In 1559, Frederick III became the prince-elector of the Palatinate, a small German-speaking territory within the Holy Roman Empire. As was typical throughout the Germanic parts of the empire, he inherited a Protestant church that had been reformed along Lutheran lines. Granted, the Lutheranism in Frederick’s hometown, Heidelberg, was not the high-octane variety that some, known as gnesio-Lutherans, were advocating. These conservative Lutherans regarded the form of Lutheranism cultivated by Philip Melanchthon (one that inspired hopes in places like Geneva for unity between Lutherans and the Reformed) as betraying Luther’s original insights. Still, the Palatinate church had a reputation even before Frederick’s succession for taking stances that resembled Reformed practices, for instance, by prohibiting the use of images in worship. The commercial ties between Heidelberg and imperial cities to the southwest like Strasbourg, where Reformed teaching took root, accounts for some of Heidelberg’s ecclesiastical character and its openness to Reformed ideas.
By the time Frederick assumed his princely duties, he had experienced a reformation of his own faith. Born in 1515, Frederick grew up a devout Roman Catholic. But his marriage to Maria of Brandenburg-Ansbach changed his outlook. Maria was a committed Lutheran, and in 1547 he followed her into the Protestant fold by adopting her church. Frederick’s faith did not determine his political alliances, however. In Charles V’s war against the Schmalkaldic League (1546-47), an alliance of Lutheran princes, Frederick backed the emperor. Naturally, the Lutheran princes regarded Frederick as an enemy, an animosity that likely colored their suspicions of Reformed teachings in the Palatinate a decade later.
Whatever the personal dimensions of Frederick’s loyalty to Lutheranism, his responsibilities as elector of the Palatinate forced him to confront the escalating tensions among Lutherans as well as the differences between Reformed
Protestants and Lutherans. He determined to study the reasons for Protestant divisions; not simply for the good of his territory but because of his own devotion. He called for a disputation among leading Lutheran theologians while continuing his own reading, especially Luther’s writings against Protestants who opposed Christ’s real presence in the Lord’s Supper. After these initial lines of investigation, Frederick decided that Reformed interpretations were closer to biblical teaching than the Lutheran position. The prince had help, since one of the Lutheran theologians to participate in the debates, Pierre Boquin, was leaning toward Reformed Protestantism himself.
Once Reformed convictions began to leak within Frederick’s domain, Heidelberg experienced a torrent of Reformed initiatives. The faculty at the city’s university became the home for some of the most able theologians in the Reformed camp, among them Zacharias Ursinus, Kaspar Olevianus, Petrus Dathenus, and Girolamo Zanchi; in the process Heidelberg supplanted Geneva as the leading provider of Reformed theological training. Frederick’s understanding of the Christian faith extended beyond university classrooms to the religious life of Heidelberg. He approved laws that required church attendance, and that punished blasphemy and superstition. Frederick also oversaw the creation of a liturgy and church order according to the practices prevailing among Reformed churches, as well as the production of one of Reformed Protestantism’s instructional jewels, the Heidelberg Catechism. The catechism clearly showed the Reformed identity of the city’s prince and churches, and became the doctrinal standard for Reformed churches in German-speaking territories.
Because it was immediately translated into Dutch, the Heidelberg Catechism also became an important part of the Reformed churches in the Low Countries. So helpful was Heidelberg’s instruction in the Reformed faith that Bullinger called it “the best catechism ever published.” 1 Its first question and answer may explain Bullinger’s judgment since it rivaled in clarity and devotion any other catechism produced in the era:
CX: What is thy only comfort in life and death?
A.: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit,
He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.
The second question was no less exemplary for letting catechumens know what they were in for:
Qy How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou, enjoying this comfort, mayest live and die happily?
A.: The first, how great my sins and miseries are; the second, how 1 may be delivered from all my sins and miseries; the third, how I shall express my gratitude to God for such deliverance.
One additional example, question sixty, summarized effectively the basic conviction of Protestantism:
Qy How are thou righteous before God?
A.: Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that, though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding, God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had, nor committed any sin: yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.
Lutheran reactions to Heidelberg’s reformation did not exhibit the same levels of enthusiasm as Bullinger. The imperial diet in 1566 summoned Frederick to defend his churches since Heidelberg’s reforms appeared to violate the Peace of Augsburg. Frederick replied that Geneva’s and Zurich’s teaching had not influenced him; what had were the simple teachings of the Bible. What is more, Frederick argued that he had signed the Augsburg Confession and approved of subsequent Lutheran developments. His defense satisfied alarmed Lutheran princes who also knew that another division within Protestant ranks could aid Roman Catholic opposition to the new churches.
Frederick’s church in the Palatinate demonstrated a recurring feature of Protestantism during the second wave of reformations after 1550. Reformed Protestantism extended its influence across Europe, while Lutheranism remained confined to German-speaking parts ofthe empire. Consequently, as Protestantism entered kingdoms like Scotland or would-be nations like the Netherlands, local pastors, nobles, and lay people embraced the Reformed faith instead of Lutheranism. The temptation is to attribute this Reformed hegemony to the genius of the doctrine and practices that the churches in Zurich and Geneva originally developed. But just as important - and likely decisive - is that
Lutheranism by mid-century was experiencing considerable internal strife, while Reformed Protestantism was continuing to work out its distinct identity and demonstrating considerable flexibility in doing so. This was indeed Fredericks experience in Heidelberg. And although Scottish and Dutch Protestants would experience circumstances less dependent on the piety of the prince, Scotland and the Netherlands would emerge along with the Palatinate as places where Reformed Protestantism’s success would rival the Swiss cities’ achievements. In fact, the Scottish and Dutch experiences indicate that an important factor in the establishment of a Reformed church was the capacity of ecclesiastical figures to create structures independent of the state for overseeing and determining religious affairs. Once these institutions gained stability, they became the basis from which to export Calvinism. Indeed, what Switzerland was to the first fruits of Reformed Protestantism in Europe, Scotland and the Netherlands were to Calvinism in the New World.
Kirk and Covenant
If Reformed Protestants possessed a board of advisors responsible for developing a strategic plan for advancing church reform, Scotland would not have been high on their list. The kingdom north of England was poorly populated, politically decentralized, and agriculturally impoverished. It was a place where men often attended church carrying weapons for self-defense. In addition, Scotland’s rulers had close political alliances with France, a tie that predisposed the Scottish monarchy to view Protestantism with suspicion. Scotland’s cultural backwardness was indeed responsible for the late arrival of Luther’s writings among the Scots. Only in 1525 did authorities pass a law against Protestantism, one indication that the Reformation was becoming a live concern. Iconoclasm, another sign of Protestant presence, did not surface until 1533. Before 1560 Scotland produced only twenty-one martyrs for the Protestant faith.
Although prospects for church reform looked grim, political developments within Scotland conspired to make Protestantism a useful tool for ambitious rulers. James V’s death in 1542 inaugurated a period of monarchical instability in which the church became a pawn within a larger contest for control of the kingdom. James’ immediate successor was his daughter Mary Stuart, who was only five days old at the time of the king’s death. James Hamilton, second earl of Arran, emerged as the leading figure in the regency government and was responsible for opening the door to Scottish Protestantism. He legalized an English Bible and appointed two Protestant chaplains, Thomas Gwilliam and John Rough, who preached widely and gained many converts, including John Knox,
who would emerge as Scotland’s John Calvin. But such religious developments could not proceed independently of political maneuvering. Henry VIII in England hoped to attach Scotland to his kingdom through an arranged marriage between his son Edward and Mary Stuart. Henry’s attention in turn prompted Scots to look to France as an ally to prevent England’s advances. Mary of Lorraine, the queen mother, gained the ascendancy within the regency government. Consequently, church reform and evangelical preaching took a back seat to the Roman Catholic loyalty necessary to placate the French. Throughout the 1540s Scotland experienced a civil war between those who favored the patronage of the Roman Catholic French and others who looked to the Protestant English. Between 1547 and 1549, St Andrews, where John Knox became a vigorous preacher, went back and forth between Roman Catholic and Protestant control. Knox himself became a galley prisoner of French soldiers, the penalty for trying to secure St Andrews for Protestants.
Affairs of state may have restrained the initial burst of church reform during the 1540s, but those same considerations once again provided openings for Protestants. Mary of Lorraine’s desire to preserve Scotland’s independence was in fact crucial to the growth of Reformed Protestantism. Although the succession of Mary Tudor to the English throne in 1553 witnessed a resuscitation of Roman Catholicism - an outcome Mary of Lorraine favored on religious grounds - she opposed an alliance between England and the Habsburg dynasty through the marriage of the English queen to Philip II of Spain. When Reformed preachers began to seek refuge in Scotland during the 1550s, Mary of Lorraine recognized the advantage of the new faith to her political designs. She also needed to maintain a delicate balance within a nation that had a significant Protestant population that would have objected to her own efforts to form an alliance between Scotland and France through marriage. These conditions made possible a Protestant presence in Scotland even though the nation was still officially Roman Catholic.
Knox was one of those Protestants who returned to Scotland under conditions favorable to reform. John Willock was likely more prominent at the early stages of the Scottish Reformation than Knox, but Willock left no writings and Knox wrote the first history of Scotland’s church reforms, thus insuring his fame. Knox’ strategy for reform, such as it was, lacked the judiciousness and restraint that Calvin had encouraged among the Huguenots. Knox was slow to form congregations under the oversight of elders but preferred to rely on local bands of believers who covenanted together to uphold the true faith and support and defend faithful ministers. By 1559 Scotland had only seven organized Protestant congregations, and in contrast to Reformed developments in Geneva and France these Scottish churches had yet to form presbyteries or synods to insure stability
and order. Knox also lacked political tact but made up for it in temerity. While ministering in Frankfurt he had already compared the emperor to Nero, and back in Scotland he directed his invectives at the Protestant queen Elizabeth of England, in his infamous First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Knox not only faulted the English female monarchs for restoring the Mass (Mary Tudor) but also for contradicting divine will (Mary and Elizabeth). The only solution was male rule. In other publications addressed to Scottish authorities, he even contended that if the magistrate did not comply with his (or her) divine obligation to reform the church and its worship, ordinary citizens could take matters into their own hands. Knox was capable of doing what he suggested as only a possibility for the people. In 1559 his preaching provoked iconoclastic melees at different sites. This was the sort of militancy of which Reformed leaders looking on from Geneva and Zurich disapproved.
Mary of Lorraine attempted to bring the Protestants to heel, but religious and political divisions among the nobility prevented prosecution of the evangelical faith. Mary’s hand grew stronger when in 1559 her son-in-law, Francis II, succeeded to the French throne along with a sympathetic majority on the king’s council. France’s involvement in Scotland’s affairs was not a welcome development for England, so with English assistance, Scottish nobles rose up in armed opposition, not only to oppose the designs but also the authority of Mary. They invoked the venerable liberties of the Scottish people to be protected from foreign powers, pointed out Mary’s failure to consult with Scotland’s nobility, and condemned her refusal to uphold the true religion and suppress idolatry. This Protestant show of force received divine blessing when Mary’s attempt to respond failed to materialize. At first, storms in the winter of 1560 prevented French soldiers from reaching Scotland. By the time the weather improved, Francis II faced political difficulties within his own kingdom that made him reluctant to intervene in Scotland. And then in June of 1560 Mary of Lorraine died. Rather than defending the wishes of his mother-in-law, Francis II in July 1560 agreed to a treaty in which he would withdraw all French troops from Scotland and a select council would determine the future of Scotland’s government. The religious settlement would await the next meeting of the Scottish parliament.
In August of 1560, the said parliament met and formally implemented the reformation of the Scottish church. One of the body’s first acts was to abolish the Roman Catholic Mass and, in vague language, all other forms of “idolatry.” Parliament adopted a confession of faith which was noticeably silent about predestination but fulsome about the duties of the civil magistrate to promote and defend the true religion. On the contentious matter of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, the Scots followed Geneva more than Zurich by stressing that
Christ really was present, though in a spiritual manner. The 1560 parliament also approved the First Book of Discipline as the polity responsible for ordering the church’s government. The reformation of worship would await the work of the church’s future assemblies.
Parliament’s task in the Book of Discipline was to take charge of an existing national church rather than establish what had emerged independently as a rival to Rome. The new order did away with church institutions like monasteries and left standing only parish churches and related schools (even specifying that each parish implement a Latin and grammar school). To fund these institutions the Book of Discipline retained the system of tithes and glebe lands that were already in place for the older Roman Catholic structures. The Book of Discipline also called for the appointment of superintendents, one in each of twelve regions, to oversee the churches and ministers in their territory. This feature of the Scottish polity combined elements of episcopacy - one superintendent responsible for a given region - with a presbyterian system that granted ministers in a region the power to call their superintendent and to gather regularly and instruct each other in the correct interpretation of Scripture. Within each parish the Book of Discipline granted the congregation authority to elect its pastor, pending the approval of elders and ministers from nearby churches. Each parish also elected elders, who assisted pastors in the work of discipline.
The Scottish Book of Common Order, originally devised while Knox was ministering to other British exiles in Frankfurt, relied on Calvin’s liturgical reforms in Geneva. The influence of Calvin was also evident in the publication of the Geneva Catechism in practically all editions of the Book of Common Order. The service was plain. It featured readings from Scripture, preaching, and prayer, with congregational singing punctuating worship. The Book of Common Order also provided prayers and forms for different elements of worship. Because the First Book of Discipline established a liturgical calendar based on Sunday worship services as opposed to the traditional Christian holidays, the Scottish church lacked instruction or directives for rites or ceremonies on days other than the Sunday. The Book of Discipline did encourage a regimen of daily prayers and family worship, and it specified that the Lord’s Supper was to be observed quarterly (and not on Easter Sunday). With the Book of Common Order establishing a simple service and the Book of Discipline regulating the pattern of Sunday worship, the Scottish churches took a major step in overturning what many reformers regarded as the abuses and idolatry of Rome’s liturgical traditions.
As pleasing as these reforms may have been to Reformed leaders, their reception in Scotland more generally was mixed. On the one hand, the church
government, liturgical reforms, and disciplined clergy that Geneva’s churches inspired in Scotland provided a set of mechanisms for taking Protestantism beyond political debates in parliament to the ordinary lives of parishioners. Records of sessions suggest that Reformed Protestantism provided a substantial alternative to Roman Catholicism’s sacramental system of holy days, liturgical mysteries, and monastic ideals. At least in certain territories, especially among the urban populations in the region from Stirling to St Andrews (in Edinburgh rates of communion suggest a different outcome), weekly sermons (twice each Sunday), catechesis, and relief to the poor readily filled in for the evaporation of the old religious order. Especially effective were the elders’ and pastors’ regular meetings with parishioners to address sexual offenses, drunkenness, marital disputes, and town quarrels. These instances of church discipline replaced older forms of penance with a different method for resolving conflict and restoring fellowship. Communion seasons (quarterly), which included days of preaching services before and after the observance of the Lord’s Supper, also became a ritualized manner for observing the sacrament. One last noteworthy aspect of Reformed Protestant piety was congregational singing, which featured the metrical psalter. The simplicity and repetition of tunes in the Scottish Psalter meant that one “section of the scriptures could easily be learned by heart without the need for literacy.” 2 Jane E. A. Dawson even contends that psalm-singing in the vernacular and simplified forms of the Kirk, though previously associated with monastic daily worship and complex musical settings, became for the laity a “marker of a distinctly Scottish Reformed identity.” 3
On the other hand, even if church reform caught on with the laity the crown’s response would continue to be decisive, as it was throughout European society. Upon her return to Scotland after trying to arrange for a second royal husband (after Francis II’s death in 1560), Mary Stuart decided momentously to accept the Protestant program of church reform. Since many of the inner workings of church government, though codified, had yet to be implemented, the Scottish Reformation at the time was very much a work in progress. Mary’s acceptance of Protestantism, consequently, may have been intended as only part of a negotiation process. What the queen did specify was that she retain the right to a Roman Catholic Mass wherever her court was in session. This was only the first of a series of missteps, which included her retaining a claim to the English throne (in violation of the Treaty of Edinburgh), and a contested marriage to Lord Darnley in 1565. Between 1560 and 1567 Mary managed to alienate most of the Scottish nobility and nurture the mistrust of the English. In 1567 the Scots forced her to abdicate the throne, thus prompting a period of intermittent civil war between those who supported the legitimacy of Mary’s rule and the advocates of James VI, her infant son.
Mary’s plight would continue for almost two decades, until her cousin Elizabeth I could no longer tolerate her schemes, but the uncertainty of royal succession in Scotland naturally affected church life. Indeed, without a strong central authority, Scotland’s ensuing three-cornered struggle among leading nobles, the monarchy, and the church prevented the Scottish Reformation from achieving stability. On the one side, the Scottish church faced constant meddling from local nobles, who for their own purposes sought to control ecclesiastical revenues from benefices and property. On the other side, the crown, through its regency, looked upon the Church of England, with the supremacy of the monarch over the church and a system of episcopal hierarchy, as a model for the church in Scotland. The Scottish ministers’ lone outlet for articulating and maintaining their prerogatives was the General Assembly, a body composed of the three estates in the manner of the Scottish parliament. During the period of the earl of Morton’s regency (1572-78), church and crown attempted a compromise between presbyterianism and episcopacy by stipulating that the offices of bishop and archbishop in Scotland be subordinate to the Assembly. Morton, who had required that all benefice holders subscribe the Scottish Confession, was firmly in the Protestant camp. But his understanding of a reformed church owed more to a strong monarchy presiding over the church than it did to a vigorous set of ministers responsible for the spiritual health of the nation. By following Geneva’s model of ecclesiastical authority over spiritual matters in a manner independent of civil government, the Scottish reformers posed a “jurisdictional rival” to the Stuart monarchy that had not been nearly so vexatious with an episcopal system. In effect, the conflict over presbyterianism and episcopacy was a debate over the degree to which the Kirk’s “potential power in the realm ... should exist independently from the crown and other reins of authority running through the kingdom.” 4
The debate over episcopacy and the monarchy’s supremacy prompted the Scottish authorities to solicit advice from Geneva. Although Calvin and Beza had expressed toleration for episcopacy during England’s Reformation, by the 1570s Beza had soured on bishops as part of the church’s government. He explained that a parity of ministers was much better than episcopacy for the good order of the church and disapproved of bishops retaining standing within parliament. Ministers in Zurich got wind of Geneva’s advice and indirectly offered a counter-proposal. Their advice favored the mixture of ecclesiastical and civil authorities within parliament as well as the king’s supremacy over the church. But Geneva’s recommendation prevailed and the Scottish church sought to implement the pattern of Calvin’s church government. The Genevan orientation of the Scottish church was evident in the Second Book of Discipline (1578). Not only did the new form of government follow Calvin by delineating four
ecclesiastical offices - pastors, doctors (teachers), elders, and deacons - but it also implemented the presbyterian structure of graded church courts, from session within the local congregation, to presbyteries for the regional churches, and synods and general assemblies at the provincial and national levels. On matters that had specifically bedeviled the Scottish church, the Second Book eliminated bishops and superintendents, while it also condemned any diversion of church revenue for non-church use.
Even as the Second Book brought Scotland into line with Geneva, it was a further fillip to Scottish politics. Parliament and the advisors to the king saw the new church government as an affront to their authority. Between 1582 and 1590, the young King James was caught between a Presbyterian faction that insisted on the church’s authority to govern its own affairs, and an anti-presbyterian group that insisted upon the supremacy of the king over the church. With the assistance of Andrew Melville, the minister who succeeded Knox as the leader of the Scottish clergy, James devised a compromise that implemented much of the Second Book of Discipline while also retaining bishops (who also needed to minister within a specific parish). The compromise may not have pleased those pastors most eager for Presbyterianism, but James himself deemed the 1590 General Assembly “the sincerest Kirk in the world.” Parliament in turn gave its blessing in 1592 by recognizing the power of synods and presbyteries to approve and call their own candidates for ministry (though secular patrons would still play a role in ordination and have access to church income). 5
The politics of the Scottish Reformation succeeded in the main in establishing a Reformed church, but hurt the reform of church life at the local level. By the 1560s most of the congregations throughout Scotland were following a Protestant form of worship. But the training of Reformed clergy lagged behind significantly. By the end of the sixteenth century, only approximately half of the nation’s parishes had trained clergy. Meanwhile, pockets of Roman Catholic practice remained. Consequently, while the reformation of Scotland’s church put in place the bones of a Reformed church, the flesh on the skeleton was thin. Philip Benedict puts it well when he writes that the Scottish Reformation created “not an ordered, puritanical society, but a political culture in which the language of the godly magistrate, the obligation of the ruler to combat idolatry, and the pretensions of the clergy to moral guardianship over the society all gained substantial resonance.” 6 This was an all-encompassing Calvinism that would inspire the descendants of Scottish Protestantism to hope for and promote a godly ruler who would carry out in the civil realm what ministers and elders undertook within the church. That the churches themselves had trouble executing the Calvinist ideals did not dissuade Presbyterians from either such optimism or sense of guardianship.
Dutch Political Independence and Modest Church Reform
The Reformation in the Netherlands was contemporaneous with the one in Scotland, but it had been building for a much longer period. Another instance of the second wave of Reformed Protestantism to wash across Europe, the Reformation in the Low Countries produced the most Protestant martyrs of any nation and demonstrated how brutal the Holy Roman Empire’s religious policies could be without the buffer of strong, independent nobles. For this reason, although Protestant ideas had reached the Netherlands in the 1520s (before Geneva), the establishment of a Dutch Reformed church would have to wait for the United Provinces to establish political independence from Spanish rule. As such the Dutch Reformation was more politically disruptive and even less religiously comprehensive than Scotland’s. When Luther’s ideas began to circulate, the Low Countries were seventeen disparate provinces within the Holy Roman Empire under the rule of the Habsburg overlord, Charles V, a native of the Flemish city of Ghent. Charles cultivated the Netherlands as a separate political entity and a center of commercial activity. The emperor’s personal attachment to the Netherlands was an important factor in the early opposition to Protestant ideas and ministers. His son, Philip II, king of Spain, gained the reputation of an absentee ruler with little sympathy for the provinces. Philip’s detachment would make his religious policies against the Protestant heresy aggravating to the point of instigating political rebellion by nobles who wanted to protect legal prerogatives even more than they cared about Luther’s or Calvin’s ideas.
Although Protestant convictions gained a hearing among the literate and urban sectors of Netherlands society, the emperor’s response was even more commanding. Luther’s works received Dutch translations early and circulated much more widely in the Low Countries than in England or France. Augustinian monasteries in Antwerp and Tournai produced Protestants who as early as 1523 began to meet for instruction. Unlike other parts of the empire, Charles did not have to rely on ineffective lords or city councils to weed out heretical views; he could act directly. Between 1520 and 1545 the emperor established a highly disciplined state-run inquisition to supplement existing ecclesiastical measures to discover and punish heretics. The offending monastery in Antwerp was leveled and three of the monks accused of heresy were executed (two in 1523, the other in 1528). Part of the imperial animus against Protestantism stemmed from the popularity not only of Lutheranism but also the threat of Anabaptist politics. The result was the execution of more than 1,300 Dutch heretics between 1523 and 1566 (compared to roughly five hundred in France with nine times more inhabitants, and twenty-one in Scotland with one-third of the Netherlands’ population); by 1555 the Netherlands had produced more martyrs for the Protestant cause
than any other European country. Only after 1560 did persecution temporarily decline, thanks partly to widespread recognition that the system of paid informants, trials, and executions was good neither for society nor commerce. Even so, the prosecution of heretics did not deter but legitimized the Protestant cause.
The early Protestant influences were by no means uniform, and Reformed Protestantism was not dominant in the Netherlands until the 1560s. From 1521 to 1544, the total number of persons accused of harboring Protestant beliefs was 186 (160 Lutherans and 26 Anabaptists); from 1545 to 1565 the total jumped to 1,332 (989 Reformed Protestants and 343 Anabaptists). 7 John Calvin’s books did not show up on the index of forbidden books until 1546, and not until 1550 was the Geneva pastor included in Charles Vs edict against heresy. Anabaptism was strong in the Low Countries thanks to the leadership of Menno Simons. Other mystical or spiritual forms of Christianity - which drew upon objections to the seemingly magical and ornate nature of Roman Catholicism - also appealed to believers enduring opposition from church and political authorities. Lutheran teaching circulated widely through translations of German works into Dutch. Meanwhile, Reformed influences circulated primarily through personal contacts among reform-minded Dutch clerics and Reformed pastors in other cities. The initial input came primarily from Strasbourg, first with Martin Bucer and then with Pierre Brully, a former Dominican priest from a part of France near Luxembourg, who pastored the French-speaking congregation previously occupied by Calvin. Brully evangelized throughout regions of the Low Countries around Tournai before inquisition authorities caught and executed him. As the case of Brully indicated, the Inquisition was effective in preventing Protestantism from gaining an institutional base. But it was also very unpopular. Some trace the decline between 1530 and 1560 in the observance of Roman Catholic practices, such as indulgences and pilgrimages, to the people’s opposition to inquisitorial measures.
By the 1550s, when Charles abdicated his rule and transferred power to Philip (1555), the center of Reformed strength was in the southern Low Countries, particularly the provinces of Brabant, Hainaut, Walloon Flanders, and Zeeland. Only in the 1560s would the northern provinces become Calvinist strongholds, thanks in part to the migration of Dutch and French Protestant refugees to religiously tolerant territories. In the middle of the 1550s, Antwerp in the province of Brabant became home to several Reformed congregations. To escape detection many of these churches divided followers into units of eight to twelve members, with each group assigned particular times to attend preaching services led by ministers who were often in town only to conduct the service before returning to a safe place (most likely Emden). Within a decade, sixteen congregations had been formed, including the cities of Tournai (Flanders) and Valenciennes (Hainaut). Thanks to the persecution of the Huguenots in France,
TO REBEL AND TO BUILD
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these Dutch congregations included French refugees who gave a strong French Protestant flavor to the emerging Dutch Calvinist identity. And much like the Protestants in France, Calvinists in the Low Countries would depend initially on itinerant preachers and clandestine congregations.
Giving a measure of coherence to these piecemeal efforts was Guy de Bray, a native of Mons (in the south of the Spanish Netherlands), who took the lead in establishing churches near Tournai. He had studied at Geneva and Lausanne between 1557 and 1558. De Bray produced a confession of faith for the Low Countries that relied heavily on the French Confession of Faith (1559). After receiving approval from other ministers, the creed, known as the Belgic Confession, was published first in French (1561) and then Dutch (1562). This was another effective statement of Reformed convictions and in its comparative brevity represented trends among sixteenth-century churches to arrive at relatively simple affirmations of faith, such as Belgic’s Second Article, on “the means by which we know God”:
We know him by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.
Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.
A further indication of solidarity and organizational presence among the Dutch Reformed came in 1563 with efforts by Antwerp church leaders, following the French again, to form synods that would oversee congregations. Oversight included requiring church members to subscribe the Belgic Confession.
Whatever strides the Reformed churches may have made thanks to lesser nobles who looked the other way or to the influx of Huguenots, the cause of ecclesiastical reform was difficult to spot during the 1560s as the Spanish Inquisition grew increasingly unpopular. Opposition to Spain’s tactics was not the same as ecclesiastical reform. Executions of heretics began to spark riots in the late 1550s. Then leading members of the Council of State - among them William of Orange - called for moderation. The king’s plans for new bishoprics in 1561, with Antoine Perrenot (Cardinal de Granvelle) at the top of the hierarchy in the newly created diocese of Mechelen, suggested a refusal by Philip to hear from his nobles. Even so, persistent maneuvering by the Dutch nobility,
along with periodic episodes of iconoclasm, forced Granevlles withdrawal in 1564. At this point, religious motivations rivaled political frustrations. Protestant preachers circulated widely in open-air meetings, adherents who gathered sang psalms, and hearers were encouraged to compare what they heard to the actual contents of Scripture. One contemporary observed that only four or five sermons were sufficient to change views held for almost four decades. 8
Under pressure, in early 1566 Margaret of Parma, Philips sister and regent in the Low Countries, negotiated the Compromise of the Nobility with Dutch lesser rulers (roughly 300 in all), a petition to the king that called for moderation of the Inquisition. Philip refused. The king’s decision was a major factor in the iconoclastic riots that broke out in August of 1566. Some of this destruction of statues, images, and structures was spontaneous, some orchestrated by Reformed pastors and local nobles. In west Flanders alone rioters sacked 400 churches and convents. Margaret made further concessions and granted freedom of worship to Protestants in areas where it was already taking place but nowhere else. Although many Protestants and ruling elites mistrusted the government’s new policy, it did allow for full worship by Reformed Protestants (and some Lutherans) in Antwerp, Tournai, and Ghent.
A situation fraught with uncertainty and peril prompted Philip to act decisively by sending Don Fernando Alvarez, duke of Alba, to the Netherlands to quiet the turmoil. According to Geoffrey Parker, this decision was a “Rubicon” for Spanish imperialism and a turning point in European history. 9 Before Alba arrived in the summer of 1567 - marching over ten thousand Spanish soldiers from Lombardy to the Netherlands in a politically contested Europe was no easy feat - Margaret had managed to regain control through an aggressive military campaign in December of 1566. In this warfare, Reformed pastors and consistories raised funds to pay soldiers who fought the government’s army. Rebel forces were significantly outnumbered. By April of 1567 the Spanish government had ousted Reformed pastors and their fighters from the southern Low Countries. Reformed worship ceased and the pastors responsible for the services either fled for safety or lost their lives. The latter was the fate of Guy de Bray, the preacher at Valenciennes, a town that fell in 1567; he was executed for proclaiming the Reformed faith as publicly as he had when he wrote a confession of Protestant faith addressed to Philip.
Although Margaret informed Philip that Alba’s troops were no longer needed, the duke had already begun the journey and could not be called off. In August, when Alba arrived in the Netherlands and informed Margaret of his mission to pacify the territory, the regent resigned her post. From here it was a short route to Alba’s iron-fisted policies. Most notable was the establishment of the Council of Troubles, a tribunal designed to ferret out all rebels and anyone who had given
them aid. The Council tried over twelve thousand people, nine thousand of whom lost either some or all of their property. Over one thousand were executed for treason. Under these conditions, the Reformed churches reverted to clandestine practices. They maintained solidarity through synods that met outside the Netherlands in nearby Germany at the cities of Emden and Wesel. When the 1571 synod convened, it calculated that twenty-eight fugitive Dutch Reformed churches were gathered in Germany and England, while sixteen congregations persisted under the threat of persecution.
William of Orange (1533-84) had by now emerged as the leader of Dutch opposition and the prince in whom Protestants hoped. Those hopes were not uniform since William, a Lutheran in upbringing, had converted to Roman Catholicism upon taking up political duties in the Low Countries. But his opposition to Spanish rule was consistent and based on a defense of the traditional rights of nobles. To avoid Alba’s muscle, William went into exile but did so to gear up for a counter-attack. In 1568 the prince invaded but Alba’s forces turned back the rebels. William spent the next several years trying to raise military support for another attack. In 1572 he rallied again. Despite the failure of Huguenots to assist thanks to the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, this time the prince was successful. In addition to William’s army, the so-called Sea Beggars, a body of Dutch pirates whose business was to raid Spanish merchant ships in the English Channel, contributed another layer to the rebellion. The Beggars had planned to stock up at the Spanish garrison in the town of Brill. But when they found no Spaniards there and experienced a welcome reception from the city’s inhabitants, the Beggars decided to change course and liberate nearby towns. They were successful in all of the provinces’ cities except for Amsterdam, Middelburg, and Goes. In July, the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Frisia appointed William the general governor and lieutenant king over Holland. Alba rebuffed the prince temporarily but by October William had returned with reinforcements to defend his lands and repel the Spanish.
The existence of the new independent political entity in the Low Countries was tentative at best. William had tried to consolidate power throughout the Low Countries, with a policy of toleration for both Roman Catholics and Protestants. But Calvinist leaders objected and the policy foundered. In the provinces of Holland and Zeeland in particular, authorities replaced Roman Catholic priests with Reformed pastors, even though the majority of the population was Roman Catholic. Reformed aggression was also on display when Holland and Zeeland took the lead in the Union of Utrecht (1579), a treaty that bound together as one province the states of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Frisia, Gelderland, and the Ommelanden and that prohibited Roman Catholicism. With Rome banned in the new union, ruling nobles in the southern provinces
Walloon Flanders, Hainaut, and Artois turned to the Spanish for support through the Union of Arras (1579). The emerging wedge between the Protestant Dutch Republic and the Roman Catholic southern provinces provided a platform for Alessandro Farnese, the duke of Parma, to try to reconquer the Low Countries. In 1583 the United Provinces lost the leadership of William of Orange to an assassin. By 1589 the duke had reconquered most of the southern Netherlands and had even successfully retaken the entire eastern half of the United Provinces, going as far north as Groningen. The future of Dutch independence looked bleak as did the hopes for a Reformed church. Dutch nobles looked unsuccessfully to Henry III in France and Elizabeth in England to support the United Provinces in the capacity of a protectorate. Despite its fragility the Dutch Republic survived and by 1594 had recovered most of the territory lost to Parma. Conflict with Spain came to end in 1609 with the Twelve Years’ Truce, at which point the Spanish formally recognized the Dutch Republic.
Through the warfare and political maneuvering of an independent Dutch state, support for Protestantism was mixed and unreliable, making the establishment of a Reformed church almost as difficult as resisting Alba. Participation in Reformed services was small at the outset of the rebellion, and would remain so even after Dutch independence. But animosity to Spanish rule and the Roman Catholic establishment ran so deep that the provinces’ initial policy of toleration for Protestants and Roman Catholics drew strong opposition from many Dutch who desired an outright ban on Roman Catholicism. In 1573 the United Provinces turned over the parishes to Reformed congregations with provisions for Protestant ministers to receive support from ecclesiastical revenues. This was the same year that William of Orange joined a Reformed congregation.
Reformed ministers may have been encouraged by these developments but they were still powerless to implement the reforms that many had experienced as refugees, whether in Germany or Geneva. The 1574 Synod of Dort’s decision to empower consistories and classes (the Reformed version of the presbyterians’ sessions and presbyteries) to call and ordain ministers was not popular with the laity or local elites, many of whom did not resonate with the spare contours of Reformed worship, or wanted input if not power in the selection of a pastor. An additional wrinkle for the Dutch churches was the disagreement among ministers about the power of church assemblies. Several controversies bedeviled the Dutch churches during the 1570s and 1580s, stemming from recalcitrant ministers who refused to comply with the Synod’s directives.
The Dutch Reformed churches reached a novel form of compromise to adjust ministers’ expectations to the realities of a population and ruling class that was hardly enthusiastic about Calvinism. At first, the Dutch Republic tried to appropriate the Reformed churches as the national church, a civic institution
that included all citizens. In 1574 its religious policy stipulated that church consistories needed the approval of town councils or provincial assemblies for their affairs. In 1576 the proposed church order allowed for all citizens to participate in the Lord’s Supper whenever it was administered (four times each year). But church leaders, partly through the influence of Geneva and the Huguenots, balked at the ideal of including indifferent or unbelieving persons in the sacrament. They argued that church discipline should restrict participation to those who adhered to the Reformed faith. The way through the impasse between a civic church and a disciplined congregation was to sever the public and private aspects of church membership. The resulting Dutch religious policy would allow the Reformed churches to maintain high levels of ecclesiastical discipline, but limit their spiritual authority to persons who qualified as church members. At the same time, no law would require church attendance, and citizens wanting to marry could opt for either a church ceremony or a civil observance. In effect, the Dutch Reformed church’s membership was a subset of the Dutch Republic’s population. In fact, between 1580 and 1600 church membership in some locales was no more than 10 percent of the population.
This arrangement gave citizens the option of attending church without being under the oversight and discipline of the pastor and elders. In 1579, for instance, of Leiden’s twenty-eight magistrates, only five were full members of the church. The situation, as Philip Benedict observes, cultivated a “brand of personal Christianity that did not include regular observance [at church] of any form.” 10 It also generated creative approaches to include all citizens under the umbrella of the church, such as one attempted in 1578 by the Utrecht pastor, Hubert Duifhuis. With the approval of the city’s magistrates, Duifhuis admitted into full communion everyone who desired to be. He also decided to remove any obstacles that might prevent people from joining the church. His ministry included no body of elders (consistory) and no catechism. Duifhuis’ practice did not escape the notice of Reformed ministers who appealed to church authorities to intervene and remedy the novel and flawed situation in Utrecht. The controversy over Duifhuis precipitated a division among the local ministers between the Reformed of the consistory (anti-Duifhuis) and the preachers of the Old and New Testaments (pro-Duifhuis).
The Duifhuis conflict, which simmered for a generation, was a reflection of the Reformed churches’ ambiguous status within Dutch society. On the one hand, the theocratic option of a church stipulating religious policy was impolitic, since anti-Catholicism, which many Reformed ministers would have supported, could revive Spanish military aggression. On the other hand, an Erastian arrangement where civil authorities defined the church’s function was unworkable since Reformed pastors were effective in using ecclesiastical assemblies to get rid of
latitudinarian ministers favored by the ruling class. The result was an awkward entente in which church and state recognized each other as valuable allies while refusing to give ground on disputed matters.
Odd though it was, compared to the Spanish Netherlands, the original site for Calvinist strength in the Low Countries where Reformed Protestantism was prohibited, the Dutch Reformed churches looked as vigorous and resilient as Geneva under Calvin. The limits of reform in the Dutch republic may have been frustrating but, like Puritanism in England, it yielded a productive tension that made Dutch Calvinism one of the most dynamic centers of Reformed convictions. Zeal for reform fueled later efforts among Dutch Protestants and their cousins overseas to complete what the Low Countries had begun when establishing political and ecclesiastical independence.
The other German Reformation
Although the Germanic portions of the Holy Roman Empire where Protestantism succeeded were generally Lutheran, during the second half of the sixteenth century, as the Reformation spread, Reformed Protestantism also took root in German-speaking territories and developed some of its strongest advocates. An important factor in the growth of Reformed Protestantism within the area of Lutheranism’s greatest influence was controversy among Lutherans themselves. From the 1550s until the adoption of the Formula of Concord in 1577 Lutherans feuded from within two camps: the Philippists (after Philip Melanchthon) and the gnesio-Lutherans. The former adapted many of humanism’s insights to give Lutheran piety a strong sense of personal holiness and moral zeal. GnesioLutherans stressed following Luther, especially on the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper and the Christological doctrines that supported the real presence. Because of the friendship between Melanchthon and Calvin, and owing to Melanchthon’s willingness to regard Christ’s presence in the sacrament as largely spiritual, gnesio-Lutherans accused Philippists of crypto-Calvinism. In the 1550s and early 1560s Lutherans engaged in a heated dispute over the Lord’s Supper. Then during the 1570s, leading up to the Formula of Concord, the elector of Saxony imprisoned leading Philippists for harboring heretical views; not helping the Philippist defense was a fairly extensive correspondence between the Philippists and Reformed pastors in Geneva and Heidelberg. To celebrate the victory over heresy, the elector of Saxony hung Calvin publicly in effigy.
The harsh treatment of Reformed Protestantism as well as the sometimes brutal regime of Lutheran orthodoxy had the effect of turning Reformed Protestantism into the faith of the underdog within the empire. As debates so often do, the controversy also unintentionally popularized the teachings of the
Reformed. For Protestant Germans, most specifically princes who either had hoped for a consensus between Lutherans and Reformed, or who had assisted the armed conflicts of Protestants in France or the Low Countries, the Reformed faith was a worthy cause and became a local option. Part of the reason stemmed from the Reformed presence that had existed from the earliest days of the Reformation. The imperial city of Strasbourg was one of the first sites for Reformed Protestantism to blossom. Although the city’s church would become Lutheran, it retained a Reformed presence at least through the efforts of individuals. Other cities within the empire also demonstrated a Reformed influence: Alsace looked to Basel during the 1570s for assistance in reforming the church; Bremen went back and forth during the second half of the sixteenth century between Reformed and Lutheran dominance; Jiilich, Cleves, and Berg, locations lower on the Rhine near the Netherlands, with ties to Emden, a German Reformed stronghold, were also receptive to Reformed teaching and practice.
One of the more notable sites in the northern portion of the empire near the Low Countries to welcome Reformed Protestantism was the territory of NassauDillenburg, which did so during the 1560s and 1570s under the rule of Count John VI. A significant influence on John was the assistance he gave to his older brother, William of Orange, in resisting Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands. Prior to the conflicts of the 1560s, John had a general disdain for Reformed Protestants, but his experience in the Low Countries prompted him to see these believers as persecuted, in need of assistance, and possessing an admirable faith. During the 1570s John looked for ways to introduce Reformed Protestantism within his territory. The reforms were minor at first; they involved small adjustments to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, a doctrinal testimony that accommodated predestination and affirmed the Augsburg Confession as long as it agreed with “the confessions of the other evangelical reformed churches outside Germany,” and a system of church government modeled on the presbyterian system that had developed in France. 11 By 1581 the territories of NassauDillenburg, Wittgenstein, Solms-Braunfels, and Wied, under John’s encouragement and instruction, had adopted the rudiments of a Reformed church. The changes in church life were unpopular at the parish level, but John continued his support. In fact, he lent important assistance to the Reformed cause and provided a place for Calvinist refugees from other territories in Germany under threat from Lutheran reprisal.
One of the regions to produce Reformed exiles was the Palatinate, originally the most important expression of Reformed Protestantism within the Germanspeaking territories of the empire. During the 1560s, Frederick III, the elector of the Palatinate, was successful in withstanding Lutheran pressure to conform and oversaw the consolidation of a Reformed church order and system of
instruction. His appearance before the Lutheran imperial diet in 1566 to answer for his religious views was, in fact, a significant factor in establishing a panReformed identity across Europe. Not only did Reformed church leaders from Switzerland, England, France, and the Netherlands send letters of support; but to bolster Frederick’s case, Heinrich Bullinger reproduced a confession he had originally written for the Swiss Protestant cities, the Second Helvetic Confession, to give creedal solidarity to Reformed churches as far and wide as Poland, Scotland, France, and Switzerland.
As initially encouraging to other Reformed churches as Frederick was, his reforms ran into two obstacles that revealed the flaws of a prince-led church. The first was a major controversy over the rival claims of church power and state authority in the work of ecclesiastical discipline (specifically excommunication). This controversy was essentially a contest between the Geneva system, which granted the church autonomy in exercising discipline, and the pattern in Zurich, where a joint body consisting of city and church officials was responsible for excommunication. In 1568 a student from England, George Withers, had proposed for debate at the University of Heidelberg a thesis asserting that the power of excommunication was necessary for a church to be legitimate. Taking the opposing view was a professor of medicine, Thomas Erastus, who also served in a lay capacity within the Reformed church at Heidelberg. A year later Erastus produced the Explanation of the Weighty Questions Concerning Excommunication, in which he argued for state control of the church (including the duties of church discipline). At the theoretical level he regarded the possibility of two heads within one body as recipe for disorder and saw the potential for ecclesiastical tyranny within a system that granted the church powers of excommunication. Erastus also had concrete reasons for his position. In a city where only 30 percent of the population was qualified to receive communion, the church as separate agency of discipline could easily create two classes of citizens.
The controversy over discipline had repercussions for the Reformed churches throughout Europe, but was particularly revealing of the long-standing differences between Zurich and Geneva. These cities’ respective theologians weighed in on the debate in Heidelberg, with Bullinger (Zurich) supporting Erastus’ position and Beza (Geneva) providing a refutation. Heidelberg’s authorities were evenly split on the matter, and the disagreement was so intense that the advocates of the Geneva position considered banning Bullinger’s Treatise on Excommunication from the Palatinate. Yet, as heated and revealing as the Heidelberg controversy was, the idea of state control of the church became synonymous with Erastus (i.e. Erastianism) because cooler heads within the Swiss churches did not want an open breach between the oldest cities of Reformed Protestantism.
Frederick himself found the position of church responsibility for discipline more compelling than Erastus’ argument. The church order implemented after 1570 was a compromise but leaned toward church control. Each congregation would have a body of elders responsible for disciplining members. The consistory could meet privately with wayward Christians, and should the desired reform of personal conduct and attitude of remorse not surface, the elders could suspend church members from the Lord’s Supper. If the offender still proved recalcitrant, then the church would hand over the disobedient member to the city council, which had the power to excommunicate. The aim was not simply the reform of church members’ lives. The church order also called for regular meetings of ministers, grouped regionally, for mutual encouragement and critique.
Frederick may have successfully introduced Reformed Protestantism into the Palatinate, but he was less successful with his family. His oldest son, Ludwig, was already a professing Lutheran when Frederick determined to join the Reformed effort. Ludwig never renounced his Lutheran convictions, and when he succeeded Frederick as elector in 1576, after his father’s death, the son reinstated Lutheranism in Heidelberg, a process that meant a complete overhaul of the clergy and university professors. Among the theologians at Heidelberg who had to find new university positions were Zacharias Ursinus and Girolamo Zanchi, who both relocated to the university at Neustadt an der Weinstrasse under the patronage of John Casimir, Frederick Ill’s third son. Ludwig’s efforts did not last, and in 1583 when Frederick IV succeeded him as elector, John Casimir appointed Reformed advisors to serve the young ruler, which in turn led to the restoration of Reformed church order in Heidelberg and the Palatinate.
Although the Palatinate and Nassau-Dillenburg would become the most important centers of Reformed Protestantism within the German-speaking portions of the empire, the faith and practice started in the cities of Switzerland would find other outlets over the course of the sixteenth century. Especially after 1580, religious and political factors prompted German princes to embrace Reformed Protestantism. The proposed Formula of Concord by Lutherans, along with another round of harsh treatment by Lutherans of the Reformed church, pushed some rulers away from Lutheran orthodoxy and its sometimes heavy-handed tactics. Meanwhile, Roman Catholic military threats to Protestants both within and outside the empire were a catalyst for princes to form alliances with Reformed Protestants, and to implement appropriate reforms in church life to reinforce those coalitions. In Saxony in 1586, for instance, a young prince of Reformed inclinations, Christian I, assumed the throne and subsequently conducted a series of personnel changes in the churches and university that saw Reformed Protestants and Philippists replace staunch Lutherans. Christian also
forged an alliance with the Palatinate, Brandenburg, Hesse, and Anhalt to support Huguenots and encourage the new French Protestant monarch, Henry of Navarre (IV).
Saxony’s status as a stronghold of Reformed Protestantism was short-lived thanks to the premature death of Christian in 1591, but the Protestant alternative to Lutheranism made additional inroads within the empire. Among the territories to enter the alliance to aid the Reformed cause in France, Anhalt and Hesse implemented significant reforms. In the former, John George I introduced liturgical changes such as eliminating exorcism from the baptismal rite, which culminated in the 1596 reforms that included the elimination of images, and the adoption of the Heidelberg Catechism and liturgy used by Reformed Protestants in the Palatinate. In Hesse, the elector Maurice came to Reformed convictions through conflict with Roman Catholic Spain and a marriage to Juliana of Nassau. In 1604 he introduced reforms similar to those of Anhalt: the elimination of images and the use of the Heidelberg Catechism. Around this time further changes of a Reformed flavor took place in the small territories of BentheimSteinfurt-Tecklenburg, Zweibriicken, and Lippe. For similar reasons, having to do with political alliances against Roman Catholic rulers and resentment of orthodox Lutheran tactics, rulers in these regions introduced measures that leaned toward the Reformed side of the Reformation.
By the second decade of the seventeenth century, the spread of Reformed Protestantism within the empire had stopped. The territory of Brandenburg exemplified the factors that ended Reformed influence. John Sigismund, elector of Brandenburg from 1608 to 1619, as a young man found the Reformed faith to be more plausible than Lutheranism, at least on the Lord’s Supper; he then discovered the politics of the Lutheran princes to be despotic, thus encouraging his affinity for the Reformed. When he ascended to the position of elector, he surrounded himself with Reformed political and ecclesiastical advisors and planned the reform of his churches. John’s directions followed the pattern of other Reformed churches in the German-speaking territories: changes in the observance of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; a new form of church government; and the replacement of Lutheran faculty at the university with Reformed professors. But as was also true elsewhere in the empire, the changes met with popular opposition. In 1615 an attempt to eliminate idolatrous aspects from the Berlin cathedral’s furnishings led to a Lutheran minister renouncing the reform and a subsequent uprising in support of the Lutheran protest. At one point the crowd yelled at a city official, “You damn black Calvinist, you have stolen our pictures and destroyed our crucifixes; now we will get even with you and your Calvinist priests!” 12 The rocks that accompanied this rant were likely more intimidating than the religious slur but the point was well taken. Soon the estates
of Brandenburg produced a compromise with John that granted tolerance for Lutherans and barred the elector from arrogating “to himself dominion over consciences or imposing “any suspect or unwelcome preachers on anyone” even in places where he had the right of patronage. 13 What had happened by the early seventeenth century as this incident in Berlin suggests, was that the people had become so accustomed to the first stages of church reform that they objected to further disruptions of their received (even if recent) religious ways.
By 1620, after Reformed Protestantism had run its course in the empire, Lutheranism was by far the larger Protestant presence among German speakers but the Reformed churches had done remarkably well in the land of Luther. Twelve state churches in different territories within the empire, led by the conversion of princes, were Reformed. Five imperial cities - Emden, Bremen, Wesel, Mulhouse, and Colmar (Lutheran and Reformed) - had also instituted ecclesiastical practices patterned on the Reformed churches. Aside from these state-approved reforms, Reformed Protestantism also found outlets in a number of small congregations throughout the empire, and some formed associations in territories that tolerated both Lutherans and Reformed Protestants. The estimated population of Reformed Protestants at the beginning of the seventeenth century was one million (out of a total population of sixteen million). At the upper echelons of imperial politics, two of the seven electors were adherents of the Reformed faith. In the halls of learning the Reformed accounted for four of the empire’s twenty-six universities: Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Marburg, and Herborn.
The appeal of Reformed Protestantism to German speakers, however impressive, was also constrained by imperial politics. Unlike Scotland or the Netherlands where church reforms were part of an emerging national consciousness, in the empire the blend of imperial and local princely rule contained Reformed Protestantism to areas or cities that depended on the patronage of an elector. As such, Reformed churches developed in relatively isolated pockets and often had their own regional character. If German Reformed churches did achieve a uniform identity it was more the case before 1585 than after. Prior to the 1580s, as happened in the Palatinate, Reformed Protestants included the structures and justification for church government that characterized Reformed churches among the French, Scottish, and Dutch. After 1585, however, the extent of church reform within the empire involved mainly liturgical modifications and the adoption of the Heidelberg Catechism. Nowhere among the German Reformed did the commitment to a reformation of manners and civic life emerge the way it did in Zurich, Geneva, Scotland, and England. The loose nature of German Reformed church life would be an important factor in the way that these Protestants would carry their faith to the New World. German
Calvinism would not yield the busybodies that Scottish Presbyterianism and Dutch Calvinism produced. The Germans were sober, diligent, resilient, and content to let others experience the headaches and excitements that came with running things.
Weak Strongholds
The institution of Reformed churches in German-speaking portions of the Holy Roman Empire outside Switzerland testified to the appeal of a wing of Protestantism initiated in Zurich. After the initial wave of church reform in Wittenberg and Zurich, Protestantism became a lively cause throughout Europe, from the British Isles to Transylvania. In fact, during the 1550s and 1560s a so-called Second Reformation began to play out in places such as Scotland, the Netherlands and the Palatinate. In most cases, the second phase of reformation depended on energy supplied by church models and teaching originated not by Lutherans but Reformed Protestants. Aside from the religious appeal of Reformed faith and practice, political factors were significant. As was true in Switzerland, France, England, and Poland, the post-1550 round of church reforms depended on political circumstances, where magistrates or ruling bodies emerged as patrons of the changes that Reformed Protestants proposed and implemented.
As obvious as this political dimension of Reformed Protestantism’s success may be, given the realities of a European society in which religion and politics were intimately intertwined, the Reformed faith offered a political theology that could readily justify the decisions of pious magistrates. On the one hand, Reformed Protestantism prompted a zeal for reform that refused compromise with the perceived idolatry and errors of Rome, thus motivating church leaders and nobility to resist rulers who were hostile to the new faith. On the other hand, even while implicitly endorsing political resistance - and in some cases, revolution - the Reformed version of Protestantism, especially as practiced in Zurich, supplied a rationale for rulers to exert control over the church in the appointment of clergy and the act of excommunication. Meanwhile, the Reformed understanding of church government through the rule of pastors and elders and a series of ecclesiastical assemblies linked churches not only within a nation but also throughout Europe. These networks in turn informed the foreign policy decisions of Protestant monarchs and nobles, who often rallied to the side of another Protestant ruler who was facing political opposition. In sum, the Reformed churches would be the strongest not simply where their existence was bound up with political resistance. They also developed ecclesiastical structures that generated stability and coherence within the churches themselves.
These institutional forms insured that Reformed Protestantism would not be a momentary phenomenon but a form of Christianity that could endure and multiply.
For that reason, as insignificant as the reformations in Scotland, the Netherlands, and the Palatinate seemed compared to the glories of emperor and pope, those Reformed churches would turn out to be remarkably consequential for the future of the faith launched in Switzerland. In fact, the Scottish, Dutch, and German expressions of Reformed Protestantism would be the most influential in Calvinism’s growing global presence. During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, these varieties of Calvinism would become the chief exporters of Reformed Protestantism to lands outside Europe. Through colonialism, immigration, or foreign missions, the Scots, Dutch, and Germans would be decisive in establishing patterns and orders for Reformed churches in other parts of the world. The irony, perhaps, is that the Swiss churches of Zurich and Geneva, the original Reformed communions, would have little direct influence on the character of Reformed churches in other societies. But since the reforms in Scotland, the Netherlands, and the Palatinate could not have happened without the spadework of Zwingli or Calvin, the expansion of Reformed Protestantism globally would always have Swiss fingerprints. That Calvinism would succeed in relatively weak nations was indicative of the difficulty involved in overturning the established ways of a powerful kingdom or empire.
CHAPTER FOUR