Reformation, I wish to premise that all controversy on points of
dogma, all controversy on the merits or demerits of individuals, the
worthiness or unworthiness of persons, does not enter into the plan of
this work. My object is particularly to describe the various manner in
which the religious revolution commenced in the three or four
countries over which it exerted the most remarkable influence; as well
as the dissimilar form which it finally assumed in each of those
countries. I wish particularly to trace the influence of the
reformation on the progress of Christian states, and on European
literature and science; two things which constitute the main subject
of the last chapters of this Philosophy of History. But we must notice
briefly, and as far as is necessary to the elucidation of the subject,
the point of connection existing between persons and doctrines, and
the historical event which alone is the subject of our enquiries. In
the first place, it is evident of itself, that a man who accomplished
so mighty a Revolution in the human mind, and in his age, could have
been endowed with no common powers of intellect, and no ordinary
strength of character. Even his writings display an astonishing
boldness and energy of thought and language, united with a spirit of
impetuous, passionate, and convulsive enthusiasm. The latter qualities
are not indeed very compatible with a prudent, enlightened, and
dispassionate judgment. The opinion as to the use which was made of
those high powers of genius must of course vary with the religious
principles of each individual; but the extent of those intellectual
endowments themselves, and the strength and perseverance of character
with which they were united, must be universally admitted. Many who
did not adhere afterwards to the new opinions, still thought at the
commencement of the Reformation, that Luther was the real man for his
age, who had received a high vocation to accomplish the great work of
regeneration, the strong necessity of which was then universally felt;
for no well-thinking man then dreamed of a subversion of the ancient
faith. If at this great distance of time, we pick out of the writings
of this individual, many very harsh expressions, nay particular words,
which are not only coarse, but absolutely gross, nothing of any moment
can be proved or determined by such selections. Indeed the age in
general, not only in Germany, but in other very highly civilized
countries, was characterized by a certain coarseness in manners and
language, and by a total absence of all excessive polish and
over-refinement of character. But this coarseness would have been
productive of no very destructive effects; for intelligent men well
knew that the wounds of old abuses lay deep, and were ulcerated in
their very roots; and no one was therefore shocked if the knife,
destined to amputate abuses, cut somewhat deep. Luther acquired, too,
the respect of princes, even of those opposed to him. Thus when
shortly after the commencement of the Reformation, a general
insurrection of peasants broke out, which renewed all the excesses of
the Hussites; Luther so far from exciting the rebels, like some of the
new Gospellers, opposed them with all the powers of his commanding
eloquence, and all the weight of his high authority; for he was by no
means in politics an advocate for democracy, like Zuinglius and
Calvin, but he asserted the absolute power of princes, though he made
his advocacy subservient to his own religious views and projects. It
was by such conduct, and the influence which he thereby acquired, as
well as by the sanction of the civil power, that the Reformation was
promoted and consolidated. Without this, Protestantism would have sunk
into the lawless anarchy which marked the proceedings of the Hussites,
and to which the war of the peasants rapidly tended; and it would
inevitably have been suppressed, like all the earlier popular
commotions--for under the latter form, Protestantism may be said to
have sprung up several centuries before. And besides, none of the
other heads and leaders of the new religious party had the power, or
were in a situation to uphold the Protestant religion--its present
existence is solely and entirely the work and the deed of one man,
unique in his way, and who holds unquestionably a conspicuous place in
the history of the world. Much was staked on the soul of that man, and
this was in every respect a mighty and critical moment in the annals
of mankind, and the march of time. The real problem for the age would
have been to terminate this unhappy confusion of doctrines, that is to
say, that disorder and not unfrequent confusion in the relations of
the ecclesiastical and civil powers, (occasioned by the general state
of things in Europe, and by the circumstances which first promoted the
political and intellectual civilization of the West)--in a word, to
compose the old dispute between church and state, and bring it to a
just Christian settlement by a peaceful and amicable arrangement. Then
the many existing, though scattered, rays of true Christian piety,
humility, and self-denial, as well as the new discoveries in science
would have acquired a more intense and more extended power--an event
which was now entirely prevented by a great civil war between two
religious parties, and was not brought to a full accomplishment till a
much later period. But the total rejection of the traditions of the
past (and here was the capital vice and error of this Revolution),
rendered the evil incurable, and even for Biblical learning and
philology now so highly valued, the true key of interpretation, which
sacred tradition alone can furnish, was irretrievably lost, as the
sequel has but too well proved. And even if this were not the case,
how could mere learned institutes of Biblical philology, united with
popular schools of morality, constitute the spirit and essence of a
religion? This is no where so fully understood, and so deeply felt,
as in Protestant Germany at the present day--Germany, where lies the
root of Protestantism, its mighty centre, its all-ruling spirit, its
vital power, and its life-blood--Germany, where to supply the want of
the true spirit of religion, a remedy is sought sometimes in the
external forms of liturgy,[8] sometimes in the pompous apparatus of
Biblical philology and research, destitute of the true key of
interpretation[9]; sometimes in the empty philosophy of Rationalism,
and sometimes in the mazes of a mere interior Pietism.
Undoubtedly even within the pale of Catholicism, we meet occasionally
with individuals who adopt the same, or at least very similar systems,
who either give in to the principle of Rationalism, or to a false
theological illuminism (as in the recent period of Neology), or like
some of the Jansenists, indulge in the unsafe and illusive suggestions
of a sentimental mysticism. For the contests of two hostile parties
will not always prevent the imitation of defects, and the contagion of
errors; and this is only an additional reason, why in a work of this
kind, we should abstain from entering more closely and minutely into
the nature of these controversies. In contemplating the first steps of
this great Revolution; in considering the circumstances of that
period, we experience a feeling of regret, that the great problem of
that age, the arduous task which devolved on it, of accomplishing an
universal regeneration and real Reformation of the world, should have
remained unexecuted, from the very revolutionary turn which affairs
took--nay, that this task should not even have been understood or felt
by any of the leading characters of the time. The earlier disputes
between the spiritual and temporal powers had related to the dominion
over certain territories, or over Ecclesiastical property in general,
and especially to the jurisdiction of the state over the latter
species of property. The allurements which the confiscation of church
property held out to cupidity, must be ranked among the main causes
which contributed to the diffusion of Protestantism. Thus, for
instance, Prussia, the country of the Teutonic order, was now
converted into a secular dutchy; and in the interior of Germany, a
celebrated knight,[10] led away by the spirit of that age of feud,
invaded one of the Ecclesiastical electorates, thinking no doubt, that
that state, like every other Ecclesiastical domain, was the lawful
booty of the first comer. But independently of these partial changes
and minor transactions, (and in many Protestant countries, such as
England and Sweden, church property remained inviolate, and even
Episcopacy was retained,) the hostility of the German Reformers to the
church was of a different and more spiritual nature; and it was the
religious dignity of the priesthood which was more especially the
object of their destructive efforts. And this is the point, where
doctrinal controversy enters within the province of history; for the
priesthood stands or falls with faith in the sacred mysteries. The
rejection of these mysteries, by one half of the Protestant body in
Switzerland, France, England, and the Netherlands, Luther not only
discountenanced, but strenuously reprobated; yet it was only by a
subtle distinction he attempted to separate those mysteries from the
functions of the priesthood; and it was not difficult to foresee that
together with faith in the sacred mysteries, respect for the clergy
must sooner or later be destroyed, as indeed experience has
sufficiently demonstrated. For that great mystery of religion, on
which the whole dignity of the Christian priesthood depends, forms the
simple, but very deep internal keystone of all Christian doctrines;
and thus the rejection, or even the infringement of this dogma, shakes
the foundations of religion, and leads to its total overthrow. The
pacific conferences of learned and well-meaning men of both parties,
though often renewed, were not attended with real and ultimate success;
although sometimes, in looking at the language of such a man as the
mild Melancthon, we are almost perplexed to discover the few points
which do not coincide with the old Catholic doctrines--so nearly akin,
and almost identical do the two religious systems appear, when we
merely consider their separate parts. Equally fruitless were all those
honest attempts at pacification, incessantly made by the Emperor
Charles, who sought by his interim to create delay, while he indulged
a secret hope, that the agitated waves of anarchy,--all that mighty
tempest of opinion, would be allayed by time, and would finally be
stilled. But that interim has been of longer duration than was at
first calculated, and it still awaits the judgment of God for its
great day of termination.
When we consider Luther's original powers of mind, independently of
the use and employment which he made of those extraordinary powers,
(for even the greatest comet, though it should cover half the heavens
with the splendour of its light, can never possess, or be supposed to
possess, the sun's genial warmth;)--when I say, we consider the
intellectual endowments of this extraordinary man solely in
themselves; the boldness of his speculations and the vigour of his
eloquence will be found to form an epoch, not only (as is universally
acknowledged) in the history of the German language, but in the
progress of European science and European culture. After the first
period in the intellectual history of Europe, which I denominated the
scholastico-romantic epoch, and after the second, which I termed the
epoch of enthusiasm for Pagan Antiquity, and in which a Christian
simplicity of eloquence and a depth of scientific enquiry appear as
only happy and occasional exceptions; a third epoch now arose, which
from the general spirit of the age, and the tone of the writings,
which exerted a commanding influence over the times, cannot be
otherwise designated than as the era of a polemico-barbarous
eloquence. This rude polemic spirit which had its origin in the
Reformation, and in that concussion of faith, and consequently of all
thought and all science which Protestantism occasioned, continued,
down to the end of the seventeenth century, to prevail in the
controversial writings and philosophic speculations both of Germany
and England. This spirit was not incompatible with a sort of deep
mystical sensibility, and a certain original boldness of thought and
expression, such, for instance, as Luther's writings display; yet we
cannot at all regard in a favourable light the general spirit of that
intellectual epoch, or consider it as one by any means adapted to the
intellectual exigencies of that age. But with respect to the language
and literature of Germany, so far as these are of general interest, I
should wish to make one observation. Besides Thomas à Kempis, whom I
have already mentioned, I might cite several other religious writers
of the fifteenth century and even of an earlier period, who though
less known, were distinguished by a similar spirit, partly among those
who made use of the Latin language, then universally current, and
partly among those who, like Taulerus, for example, made the German
the vehicle of their thoughts. And indeed were we to compare the
gentle simplicity, the charming clearness of thought and expression
which reign in the works of these writers, with the productions of the
following age of barbarous polemic strife, we should then be furnished
with the best criterion for duly appreciating the earlier and the
later period.
With respect to those institutes of the church, which had early
devoted themselves to the task of the propagation of the gospel, or of
the defence and support of religion, and made this spiritual conflict
and holy engagement the business of their lives; it now happened, as
it had often occurred before, that the proper defenders of the church
arose at that moment, and adopted that course and mode of defence
which the circumstances of the church precisely required. The powerful
prelates of the old Episcopal sees, who had rendered such high and
imperishable services to the cause of European civilization, though
they might not be unfaithful to the original spirit of their calling,
and might be no strangers to science, were, however, much too
dependant on government, and mixed up in affairs of state. The more
popular and mendicant orders, from their very nature and character,
and their peculiar habits of life and modes of speech, were not always
calculated to exert due influence on government and the upper classes
of society, while their ardent zeal, unmindful of times and
circumstances, often transgressed the bounds of moderation. The great
want of the age was a religious order, which established in opposition
to Protestantism, should not be dependant on the state, but devoted
exclusively to the interests of the church; a religious order, which
well equipped with modern learning, science and accomplishment,
possessing a knowledge of the world, acquainted with the spirit of the
times, and pursuing the course which expediency dictated, with
prudence and circumspection, should undertake the defence of the
Catholic religion, and the propagation of the gospel in foreign
countries, and worthily and successfully prosecute this twofold
object. Such an order was the society of the Jesuits in its first
institution; and that among the founders and first members of this
order, there were men of undoubted piety and eminent sanctity, men
animated by the sublimest principles of Christian self-denial,
possessed of great intellectual endowments, and favoured by God with
high preternatural powers, no unprejudiced historical enquirer will
deny. Whether the reproaches which have been made to many members of
this order, of having exerted an undue political influence, and
displayed a spirit of intrigue and ambition in the history of this
period, be well-founded or not, I shall not stop to enquire; because
such charges at best can affect individuals only, and not the society,
whose very name indeed has become in our times the watch-word of party
strife and contention. The severest condemnation of the Jesuits
proceeds from a quarter where we clearly discern the most implacable
hostility to Christianity and to all religion; and this circumstance
ought to furnish the Jesuits with an additional claim to our good
opinion; but any judgment on the merits of this society, as this is a
question which more immediately regards the present age, is quite
foreign to the purpose of the present work. If some members of the
order adopted at this period those absolute maxims and principles of
policy and government, which in general characterized that age; and if
the writings of others were distinguished by that rude polemic tone
and spirit spoken of above, and which was equally characteristic of
those times; it would be unjust to lay to the charge of the order, or
even of particular members, failings and defects which were common to
the age, and a perfect exemption from which is the most rare of human
excellencies.
A violent insurrection can be put down only by forcible means; but
every system of terror, of whatsoever nature, is sure to provoke,
sooner or later, a re-action equally terrible. And if the dangerous
disease be checked by means merely external, and no healing remedy be
applied to the root and principle of the disorder, nor used to
renovate the impaired organs of life--if the fire be smothered in its
own flames--it will lie concealed beneath the ashes, and will burn in
secret, till the first casual and unlucky spark shall kindle it anew
into a fiercer blaze. Such, in my opinion, are the plain and obvious
principles which the historian should bear in mind, while passing in
review periods of revolution like the one under consideration;
principles, which even now are susceptible of no very remote
application.
In that first period of ferment which marked the birth of the
reformation, the revolt of the peasants had been put down with amazing
promptitude and vigour. It was but ten years later, when in the north
of Germany, a new insurrection broke out, which from its religious
complexion, seemed still more revolting, whose adherents sought to
establish on earth the invisible empire of God by fire and sword, and
whose new spiritual monarch, John of Leyden, made his triumphant entry
into Munster, amid many and dreadful excesses; till at last this
savage fanaticism was crushed, and (as invariably happens in similar
cases), met with a bloody end.
But the most singular phenomenon at this momentous epoch was Henry
VIII. of England: a prince who while he adhered to the Catholic
doctrines, and zealously asserted them against Luther, yet severed
his kingdom from the church, declared himself its spiritual head, and
by that monstrous and unchristian combination of the two powers,
appeared in the midst of Christendom, like the Caliph of England.
When, too, we take into consideration the private life of this Prince,
his endless series of divorces, and the execution of his Queens; his
conduct was a greater scandal to his contemporaries, and fixes a
deeper stain on the history of his age, than any other earlier example
in Italy, or elsewhere, several of which have been already mentioned.
The executions on account of religion which took place under Henry,
and which, as he was opposed to both Catholics and Protestants,
affected the two parties alike, were of a peculiarly odious and
blood-thirsty character. On this subject I wish to make one
observation. From the connection which then subsisted between church
and state, a case might easily arise, where a religious error would
become a political crime. When an insurrection originating in a
religious cause, breaks out and threatens the peace of society, like
the religious war of the Hussites, and the revolt of the German
peasants, no other resource remains but to put down force by force.
But when the first violence has subsided, another and a better and a
truly moral remedy should, if possible, be applied to the evil; and
this remedy was not always administered in a right, benign, and truly
Christian form. Strange and fanciful have been, in all times and
places, the offsprings of human error. Thus even in the most modern
times, and in a peaceful and civilized country, examples still occur,
where religious errors lead their unhappy dupes to violent attempts on
their own lives, or the lives of others; and a wise legislation and
humane judicature should rather treat these errors as mental diseases,
than judge them according to the rigid letter of criminal law. How
much more should not this be the case, when religious error is
confined to the sphere of speculation, and is not attended with any
practical consequences. It is often perhaps not easy to draw the line
of demarcation between measures of wise precaution against the
assaults of a dangerous fanaticism, and unchristian modes of
punishment. But certainly the criminal process of Ecclesiastical
tribunals at that period, was not only opposed to the spirit of
Christianity, but at utter variance with the express and ancient
canons of the church, and urgent admonitions of the Fathers, that the
church should strenuously avoid the shedding of blood. Men sought to
evade this wise and beautiful law, by abandoning all executions to the
secular arm; but except in the punishment of actual crimes, and in the
necessary defence against open insurrection, we must admit that the
spirit of this law was grievously violated. A vindictive criminal
jurisprudence, which was then dictated by the mutual rage of
contending parties, and which was made still more revolting to
Christian feelings by the religious colouring it assumed, remains a
stigma on that age; for it was the work not of one, but of both
religious parties, or to speak more properly, of members of both
parties. The commencement, indeed, of this great disorder--of this
great departure from the law of love--is to be found in the middle
age, during the strife of exasperated factions; but how small are
those beginnings when compared with the excesses of subsequent times.
When we hear the middle age called barbarous, we should remember that
that epithet applies with far greater force to the truly barbarous era
of the Reformation, and of the religious wars which that event
produced, and which continued down to the period when a sort of moral
and political pacification was re-established, apparently at least, in
society and in the human mind.
[7] The Prince.
[8] Schlegel here alludes to the Ordinances promulgated
a few years ago by the King of Prussia, for the reform
of the Protestant Liturgy.
[9] The author here refers to that mania for Biblical
criticism, long prevalent in Protestant Germany, and
which however it may inform our reason, and gratify a
laudable curiosity, is in itself no guide to the
knowledge of religious truth.--_Trans._
[10] Schlegel here alludes to Prince Albert of
Brandenburgh.
END OF LECTURE XV.
LECTURE XVI.
Further developement and extension of Protestantism, in the
period of the religious wars, and subsequently thereto.--On
the different results of those wars in the principal European
countries.