Ritual, Doctrine and the Church: The Reformation in Historical Context
Presentation for the Unitarian Fellowship of Regina,February 6, 2005, Yvonne Petry
I thought I would start by giving a little of my own background, because in a way it is my personal history that drew me to become a historian. My Dad emigrated as a young man to Canada from France, where he had spent time as a lay brother in a Catholic monastery. My Mother grew up on a farm around Melfort, the daughter of Scandinavian homesteaders. I was raised as a Lutheran, and felt culturally connected to France, which I had visited from the first time when I was at the impressionable age of three. Perhaps it would be inevitable then, that I would be drawn to study French history, and within that, the early modern period, the era of the Renaissance, Reformation and Scientific Revolution. My doctoral research examined the theology of a sixteenth-century French priest and scholar of kabbalah, who was particularly intriguing because we believed that Jesus Christ had been reincarnated as a woman. I'm not speaking about him today, but mention him to remind us that the period of the Reformation was at least as complicated as our own. What happened then was not merely the separation of Protestants from Catholics, but division into many types of Protestants. It was in the sixteenth century that many of the denominations we are familiar with today had their origins: Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Mennonites, and – as I am sure you are aware - Unitarians. And beyond these categories, there were individuals who defy categorization; who in the fevered climate of the Reformation believed that God had given them direct messages of various sorts. So at the time of the Reformation, beliefs were as diverse as they are today. One of the major differences between then and now, however, was that then, the idea of religious tolerance was almost inconceivable. It is one of the tragedies of European history that a century of religious warfare had to take place before tolerance would even be debated as an option.
The history of the Reformation is often presented as a history of a much-needed cleansing of a corrupt church, of the triumph of truth over superstition and error. Luther has been presented as a Germanic hero, whose voice was the voice of God itself. I try to avoid such a triumphalist tone (in spite of being Lutheran), not only because it is not helpful, but, as I hope to show, it is not historically accurate. My approach is rather to look at the Reformation as a function of social change.
To help us understand what happened, I propose to examine the Reformation along three axes: We can look at any religion in terms of practice, belief or institution. In terms of practice, we can look at rituals, especially as they were understood by the common people. In terms of belief, we can look at a few of the doctrinal issues at the heart of the Reformation, and in terms of the institution, we can look at the role and function of the church in society. In essence, I am going to wear three different hats – that of the anthropologist, looking at the function of religious practice, the theologian, discussing doctrine, and the sociologist, looking at the role of the institution in society.
I want to argue that in each of these three areas, changes occurred primarily as a response to changes in early modern society: the Renaissance, the rise of the nation state, and, perhaps most importantly, the invention of the printing press (which more than anything else signaled the end of the medieval world and ushered in an information revolution), and the subsequent growth of a literate, urban middle class. In order to understand how things changed, we need to begin by looking at what they changed from. So we will start by looking at church and society prior to the Reformation, so in the late Middle Ages, by which I mean the 14th and 15th centuries.
We will begin by looking at the issue of practice, by which I mean the experience of Christianity for the common people of late medieval Europe. For us, religion is something that we believe – we define ourselves by our assent to a particular set of doctrines; however, in the late Middle Ages it is more accurate to say that Christianity was something you did. Most people lived in small villages, participated in subsistence agriculture, grew up and died in the same location, and were illiterate. For them, the Christian faith revolved around the parish church, the religious festivals that marked the rhythm of the seasons, the saints, and the sacraments that the priest performed for them. In all of these activities, they were worlds apart from the university-trained theologians who defined the doctrines of the faith.
The best example of how beliefs were interpreted, practiced, and modified is provided by the sacrament of the eucharist, the reenactment of the last supper that Jesus had with his disciples. The theology around the eucharist was most fully developed by scholars in the 13th c. and resulted in a doctrine known as transubstantiation. Once the theology was refined in this wine, churchmen began to encourage devotion to the sacred host (i.e. the consecrated bread). During the mass, priests were taught to elevate the host (i.e. the bread) so that everyone could see it and a bell was rung so that everyone would pay attention. We need to remember that the mass was said in latin, so that most of the time, people didn't know what was going on. From this point on the eucharist played an increasingly large role in the experience of the people in the mass. In light of this emphasis placed on the consecrated bread, it is not surprising that for the common people, the eucharist would become an event imbued with magical significance. Many people considered a consecrated wafer as a good luck charm. It could heal the sick if they ingested it, make crops flourish if it was placed in a field, and cause someone to fall in love with you. The process that was occurring then, is that the Christian rituals were appropriated by the people of Europe and interpreted and understood in the context of their own world view.
Wearing our anthropological hat here helps us to avoid seeing viewing this with disdain. Christian rituals were viewed as magical, because we are we are dealing with an oral, illiterate society that had limited knowledge of the natural world, of illness, of reproduction. It ought not to surprise us that Christianity was used during this time as a sort of coping mechanism to deal with the problems of rural life. In the villages, there was little real knowledge among the common people of the basic doctrines of Christianity, much less complicated theological concepts like transubstantiation. The rituals of the church played an essential role in the life and identity of the community, but not in quite the way we might imagine today.
In many ways, the emphasis on the sacraments and the rituals of the church was reinforced by late medieval theology, and here we will change hats and become theologians for a few minutes. One of the recurring themes in the history of Christian doctrine is the issue of salvation and more specifically justification – how is a person made right in the eyes of God. In the early church there had been two competing trends. The one that predominated was that of Augustine, who emphasized the sinfulness of humanity and the notion that salvation must come from God. Another position had been put forward by Pelagius, who had argued that humans were able to save themselves through their own efforts – through good works and good intentions. Pelagius' position in extreme form was considered heretical. In a sense, these two views represent two different psychologies, in a way – that of Augustine being pessimistic and that of Pelagius more optimistic.
What we need to know is that by the late MA the pelagian position had been reincorporated into Christian thought. Where this approach had the greatest impact was with regard to the sacrament of penance. Penance was the sacrament designed to restore sinners to a state of grace. The rationale for it was that baptism took away original sin, but something needed to be done with sins committed in one's lifetime. What developed is a system of thought sometimes called the ledgerbook mentality, in which salvation is a question of bookkeeping (again we see the economic metaphor being used). Each sin a person committed needed to be accounted for by an act of penance and both were quantifiable. With this as the starting point, a whole system of thought flowed.
To get to heaven, a person needed to be in a state of grace; if they died in a state of sin, they would go to purgatory, sort of a waiting room. Luckily, they would not have to wait there forever, because the church said that merits were transferable from person to person, i.e. if your grandfather were in purgatory, you could do a good deed, e.g. pay a priest to say mass for him and thus help to get him out.
If merits were transferable in this way, it was logical to think that you could 'borrow' merits from someone else. Who would have had surplus merits? The saints, Mary, and of course Jesus, who had never sinned. These were conceived of as a bank deposit, called the treasury of merits, and the pope was the chief accountant. Because acts of penance were often inconvenient, it became popular in the late Middle Ages, to borrow one of the merits in the church's position through buying an indulgence, that is, indulging in the church's surplus merits rather than performing an act of penance like fasting on bread and water. What ever with think of this system, I think we can admire it for its logical coherence. Late medieval theologians were nothing if not logical.
If we now put on our sociology hats and look at the role of the Church in western society during the late Middle Ages, we can make a few final observations. The collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe in the 5th century had created a power vacuum and in this context the Church had evolved as both a political and a religious force. The pope was both the doctrinal and the administrative head of an institution which had no rivals. As an institution, it was the largest employer, we might say, and it is not surprising that a life in the church was seen not just as a religious calling, but as a respectable and profitable career choice for the upper classes. The practice of simony, the selling of church offices for profit, resulted in the problems of pluralism and absenteeism (bishops and priests who held more than one office and didn't fulfill the duties of any of them). Such problems plagued the church throughout the Middle Ages and periodic attempts to address the problem had been unsuccessful. The result was that by the late Middle Ages, the church hierarchy had become thoroughly integrated with the hierarchical class structure. Some bishoprics remained in the hands of the same noble family over many generations.
Moreover, by the late MA, the church had become increasingly bureacratized and centralized. That is more of the finances were being diverted to Rome rather than staying in the parishes where they were supposed to be used. To use a sociological analysis, the church was spending more of its resources on maintaining itself and fewer on fulfilling its mission. This was in large part a function of the political chaos in medieval Italy, which led to the pope moving to Avignon in 1309 under the protection of the king of France, and subsequent rivalries which led to the Great Schism, when two popes were elected, one in Rome and one in France, a situation which lasted until in 1415. Out of this chaos emerged the "Renaissance popes" of the fifteenth century, a series of church leaders whose concerns were: to reassert the authority of the pope over church councils, to ensure the stability of their lands in Rome by fighting other Italian princes on a continual basis, and to enhance their prestige through the patronage of Renaissance artists and architects, a desire which culminated in projects like the Sistine chapel, the Vatican Library and St. Peter's in Rome.
So here we have the state of the Church on the eve of the Reformation, in terms of practice and theology, and the institution. I've spent quite a lot of time setting the stage for the Reformation, but I think you will see that things unfold quite naturally from it.
The catalyst to the Reformation is, as many of you know, a few key events which occurred in Germany in 1516 and 1517, to which we will now turn. Germany did not exist as a country, but rather as a conglomeration of small principalities loosely united under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. The position of emperor was an elected one; elected by seven princes and bishops, who had the right to vote. Understandably, holding one of these elector positions was politically powerful and in 1516, it happened the one of them was vacant, the position held by the Archbishop of Mainz. One German noble family, the Hohenstaufen, was eager for the position. However, their candidate, named Albrecht was still a teenager, and not an ordained priest – in other words, he did not therefore meet the qualifications to become a bishop, much less an archbishop.
There were always ways around church regulations, however, if you could get a dispensation from the pope. The Pope at this time was Leo X, who came from the Medici family in Florence, and who was in the middle of a huge project to rebuild the church of St. Peter's in Rome. In short, Pope Leo X agreed to sell the office to Albrecht, in exchange for a large sum of money. The family negotiated a loan to pay the pope, and in order to pay back the loan, they cut a deal. They agreed to allow the pope to have a special sale of indulgences in their territory, with the understanding that they would split the profits. Albrecht of Mainz would use his share to pay off the family debt and the Pope could carry on building his big church.
Indulgence sellers were hired and the sale was conducted among the German peasantry. In the middle of these proceedings, Martin Luther, who was a monk, a priest, and professor at the university of Wittenberg, began to question the practice of selling indulgences and posted his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, where he asked questions like 'why does the pope not give away the merits of the church instead of selling them' and making criticism like 'indulgences sellers ought not tell the peasants to buy indulgences instead of giving money to the poor or buy food for their family.' If the Reformation has a clear starting point, it is often considered this event of October 1517.
Within the space of a few months, Luther's theses were printed and circulated throughout Europe. It was clear that they resonated with what others were thinking. In fact, we can turn to Switzerland at the same period and find a similar story. Ulrich Zwingli was, like Luther, a priest; he was a priest in the town of Einsiedeln, which was a major pilgrimage site. He also objected to the sale of indulgences there, and argued that the peasants were spending all of their money at the shrine. Within a few years, such ideas had widespread support in the cities of Germany, Switzerland and Holland.
By 1522, Luther was hiding out in the Wartburg castle, having been by this time excommunicated by the pope and declared an outlaw by the emperor. In his absence, others implemented his ideas. On Christmas Day, 1521, Andreas Karlstadt celebrated mass in the German tongue, without clerical vestments, and gave communion in both kinds to parishioners, who had not confessed beforehand. Three weeks later he would become the first married priest. It is hard for us to understand the shock and confusion which resulted from acts like these. Moreover, these reforms were often accompanied by acts of vandalism carried out by unruly mobs. In many cities, churches were ransacked, priests and nuns physically assaulted and statues toppled. Such acts of violence that would be replicated wherever the Reformation took hold on the continent. So the Reformation was first evident in a questioning and then a rejection of many of the practices that had characterized the late medieval church. What underlay this change, however, was a reassessment of theology which had supported those practices.
I outlined earlier the medieval emphasis on the role of the individual in his or her own salvation. Luther's rejection of the idea of salvation by works and his return to a more Augustinian theology grew out of his own personal struggles to feel forgiven by God. As a monk, Luther had been exemplary in confessing his sins and performing all the acts of penance suggested – so much so that his fellow monks ridiculed him. It was to ease his conscience that his confessor encouraged him to become a scholar of the New Testament and it was while immersed in a study of the book of Romans that Luther came to an understanding of salvation which would comet o characterize the Lutheran Church in particular, and Protestantism in general. This is the idea of justification by faith. Luther's argued that the act of being made right with God does not originate in the human spirit, but is given through God's grace.
The implications of such a theological position, were, however, politically dangerous. Without the need to do anything for one's salvation, what need was there for the priests? What salvation by grace implied was that the seven sacraments of the church, the saints, pilgrimages, processions, and even the role of the priests would be redefined. In a series of influential pamphlets written in 1520 Luther rejected the seven sacraments, argued for married clergy, and talked about ideas such as the priesthood of all believers.
Luther was the most vocal expression of this shift in theology. However, what he said resonated with attitudes that were developing at his time. The shift away from a theology of works had been heralded earlier, in fact, by humanist scholars. The most important of these was Erasmus, who, although he remained a faithful Catholic all of his life, did more than anyone else to transform Christianity from a set of collective rituals performed by the clergy for the benefit of the laity into a religion centred on the interior spiritual life of the individual believer.
In this sense, the Reformation could not have occurred without the Renaissance, during which scholars had criticized medieval theology, emphasized the role of the individual in society, and developed critical skills which could be used to reassess both medieval doctrines and the Bible itself. Moreover, the Reformation could not have occurred without the printing press invented by Gutenberg in 1453. I say this not simply because reform ideas could be widely communicated, but because a literate culture has a different character than an oral one. It is necessarily more individualist, and more introspective, because reading is an individual activity. The cultural shift that began with print technology therefore called for a new theological understanding, as individuals sought the answer the question that all Christians ask at one time or another, "What must I do to be saved?" Luther was perhaps more sensitive and intelligent than average, but historians have suggested that the anxiety that he felt was not atypical. We see the same anxiety about their own salvation expressed in other reformers and in society in general. By the early sixteenth century it appeared to many that the traditional responses of the church to individuals' spiritual quests were no longer seen as adequate.
Of course, one feature of increasing individualism is that structures of authority and of community cohesion can be torn apart. It is well know that the Reformation was not simply the separation of Protestant from Catholic, but the development of many types of Protestants. This was probably inevitable. The Catholic Church was right to argue that authority needed to be vested in the pope or else chaos would erupt. It did erupt. By placing all authority in the Bible, as Protestants did, rather than in the traditions of the Church and its decrees, the door was opened for a variety of interpretations of the Bible.
All Protestants agreed on issues like rejecting the pope, the seven sacraments, and the veneration of Mary and the saints, they disagreed on almost everything else. Almost immediately, disputes arose among them regarding: how to read the Bible, how and when to baptize, whether there were any sacraments, and whether churches ought to be organized along episcopal or presbyterian lines. Such disputes led to the spectrum of churches that we have with us today: Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, and Anabaptist. Protestants began to identify one another as heretics. Lutherans and Catholics both put to death Anabaptists in Switzerland. And I'm sure you're familiar with the story of Michael Servetus, the Spanish scholar and doctor who was put to death by Jean Calvin, because he wrote a book questioning the Trinity.
It is possible that the Reformation might have remained a debate among theologians over such issues. The fact that it didn't is a reflection of the power of the institution of the Church in early modern society. The Reformation was at all levels a highly politicized event. At all levels of society, the Reformation was accompanied by violence, and by rebellion. We find this first among the German princes, who were attracted to Luther's in part for their political utility. The pope and emperor united against the princes, who wanted independence from both, and formed a military alliance to fight for it. This led to three decades of warfare, concluding with the peace of Augsburg which allowed each prince to determine the religion in his territory. On an even larger scale, violence broke out among the lower classes, which included artisans and peasants, although the event is usually referred to as the Peasants' War of 1525. What began as a revolt of peasants in Black Forest who refused to pay feudal dues and asked for hunting rights ended, as most peasant revolts ended, in failure, with tens of thousands of peasants and artisans dead at the hands of imperial soldiers.
This was the bloodiest example of the political force of the Reformation, but was not atypical. In cities around the continent, in Germany, Switzerland, France and the Low Countries a transfer of power was taking place. City councils were expelling - by violent means or otherwise - the traditional elites, who were in many cases both bishop and lord, and replacing them with representatives from the artisan class. The most violent example of this is the town of Muenster, where in 1534 the prince/bishop Franz von Waldeck was expelled, the town declared itself a New Jerusalem organized on anabaptist principles, and was laid siege to by a combined army of Catholic and Lutheran forces. In Geneva, the citizens fought for their independence from the Duke of Savoy, and established a city council governed by the French Protestant John Calvin.
The Reformation in the cities reflected the growth and development of a middle class, who rejected the traditional feudal power structures. It was to the detriment of the church that it was part of that structure. What these events suggest to us is that much of the popular animosity against the church was due to the fact that it had wedded itself to the social elite. Anticlericalism was not a criticism either of ritual or of doctrine, but of the role of the church in society, a role which was, by the sixteenth century, seen as exploitative.
When we look at the Reformation as a political event, historians sometimes suggest that the doctrines of the reformers were merely a pretext for social rebellion. I would argue rather that the theology was not an excuse to rebel, but it was a reason to rebel. In other words, the radical nature of the Christian message had become public, through increased literacy and preaching, and had motivated people to fight for their rights.
So what can we conclude from all of this? I have tried to articulate the political and social forces that lay behind the Reformation of ritual, doctrine and the institution. In the area of ritual, late medieval community was deteriorating as part of the transition out of a feudal society, which meant that religious ritual no longer needed to function as a cohesive, defining event in the life of a village. Furthermore, rituals no longer satisfied the spiritual needs of the middle class, who were starting to become literate. With regard to theology, the printing press and the rise of humanist scholarship led to an interiorization of belief – so that there was an increasing need to understand how an individual was saved. This found expression in the notion of salvation by grace through faith. With the transition to modern society, we see a rise of the middle class, forming a necessary challenge to the hierarchical order which had governed social organization in the Middle Ages. Because the church had been a part of that social order, it was vulnerable to the pressures from the below that the upper classes were feeling.
What I would suggest then, is that the Reformation was not about cleansing a corrupt Church, but about the Christian faith being reformulated as a response to the changing social and political climate of early modern Europe. If there is a moral to this story, it is that religious practices, beliefs and institutions are subject to the forces of history that bring about change in other areas, and that all churches need to remember that they belong to a particular time, place and society, and are an expression of it.