banished from them, their sacraments are corrupted, or falsified, or destroyed, and all superstitions and idolatries are in them” (Art. 28).
But even in less obvious ways than this creed, the French Reformed followed the practices of Protestants in and around Geneva, though not without
introducing distinct local variations. The French used the catechisms and worship of Geneva, and also followed in general the presbyterian form of government that Calvin had developed, with four distinct ecclesiastical offices (pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons), and individual congregations grouped in regional patterns with the respective ministers ruling as a body over the member churches. But when establishing patterns for unity and governance, the French churches set up a system of parity among all the congregations. This differed from Switzerland, where in the regions of Geneva and Zurich the expectation was for rural churches to follow the lead of the urban pastors. The French also instituted regular meetings of regional church officers, both lay and clerical, as a court of appeal for doctrinal and polity questions. This presbyterian system of church government delegated authority to regional associations of churches rather than to individual congregations. Church power was, obviously, independent of the civil authorities.
The new organized French Reformed church, according to the best estimates, attracted approximately 10 percent of France’s population (approximately fifteen million). The churches were strongest in Nimes, Montauban, and La Rochelle, where Protestants were in the majority, while in Rouen, Orleans, and Lyon they constituted a sizable minority. The Christians drawn to Reformed teaching and worship were overwhelmingly urban and literate, irrespective of wealth or social standing. Literacy suggests a capacity to read Scripture apart from traditions established by the Roman Catholic church. This pattern seems to account for a certain disproportion between men and women in the Protestant churches; because women were less likely to read than men, they were also less likely to join the Reformed fold.
The Protestant cause was also remarkably strong among the nobility and aristocrats (in ten regions the Reformed churches attracted anywhere between 10 percent and 40 percent of elites). The reasons for worshiping in the new churches, as suggested by the most popular literature and folklore from the era, invariably involved frustration with the Mass and the papacy. On the former, many found incredible the Roman Catholic teaching that the bread and wine became the actual body and blood of Christ, and were growing tired of measures to support this doctrine. In the case of the papacy, many Protestant recruits had long tired of the apparent hypocrisy of Christ’s representative on Earth participating in affairs and living in a style more typical of the Jewish and Roman officials responsible for the crucifixion than of Christ himself. For people who viewed the church as a corrupt institution, the new message of justification by faith alone, a simpler manner of worship, and a renewed respect for biblical teaching provided relief for pent-up frustrations.
Because the church was an established institution throughout Europe, hoary with ceremony cathedrals, and vestments, ecclesiastical reform was not simply a matter of changing beliefs or worship. The Reformation also depended upon rulers who were willing to challenge the papacy’s status both as one of Europe’s sovereigns and as the sole provider of Christendom’s holy unction. As the Reformed churches grew both numerically and institutionally in France, a showdown with the monarchy was unavoidable. Adding to the inevitability was the spread of iconoclastic activities between 1557 and 1561, where Reformed pastors and laity removed images from churches and destroyed statues of saints. In some cases, city or town governments, such as Montpellier, Castres, Bazas, Nimes, and Montauban, actually promoted these efforts to purge local churches of idolatry. Elsewhere, spontaneous reactions erupted from people frustrated by Rome’s seeming indifference.
After Francis II’s death, Catherine de’Medici took the lead in the government of Charles IX, the second of her sons to succeed to the throne. She was interested in a moderate reform of the church and peace within the nation, and sought reconciliation between Protestants and Roman Catholics. To this end she sponsored a meeting at Poissy in 1561 between the bishops and Reformed leaders, which included Beza from Geneva and Vermigli from Zurich. Rapprochement failed but Catherine still hoped for social stability, and in 1562 issued the Edict of St Germain, which decreed religious toleration and gave Protestants freedom to worship anywhere except within walled towns. But this legislation only heightened the religious antagonism because of a growing sense among Protestants that the Reformation was about to supplant Roman Catholicism in France. Within three months of this edict, civil war broke out, and for the remainder of the century under the rule of Charles and Henry III, Protestants would see their ranks thin and their religious freedoms substantially curtailed. After 1562, outnumbered by Roman Catholics almost ten to one, the best Protestants could hope for were pockets of Reformed faith and practice in cities such as La Rochelle, Nimes, and Montaubon. These locations were no more tolerant of Roman Catholics than was the reverse true elsewhere. A stalemate allowing the faith of the local nobility to determine the identity of the local church provided Protestants some space. But war also undermined the appeal of Pveformed Protestantism by apparently vindicating the Roman Catholic claim that the new faith nurtured anarchy.
Among the civil wars that punctuated French history between 1562 and 1598, the events surrounding the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre of 1572 are legendary. After a failed assassination of the Protestant leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, in Paris, who was in town for the Protestant wedding of Henry, king of Navarre, to Marguerite, daughter of Catherine de’Medici, the Royal Council
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advised Charles IX to strike preemptively against the Reformed dignitaries still in Paris. On Sunday, August 24, 1572, soldiers rounded up and executed Protestant leaders in the capital city. When news spread outside Paris, Roman Catholic partisans followed the king’s example and used similar tactics against ordinary Protestants throughout France. Estimates suggest that as many as 5,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in the weeks after the initial purge in Paris. Many others were humiliated into renouncing Protestantism. What had been a vigorous French minority with certain strongholds between Poitou and Dauphine was now reduced to a bitter faction.
This was the context for the rise of Reformed resistance theory and the hardening of French Roman Catholic opposition to Protestantism (with a good deal of encouragement from a politically interested and religiously motivated Spain). Caught between Huguenot appeals to the rights of lesser magistrates to disobey tyrannical rulers and Roman Catholic insistence that only someone loyal to the pope could accede to the throne, Henry III (1574-89) attempted a policy of toleration. He succeeded Charles IX, who had died apparently guilt-stricken by the brutality shown to Protestants. But hardline Roman Catholics who in 1576 had formed the Catholic League would have none of Henry’s moderation. The reality of a Protestant successor (Henry of Navarre) to the crown was undoubtedly a factor. When in 1588 Henry III tried to stand up to Roman Catholic pressure (and to Spanish meddling), he resorted to having two Roman Catholic nobles killed. This led to a backlash that took Henry’s life, when a disgruntled Dominican friar assassinated him in August of 1589.
This precipitated the ascension of Henry of Navarre as Henry IV. To the disappointment of Protestants, some of whom regarded the new king as the second coming of Israel’s King David, Henry converted to Roman Catholicism with the oft-repeated quip, “Paris is worth a Mass.” 2 As flippant as the remark may sound, Henry IV did realize that the only way he could rule in a predominantly Roman Catholic country was by satisfying the demands of his leastsupportive subjects. At the same time his identification with Rome became the basis for attempting to grant toleration to his Protestant subjects, thereby restoring peace and order to the realm. His Edict of Nantes (1598) ended another round of civil wars and granted Protestants terms that were the best available in a politically tense atmosphere. It specified places for worship, and granted Protestants political rights, social standing, and even legitimate control of military forces. Clearly, Protestants had suffered at the curious policies of the French crown. But France’s monarchy had no easy time trying to reconcile two versions of Christianity vying for the same polity.
Whatever the disposition of France’s unreliable kings, French Protestantism bore the unmistakable fingerprints of Geneva. The Protestant churches in
France would lead a wedge of ecclesiastical reform that would extend northward into the Low Countries and wreak further havoc in the Holy Roman Empire. The Huguenots taught an important lesson, namely, that political opposition and defeat could be as consequential for later successes as the support of magistrates inclined to identify with Protestantism.
Top-Down Reform
Compared to France, England was less overtly hostile to ecclesiastical reform once Henry VIII saw the advantage of independence from Rome. Even before his assertion of royal supremacy in 1534, the instances of legal suppression of heresy were meager. After enjoying a measure of popularity in the early 1520s, Luthers ideas generated legal opposition and those holding Lutheran sympathies fled to the Continent, among them Robert Barnes and William Tyndale. In fact, these English clergy and scholars visited Wittenberg. Like France, iconoclasm was decisive in England for prompting formal suppression of Protestantism. The reasons had less to do with religious devotion than with threats to the social order. Still, by 1530 only one person had been executed in England for harboring Lutheran (as opposed to Lollardian) views. At the same time, Reformed Protestantism in England never became as coherent and resolute as in France, and again this phenomenon owes much to the shifts within the Tudor monarchy’s policies as well as cultural and regional ties. One lesson seems to be that sustained persecution and martyrdom deepened evangelical convictions in ways that fickle monarchs did not.
Although Lutheranism enjoyed the initial attention of English Protestants, once the king established a national church, reform became the object of Henry’s chief advisor, Thomas Cromwell. A member of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s staff and a gifted administrator, Cromwell was also a committed Protestant who used his delegated authority to secure a decidedly Protestant identity for the Church of England. Of the ten bishops to leave office between 1532 and 1536 - mostly due to death - seven of the replacements were known to advocate reform. Wolsey also enjoyed the support of Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was a patron to several of the newly appointed bishops as well. The chief among them was Thomas Cranmer, a professor at Cambridge who was able to keep his head during the tumultuous and volatile years of Henry’s reign by following a wise course of moderation that sometimes appeared to show cowardice. Even so, Cranmer s judiciousness, tainted as it may have been, allowed him to preside over the English church all the way up until the reign of Mary Tudor, who tried to restore England’s ties with Rome.
The most visible part of the English Reformation during the 1530s was the dissolution of the monasteries and friaries and the destruction of images in and
around the churches. As much as this policy became a newfound source of income for the crown, the loss of monks and friars undercut significantly traditional Roman Catholic piety. Members of the orders had been some of the best preachers, and the statues and images in churches had functioned as the basis for pilgrimages and financial contributions. These direct attacks on Roman Catholic devotion prompted uprisings in northern England in 1536 and 1537 known as the Pilgrimage of Grace for the Commonwealth. Henry responded with cunning and force, putting down the rebellion handily. But the persistence of Roman Catholic piety among the laity was a hedge upon the extent and speed of reform.
The theologians and churchmen who gathered in 1537 to give coherence to the new church refused to press Henry beyond where he felt comfortable. Their deliberations reaffirmed medieval teaching and piety, while deploying Protestant tactical expressions regarding justification and the authority of Scripture. They also ratified a decision to destroy images and statues. But with Henry refusing to abandon the ways and teachings of the old church, reform was going to be piecemeal. Indeed, in 1538 Henry reaffirmed Roman Catholic teaching on transubstantiation, vows of chastity, clerical celibacy, and auricular confession. Soon Cromwell’s status with the king was shaky. Having orchestrated charges of treason and the execution of Anne Boleyn in order to arrange for the king’s third marriage, this time to Jane Seymour (who did produce a male heir but died shortly after giving birth), Cromwell then helped Henry marry for a fourth time. Anne of Cleves may have been a smart choice to give England an ally in case France and the Holy Roman Empire decided to join forces against Henry, but dubbed by the king as the “Flanders Mare,” she was no match for his sexual appetite. Cromwell’s inability to please the king through this alliance made plausible the criticisms of his enemies at court. In 1540 Cromwell suffered the fate of so many that were part of the king’s inner circle: he was executed on charges of heresy and treason. Without the patrons of Protestantism at court, some of the reform-minded bishops resigned and some left for the Continent. One of the earliest English reformers, Robert Barnes, died at the stake for opposing the king’s failure to break decisively with the old Roman Catholic faith.
If not for Henry’s mercurial disposition, the Protestant cause might have depended solely on the cautious Cranmer and his ability to gain the king’s favor. But in 1546, a year before Henry’s death, missteps by nobles and high-ranking clergy of Roman Catholic persuasion prompted the king to form a regency council for his young son, Edward, composed primarily of those who supported reformation, most notably Edward Seymour, the duke of Somerset, an uncle to Henry’s son. After Henry’s death in 1547, Edward VI, with guidance from his regency council, turned the Church of England onto a Protestant course. This change was too abrupt for some, and uprisings stemming from religious and
economic grievances hobbled the new government. The duke of Somerset literally lost his head in 1549, because of poor performance during the rebellions of 1548 and 1549. But his successor as chief advisor to the young king, John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, was also decidedly Protestant. Among Somerset, Northumberland, Edward, and the cautious Cranmer, the English church moved steadily into the Reformed column.
Protestant ideas and devotion in England prior to 1547 drew upon Lollard, humanistic, Lutheran, and Reformed sources, but thanks to a number of historical circumstances took a particularly Reformed path during Edward’s reign. Very shortly after Edward’s ascension Charles V defeated Lutheran forces (i.e. the Schmalkaldic League) and imposed the Augsburg Interim, a resolution of religious conflict that sought a compromise on devotional practice while holding off on doctrine until the conclusion of the Council of Trent. The terms of peace drove many Protestant pastors and theologians on the Continent into exile, with England under a Protestant king providing a relatively safe haven. Very important for the development of English Protestantism was the arrival of Peter Vermigli and Martin Bucer from Strasbourg, and Jan Laski from Emden. Vermigli took a position at Oxford University, where he trained at least six students who would become bishops in the English church. His eucharistic teaching generated controversy while introducing a strain of doctrine more akin to Zurich than Wittenberg. Bucer soon followed and became a professor of theology at Cambridge University. Although he died after only two years of work, Bucer was widely popular and he too trained many future English church leaders. Laski came to England to serve as pastor of the London Church for Refugees. His ministerial and worship practices provided a model for church reform. Laski also served, along with Vermigli and Bucer, on the king’s ecclesiastical commission and made recommendations on ecclesiastical policy.
As much as the new government appeared to support Reformed Protestantism, the reforms of the institutional church in England were gradual. By 1548 the Church of England’s teaching on salvation began to affirm justification by faith alone and the practices of the parishes reflected Reformed objections to images and the Mass. By 1549 Parliament had approved a new Book of Common Prayer composed by a committee overseen by Cranmer. The prayer book introduced worship in the vernacular, reduced the sacraments from seven to two (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and eliminated the practice of elevating the host during the administration of Communion. At the same time, the new prayer book was intentionally conservative. Church leaders did not want to lose touch with many churchgoers. The aim was not to complete but to begin reform. The moderate character of the new liturgy and the initial reforms upset some, like John Hooper, one of the bishops who went into exile when Henry VIII had
reaffirmed traditional Roman teaching. He questioned the continued use of vestments in the church, as well as the practice of kneeling when receiving the elements of the Lord’s Supper. Bucer and Vermigli believed these matters were of little consequence and counseled Hooper to cooperate. Laski thought otherwise.
Either way, this disagreement, which was a harbinger of Puritanism, was inconsequential. In 1552 Cranmer led the completion of a second Book of Common Prayer and the following year drafted Forty-Two Articles of faith for the English church. The revised liturgy was designed to allow less room for priests and bishops who continued to follow Roman Catholic forms. It significantly modified the Communion service, simplified the priest’s vestments, exchanged bread for wafers, and replaced the altar with a table. Thanks to the Black Rubric, which explained the meaning of a worshiper’s posture in the Lord’s Supper, communicants still kneeled while receiving Communion. But the clarification, designed by government officials in the Privy Council to mollify objections by the Scottish reformer John Knox, insisted that this posture did not signify adoration of the elements. Meanwhile, the Forty-Two Articles of 1553 adopted Reformed teaching, but not aggressively so. They affirmed predestination (God’s choosing before time the elect) but avoided reprobation (God’s eternal judgment of the rest of humanity), and taught a real spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper while denying the Lutheran position on the ubiquity of Christ’s body. At the same time, the prayer book allowed practices with Roman Catholic associations that Reformed churches on the Continent would not countenance. Meanwhile, the polity of the Church of England, with the king as supreme head and the church hierarchy of bishops intact, saw no change during Edward’s reign. From Calvin’s perspective, the English church lacked a desirable level of purity. He also believed its defects were permissible.
One reason that reformation only went as far as it did was that when Edward died in 1553 his successor was Mary Tudor, the offspring of Henry VUI’s first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon). She was a committed Roman Catholic, and even though uncomfortable with her own position as head of the Church of England, she reinstituted the Mass and promoted the reinstallation of altars in parishes. The number of ordinations increased. And aside from a minor uprising, the Wyatt Rebellion, most of the English accepted Mary’s changes amicably. In fact, the protest that took Thomas Wyatt’s name stemmed primarily from opposition to the queen’s plan to marry Philip of Spain. Whether owing to religious or political considerations, English Protestants had no interest in being subject to a Roman Catholic king of foreign descent.
While restoring Roman Catholic practices in England, Mary also sought the elimination of Protestantism, including those who held Protestant convictions,
earning her the nickname “Bloody.” Her government executed more than 280 Protestants, including the bishops Cranmer, Hooper, Latimer, and Ridley. But the list of martyrs included lay people, overwhelmingly urban, young, and from the southern part of England. At the same time, as many as eight hundred Protestants left the country as religious refugees. Here the Reformed cities of Emden, Wesel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Zurich, Basel, and Geneva proved to be more accommodating than Lutheran territories, an important factor in turning English Protestantism further in a Reformed direction. For those who had wanted Cranmer to go farther in reforming the English church than he had - John Knox was among them - Geneva proved to be the most hospitable place of exile.
Mary’s reign was short-lived, and so was the English Church’s return to Roman Catholic practices. Her successor, Elizabeth I (the daughter of Anne Boleyn), who lived the longest of any of Henry VUI’s children, ruled from 1558 to 1603 and generally restored the church to its Protestant and Reformed character under Edward. For good measure and to reassure European rulers that the English church was not too different from its peers, Elizabeth avoided the rigor and simplicity of Reformed worship, and allowed for vestments and wording in the Lord’s Supper that Roman Catholics could interpret favorably. As governor, rather than supreme head, of the church - to reflect the truth that Christ was the only true head - Elizabeth also modified the church articles, reducing them from forty-two to thirty-nine. At the same time, she appointed many of the returning Marian exiles as bishops. Her first two archbishops, Matthew Parker and Edmund Grindal, had been greatly influenced by Bucer. The Geneva Bible, published in 1560, which contained strongly Calvinist teaching, was used widely. Meanwhile, the works of John Calvin enjoyed their greatest popularity among publishers between 1578 and 1581. His successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza, also emerged as one of the Elizabethan church’s favorite authors. The English church may not have followed the Reformed Protestants on the Continent on the precise matters of church polity and worship, but its general tenor for much of Elizabeth’s reign drew inspiration from Geneva and Zurich.
While the Church of England’s leaders were taking cues from Reformed Protestants on the Continent, the queen herself kept her own convictions private and initially pursued ecclesiastical policies that were decidedly ambiguous, charitably interpreted as a via media between the extremes of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The result was tension between Elizabeth’s moderation and calls from churchmen for greater reform. The word applied to these advocating further reformation was Puritan, a term first used in 1567 as one of opprobrium to those most zealous to rid the church of compromise and corruption. During the first decade of Elizabeth’s reign these puritanical elements within the church sought to revise the liturgy, reduce the number of holy days, eliminate vestments,
abolish kneeling for Communion, and remove organs from churches. The reactions from Swiss church leaders were unfavorable. Bullinger in Zurich detected a “contentious spirit in the name of conscience,” while Beza in Geneva compared the situation in England to that of Babylon. 3
After 1570 the instances of Puritanism assumed a higher degree of importance, if only because Elizabeth, in response to threats to her authority from within England as well as from the papacy, adopted a clear religious policy. She required subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, oaths of loyalty to the crown, and use of the prayer book. In response, Reformed-minded ministers during the 1570s proposed a revision of the English church’s government along the lines of presbyterian councils rather than episcopalian hierarchy. The proponents of these measures looked to the churches in France and Switzerland as models, but their views were unwelcome and some were imprisoned while others escaped punishment through exile. Another reform initiative arose during the 1580s, again drawing on presbyterian convictions, though this time picking up support from reformers to the north, in Scotland. A proposal came to the English Parliament in 1584 that would have replaced the Book of Common Prayer with the Geneva Liturgy and overhauled the system of church government in presbyterian fashion. Another came in 1586, after local conferences of priests had begun to organize themselves in a presbyterian pattern of regional and national assemblies of church officers. Both initiatives failed, which in turn led to more radical efforts at reform, with some pastors founding separatist congregations. Religious authorities cracked down on the Puritans by breaking up the conferences and imprisoning their leaders. Some of the beleaguered escaped to the Netherlands during the 1590s, and were the origin of the Pilgrims who fled to North America three decades later. 4
Instead of reforming the Church of England, the effort to purify hardened the Anglican policy of moderation. John Bridges, for example, published a work in 1587 that defended episcopacy, an unusual argument among the many versions of church reform in the sixteenth century. Even more ambitious were Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593) and subsequent writings, which justified the Church of England as a golden mean between the extremes of Rome and Geneva (in contrast to Reformed Protestant leaders, who saw Geneva and Zurich as a middle ground between Roman Catholicism and the Anabaptists).
The consolidation of the English church’s legitimate calling as a distinct expression of the Christian religion turned efforts for greater reform (among Puritans) from external to internal methods. After 1590, instead of relying upon the discipline supplied by ecclesiastical structures, those dissatisfied with the Church of England cultivated voluntary and informal means for reforming the
lives of ordinary Christians and preserving sound instruction from Scripture. In other words, the culmination of the English Reformation in the Elizabethan settlement proved to be especially frustrating (though the persecution of Protestants was not as grave in England as in France). Like church reform in France, English Protestants also drew inspiration from Geneva. But as in France, the English monarchy, even if supportive of Protestantism, proved a barrier to true reform. The tension between Calvinist ideals and English politics was a potent combination that England’s imperial ambitions would unwittingly extend throughout the colonial world. Although reform might hit a wall in the mother country, English colonists would enjoy a variety of settings, fairly far removed from the crown, in which to experiment with Reformed Protestant ideals. At home, however, Protestants who wanted a thorough reformation could sound like over-scrupulous zealots incapable of adjusting to the limits of a fallen world.
Reformed Prospects in Eastern Europe
The kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania, a joint monarchy more than twice the size of France, under the rule of the Jagiellon dynasty, was Europe’s largest political power measured by land mass. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Jagiellons also ruled the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. These territories experienced the brunt of Turkish expansion, and the cruel defeat of Hungary at Mohacs in 1526 significantly weakened the Jagiellons’ ability to govern this vast domain. But the region had known diversity especially religious diversity - even before the events of 1526 altered PolandLithuania’s political landscape. The kingdom was situated literally between centers of western and eastern Christianity. As such, in addition to twenty-one dioceses under Rome’s oversight, a significant portion of Lithuania’s population looked for spiritual direction from the Orthodox archbishop in Kiev. At the same time, the Jewish portion of the kingdom enjoyed a legal status that in 1549 would result in its recognition as a fifth estate, alongside clergy, nobility, burghers, and peasantry. If Poland-Lithuania could handle such religious diversity, how difficult would Lutherans or Reformed Protestants be to accommodate? Indeed, Lutheranism spread to German-speaking cities in the kingdom. It also attracted a following among the Lithuanians, and Luther’s short catechism was the first book printed in the Lithuanian language (in 1547).
Such religious diversity meant that the Jagiellon kings would need to tread carefully amid the rival claims of Roman Catholics and Protestants. Adding greatly to the monarchy’s caution were the powers and privileges of lesser nobles who were used to protecting their status and eventually acquired authority to elect the Polish kings. The Jagiellons may have supported Rome throughout
most of the sixteenth century, but their assistance was largely passive. Sigismund I himself remained loyal to Rome and opposed the reformers’ teachings. As early as 1520 he issued a decree forbidding Luther’s writings, and three years later followed with the threat of death to anyone guilty of harboring Protestant convictions. But the political diversity and the jealousy of lesser Polish nobles for their own prerogatives, not to mention the king’s own sympathy for humanism and many of the changes in church life associated with the new learning, prevented Sigismund’s edicts from producing any Protestant martyrs. His son, Sigismund II, who ruled in Lithuania from 1529 and succeeded his father as king of Poland in 1548, was open to Protestantism, thanks in part to his correspondence with the likes of John Calvin. In fact, in 1549 Calvin dedicated his commentary on Hebrews to the new Polish king, so hopeful were Reformed Protestants of a favorable reception of their faith in the East. Meanwhile, lesser nobles throughout Poland-Lithuania advocated Protestantism for a variety of reasons, both genuinely religious and for political leverage against the monarchy.
Throughout the 1530s and 1540s Lutheran and Reformed Protestant writings circulated in Poland-Lithuania without a particular pattern, aside from the obvious linguistic links (German), academic interests, and urban settings. Cracow and Konigsberg were two cities where Protestant ideas gained a following. Legend has it that one graduate from the university in Cracow in 1546 appeared before the local Roman Catholic bishop to answer an accusation of heresy. When asked if he held Calvin’s views, the young man replied this was the first time he had heard the Geneva pastor’s name. After evading the charge, the accused proceeded to procure several of Calvin’s books and eventually became a Reformed Protestant advocate. By the late 1540s, modifications in worship along Swiss lines began to take hold in the small Polish region between Cracow and Lublin. In 1550, an Italian Protestant exile, Francesco Stancaro, had implemented reforms at a church in Pinczow through his Canons of the Reformation of the Polish Church. By 1553, worship was also following Reformed pattern in Lithuania. In most cases, the religious changes stemmed from a local nobleman who had become the patron of a Protestant pastor, who in turn implemented the new doctrines and worship.
In practically all of these cases Protestants were acting illegally, but Polish and Lithuanian rulers were unwilling to enforce prohibitions. Often the noblemen, even of Roman Catholic faith, preferred to defend the rights of citizens against bishops’ authority; for instance, in Pozna, when three burghers were sentenced to death in 1554 for adhering to the new faith, one escaped and armed nobles sprung the others not only from prison but also spared them from execution. A similar fate attended a cobbler convicted of Protestantism. When nobles rallied to the cobbler’s defense, the bishop naturally inquired why members of
the upper ranks of society would defend a common artisan. The response was: “it’s not that we care about the cobbler, but we realize that if you got your way with him, you might do the same tomorrow to [us].” 5 Eventually the Sejm (the Polish parliament) revoked ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the laity. But the crown retained the right to determine religion in the royal cities. Since the king usually needed the support of local nobility for war and other political purposes, aristocrats sympathetic to Protestantism possessed leverage to contravene the crown’s wishes.
Church reforms conducted locally were gratifying for Protestants in PolandLithuania but many reformers hoped for a national Protestant church. Fueling this optimism and desire was knowledge that Sigismund II, inaugurated in 1548, read Protestant hterature and had Protestant advisors. One of the king’s counselors had actually visited Geneva to purchase Protestant literature. He also encouraged Calvin to initiate correspondence with the Polish king. By 1555 the Sejm of Piotrkow gave Sigismund power to determine religion in the realm and called for a national council to address such ecclesiastical reforms as worship in the vernacular, communion in both elements, and clerical marriage. Some Polish Protestants also petitioned Geneva for help, hoping that Calvin himself might visit Poland, or at least send one of his pastors. The Frenchman declined but he did commend Jan Laski, a native Pole, who was part of the Reformed resurgence in England during Edward Vi’s reign. Laski relocated to Poland in 1556 and proceeded to organize the first national synod. He endeavored to create as broad a consensus as possible to corral the various Protestant streams, including Lutheran and Czech Brethren currents, that were swirling through the kingdom.
Laski added a calming presence to Polish Protestantism, but it was shortlived. He died in 1560, and the timing was untoward since just before his death a division had emerged within the Polish churches. Thanks largely to the Italian Protestants exiled to Poland, a strain of anti-Trinitarianism emerged. Even Francesco Stancaro, who had originally led the reform of worship, embraced heretical views and propounded them persuasively. Laski fought these developments. Meanwhile, Calvin and Bullinger wrote treatises on behalf of the Trinity precisely for the Polish situation. During the 1560s the Polish churches split along anti-Trinitarian and orthodox lines, with the majority of pastors taking the former position and the nobles adhering to traditional beliefs about Christ’s deity. By 1565 the anti-Trinitarians had established their own synod and churches.
Despite the rise of anti-Trinitarianism, Reformed Protestantism during the second wave of the Reformation had succeeded in establishing churches throughout the Polish kingdom. Little Poland witnessed the most success. At one point, as many as 265 Reformed congregations gathered for worship, no
matter how briefly in some cases, compared to approximately 100 of the antiTrinitarian version. In Lithuania, Reformed Protestantism accounted for another 229 congregations at any one time, despite cultural and linguistic affinities with German Lutheranism. In Greater Poland, where Lutheranism enjoyed a large presence, Reformed Protestantism produced only fifteen congregations. A major factor in the success of Reformed Protestantism was the patronage of nobility. Estimates suggest that one-sixth of the elites embraced the Reformed faith. But elite support was also a weakness. Without a following from the lower ranks, Reformed churches lacked a stable population of believers to endure beyond the lives of their patrons.
In Hungary, where in 1526 the young king, Louis Jagiellon, died in the battle of Mohacs, the cause of church reform appeared to be more a question of expediency than principle. Some Hungarians interpreted the Ottoman victory as a form of divine judgment on Rome’s faith. But the way church reform developed in the Habsburg and Turk-controlled region might also have prompted the arresting conclusion that the Muslims were on the side of the evangelical faith.
Prior to 1526, Luthers writings circulated among academics and learned Hungarian nobles and carried the same appeal as elsewhere in Europe. But the threat of the Ottoman armies and the papacy encouraging the rest of Europe’s rulers to defend Hungary against the infidel also bred caution about the consequences of embracing church reforms. The defeat of Hungary at Mohacs split the kingdom politically and religiously. The Habsburgs retained control of the northern and western borders of the old Hungarian kingdom while the Ottomans controlled the rest. The defeat also cost the church dearly: seven of the its sixteen bishops died during the struggle and many priests fled. As a result, fourfifths of the parishes in the Ottoman-occupied territories were vacant. An additional consequence of the 1526 defeat was Rome’s alienation of nobles in parts of Hungary outside Habsburg rule. John Sigismund Zapolyai, one of the claimants to the Hungarian monarchy, had arranged with the sultan to retain control of the southeastern sector of Hungary as a tribute-paying vassal. The papacy excommunicated Zapolyai for this decision and in turn the Ottoman authorities rejected Rome’s assistance in establishing order in their new lands. When the Turks looked for religious authorities to help with administration they granted Protestant preachers great liberty to proselytize and conduct worship as long as they respected the Ottomans’ sovereignty. Protestantism, consequently, spread almost without resistance in the Muslim quarter of Hungary. For instance, Mihaly Sztarai, an itinerant Protestant evangelist, in 1551 wrote to one of his correspondents that he had been preaching freely for seven years and in the course of those efforts he and other Protestants had established roughly 120 congregations.
Fluidity generally characterized reform efforts in Hungary until 1550. Doctrinal reflection drew upon Erasmian humanism, Lutheranism, and Reformed Protestantism. Formal church structures received more definition than doctrine, with Hungarian Protestants adapting the existing ecclesiastical framework to form districts that spanned from Royal Hungary in the East to Transylvania in the West, over each of which a superintendent - designated bishop - presided. The Christian part of Hungary had as many as six districts. The Ottoman sector had one. A controversy over sacramental theology in the town of Debrecen during the late 1540s, however, furthered the definition of Hungarian Protestantism. By the 1560s Transylvanian district synods had adopted Theodore Beza’s confession of faith and the Heidelberg Catechism, a teaching device used by German Reformed Protestants in the Palatinate. At roughly the same time, synods embraced Beza’s confession and Calvin’s catechism. The anti-Trinitarianism that afflicted the Reformed churches in Poland also tormented Transylvania. Controversies over these views throughout the 1560s led to a broad policy of religious toleration in western Hungary, which made room for Reformed churches, Roman Catholics, and anti-Trinitarians.
Such religious toleration took longer to form in Royal Hungary in the East. From 1550 until the end of the century, the Habsburg rulers essentially refused to enforce Roman Catholicism. But by the time of the revival of war against the Ottomans (1593-1606), accompanied by military success and Roman Catholic pressure on the Habsburgs, Protestants lost churches and pastorates to priests. The nobility in many royal towns resisted these changes and the Habsburgs decided to implement a loosely worded policy of religious tolerance. This concession acknowledged the dominance demographically of Protestantism in Hungary. In the upper house of the Hungarian diet, all but three out of thirty-six magnates were Protestant. In the population as a whole, Protestantism accounted for approximately 75 percent, with Reformed Protestantism constituting the largest religious body in Hungary (40 percent of the people). By adopting the creeds developed in Geneva and Zurich, the Hungarian churches revealed both the primacy of the Swiss churches for Reformed Protestantism as well as a working consensus among Reformed believers in western and eastern Europe.
The Difference a Monarch Makes
Diarmaid MacCulloch observes that in its initial phases the Reformed branch of Protestantism prospered in cities where political authority was in the hands of a city council. But when proponents of church reform needed to convince monarchs to side with the new faith, the barriers grew higher. The leaders of the major “European dynasties would need a good deal of persuading that Luther, Bullinger,
or Bucer were any safer investments than Caspar Schwenckfeld or Melchior Hoffman” - two noted radical Protestants (also known as Anabaptist). 6 Aside from Charles V, the hardest case of all, the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis I of France, Henry VIII, and Sigismund I of Poland each sawthe spread of Protestantism and responded in ways that had as much to do with politics (both domestic and international) as with personal convictions. One important factor for each monarch was his relationship to Rome. The further removed from papal pressure, the more willing was the king to live with ecclesiastical experimentation.
The lesson that Reformed Protestants learned in places like France, England, Poland-Fithuania, and Hungary was that, although appealing, the new faith would only go as far as rulers would allow. Not to be missed in the politics of these settings was the tremendous appeal of Reformed Protestantism. Its leaders produced a body of ideas that circulated widely and became a handy guide to church life and biblical instruction among those educators and social leaders who were dissatisfied with Rome’s performance. At the same time, its adherents possessed a vigor that assisted its spread well beyond cultural and linguistic ties (e.g. Poland-Fithuania). One last attractive feature was a perceived plan for addressing the specific failings of the Roman churches; ecclesiastical orders that provided blueprints for maintaining integrity among the clergy and instilling godliness among the faithful were an obvious boon for those frustrated with Christendom’s hypocritical clergy and the second-class status of ordinary church members who did not belong to a holy order.
At the same time, Reformed Protestantism could not overcome the obstacles of rulers who remained unconvinced. The new faith would spread in remarkable ways across all of Europe; but it would only take root in those kingdoms where the monarchy determined that more could be gained by tolerating some form of Protestantism than by opposing it altogether. For this reason, monarchy was the least fertile soil for orderly and sustainable reform. It was responsible for martyrs (France), zealots (England), or stillborn Calvinists (Poland-Fithuania). In practically all of these settings the Reformed churches benefited from gifted churchmen and theologians; those Calvinists wound up being only as influential as their monarchs would let them.
CHAPTER THREE