Toward the Second "Europe": The Era 1350-1650 as a Transitional Period

Outline of Lecture

I. Introduction: The Themes of Search for New Authorities and Individualism in Interpreting the Period, 1350 - 1650
II. Search for New Authorities as a Motif with Examples
III. Toward New Views of Man and the Universe
IV. A New Doctrine of Personality: the Dignity of Man and the Renaissance Ideal of the Uomo Universale
V. The End of Europe as Common Spiritual AIms and Values: Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
VI. Toward a New View of the State: Niccolo Machiavelli and the Modern Secular State
VII. Varieties of the Modern Secular State

Introduction

No period can be summed up as neatly as the title above seems to imply. Yet, there is in the era from 1350 to 1650, as diverse and complex as it seems to be, a theme which unites much of the seeming diversity and complexity: a search for new authorities centering on individualism. Individualism as used here means a tendency (1) to focus on the individual, not the community, and (2) to develop man's earthly, human potential, not fit him for the afterlife.

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1. Is this theme a valid way to understand the period 1350-1650?
2. If not, have you a suggestion?

The era of the First Europe from 900-1350 was basically communalistic in outlook: society was divinely ordered with a place for each person and each person in his place. The dominant view was that existence was a cosmic drama. The world had been created in six days; man, the greatest of God's creative acts, had fallen into sin and incurred damnation. His only escape was to obtain pardon through the sacrifice of Christ and through humility and obedience to the will of God. Life on earth was a means to that end--a testing of man. Eventually a final judgment would come, ending the drama. The evil would suffer eternal punishment; the good would enjoy perpetual bliss. Man's duty was to accept the truth of this drama and play his role. The Church and State were divinely instituted to enable man to play the role assigned to him. Medieval life, in general, was designed to aid man in the living of this drama, to manifest the revealed truth about man's destiny and God's place in the cosmos. The First Europe posited the notion of a hierarchical creation--a Great Chain of Being extending from the Creator to the lowest created thing. Institutions and thought were believed to conform to this Chain of Being: the Church with its hierarchy; feudal society with its hierarchy of lords and vassals; even the world of ideas with the ranking of theology as the queen of the sciences. The world was ultimately a rational, orderly, intelligible place planned and created by God. As Thomas Aquinas said: "the Author of the Universe is Intelligence".

In the 14^th century the tempo of change begins to quicken and the statements made in the previous paragraph become less and less true. What ensues is a whole series of bewildering changes. Variety and multiplicity become the order of the day during the period from 1350 to 1650. The older, the medieval or First Europe, survives with the new. The Christian unity of society is shattered. New worlds are discovered to the East and West, in the heavens, and in man himself. The result is a sense of uncertainty, of challenging the old, of experimentation, an attempt to begin recreating some common cultural basis for Europe: a Second Europe.

It has been remarked that European man since the era 1350-1650 has been "Faustian". Like Goethe's protagonist, he has been ceaselessly striving, attempting to experience all the heights and depths human beings can know, mindless of salvation and damnation in the world to come. There is much truth to this observation. The basic theme, then, is search for new authorities, a search driven by a new stress on individualism as opposed to communalism. What were the new authorities? The following list is not exhaustive, but suggests the wide-ranging nature of the search:

(1) A turning away from collective authority to individualism.

(2) A shift from the view that the universe was closed and finite to the view that space was continuous and infinite.

(3) A questioning of orthodox Christian theology as a means of apprehending truth and an acceptance of the view that God, and indeed all reality, is ultimately mysterious and incomprehensible.

(4) A questioning of the corporate, public religious experience and a willingness to accept the inner, private, mystical experience as a valid way of finding God.

(5) a rejection of intermediate authorities in religion such as the Pope and Church councils for Scripture and conscience as guides to God.

(6) a conscious turning away from the Gothic and all things medieval in art and architecture and a turn to pristine classical models.

(7) a questioning of the privileges of rank and class and a turning to talent, education, determination, and cunning.

(8) a questioning of the "fair price" economy as taught by the Church in favor of a marketplace economy.

(9) a questioning of the "divine right of kings" in favor of the battlefield, political intrigue, or the will of the people.

(10) a rejection of medieval models of scholarship for original inquiry and experimentation.

(11) a rejection of other-worldliness for delight in earthly secular pleasures and activities.

(12) a rejection of accepted geographical models of the world for voyages of exploration and discovery.

(13) a questioning of accepted technology and a search for better tools and instruments (clocks, instruments of measure, lenses).

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Again, let's discuss these statements about a search for new authority.

Search for New Authorities (1350-1650) as a Motif

From the search for new authorities stem many diverse ideas and movements, ranging from the rise of capitalism to Renaissance and Baroque art to the scientific revolution. By way of illustration of the theme, this section looks briefly at some of these ideas and movements, starting with the rise of humanism. It was not until the 14^th and 15^th centuries that man came to be regarded as an earthly creature and not solely as a pilgrim to another world. The spirit of humanism is that man regarded this life as important in its own right, that he should fulfill himself on earth and not worry so much about the afterlife. This attitude arose first in the northern Italian city-states in the late medieval era and expressed itself best in the ideal of the Universal Man--the man of versatility who was adept at anything to which he set his mind and hand.

Such a figure was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), at once painter, scientist, and inventor. The Universal Man aspired not to specialization, but to excellence in all things. Those who looked to this ideal believed man had the ability to excel, to do whatever he set himself to do. Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) spoke for such men in his Oration on the Dignity of Man when he wrote of man's unlimited freedom for development: "Restrained by no narrow bonds, according to thy own free will...thou, thy own free maker and molder, mayest fashion thyself in whatever manner thou likest best....To man, at his birth, the Father gave seeds of all variety and germs of every form of life." This boundless optimism about human nature passed into the Second "Europe" or Enlightenment in the conviction that man by use of reason could solve all his problems. It also led directly to the notion that men because of natural law possess natural rights.

As humanism extolled man as man, so Renaissance art sought to depict him and to explore the natural world in which he lived. In the search for new authorities artists turned to the human figure and the world of nature for inspiration. And they turned to new art forms which depicted man in the real world. In this new art space is continuous, three-dimensional, infinite, and wholly materialistic according to a new view of the world. Leonardo and Allesandro Botticelli (1445-1510) depict truly human beings, not spiritualized ones. Leonardo's "Madonna of the Rocks" shows the results of close observation of nature in the careful details surrounding the Madonna and child. Man is clearly man and in his natural setting in Renaissance art.

The rise of capitalism also illustrates the search for new authorities. Capitalism rose out of the drive for self-realization in this world in this life and an impatience with the teaching of traditional authorities about economic matters. Church theologians taught that wealth achieved through the lending of money at interest was ill-gotten. Profit for the sake of profit was sinful and contrary to nature. But in this era and particularly in northern Italy and the Low Countries the attitude grew that it was perfectly all right to search for profit by using and risking one's resources. This led to innovations in commercial methods and practices. Merchants wishing to trade in the new lands in the East had to obtain capital and found it necessary to combine with other businessmen and investors to spread the risk around. Joint stock companies were created for that purpose; insurance appeared as well. Businessmen also found it necessary to create a credit system, thus the bill of exchange to prevent sending cash on trading ventures. Better record-keeping necessitated double-entry bookkeeping. Thus capitalism arose as an attitude about making money which led to practices and methods which became integral with the capitalistic enterprise. Not until the 18^th and 19^th centuries would capitalism come into its own, but the beginnings were in the cities of northern Italy and the Low Countries.

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1. Is another word for "profit" greed?
2. The medieval church taught that the lending of money at interest was contrary to nature and to God's laws. Jews, however, could be lenders because they were outside the Church. In other words, capital was needed, but Christians shouldn't be amassing it?

The Protestant Reformation is another example of the search for new authorities. In its emphasis on the right and duty of the individual to find God in his own way the Reformation clearly illustrates that the authority of the Church was being challenged. Martin Luther, whom we shall treat later at length, taught and wrote that each man was saved by God's mercy and his own faith. There was no longer a need for the Church as an intermediary between God and the individual. Every man, Luther said, was his own priest. Because he believed this, Luther emphasized Bible study, and literacy, since man would find answers to his spiritual questions in Scripture. No pope or Church Council or Church Fathers could interpret Scripture for man; he himself had to find God and obtain salvation through his own personal search.

John Calvin similarly emphasized the individual although he gave a different stress to individualism and the search for new authority than Luther. In his writings, and particularly his doctrine of the elect, Calvin maintained that men were predestined to salvation or damnation before they were ever born. No one but God knew who the elect or saved were, but a pretty good idea of their identity was the good works they performed. Good works did not guarantee salvation, but those who did no good works surely could not be among the elect. So as far as human beings could tell, the elect were the members of the Church (Calvin's Presbyterian Church) and particularly those conspicuous for their good works, the elders. And here was the effect of the emphasis on the individual in the spiritual search: those who held eminent positions in the Church did so not because of birth or social rank, but because of individual merit. Also there was a strong strain of individualism in the concept of conscience, which along with Scripture, constituted the two authorities in Calvinism. If conscience and Scripture dictated, the individual was justified in resisting the state or any other authority which conflicted with those two guides. Calvinism, as some historians have pointed out, also buttressed capitalism. God wanted his elect to be productive and revealed his pleasure in their activities by allowing them to prosper and accumulate money for his glory. Calvinism thus became identified with what has been called the doctrine of success--God blesses the faithful with material wealth as well as spiritual favor--an idea which passed into American culture through the Puritans.

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Historians have disagreed about whether Protestantism stimulated capitalism by an emphasis on proving one's election by success. Is there a Protestant ethic which values work as godly? Do religious values play a role in one’s success?

The Baroque in art and music also illustrates the surging force of individualism and desire to overcome restraints and realize man's capacities. The Baroque style is characterized by exuberance and flamboyance, by tension between the artist's desire to do all that is possible within the medium and yet remain within the form dictated by the material or by the methods. It is an attempt display surging emotions and yet to control those emotions by reason. For example, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) in his painting, "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" (1632), attempted to capture on canvas the universality of man in a group of persons, each of whom was to be painted as though he was the focus of the painting. Rembrandt tried to penetrate the soul of each image he was painting and allow that soul to mold the image. The composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), on the outer edge of the period we are dealing with, but a composer of the Baroque era, also attempted to overcome the restrictions of his medium and to fuse into a larger harmonious whole the many independent voices of the fugue. Throughout feeling was always in tight subjection to form. Indeed Bach was so sure that the composer properly ought to follow strict rules, even when composing works of "free fantasy", that he showed other composers how to do it in his Art of the Fugue and Well-Tempered Clavier.

No less a manifestation of the spirit of individualism and the search for new authorities was the scientific revolution of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. This movement expresses perfectly the urge to escape from restraints and to realize man's potentialities to overcome his limitations. One of man's greatest limitations until the scientific revolution was the control nature had over him. With the rise of modern science man began to control nature and to manipulate it for his own ends. Before this could happen, however, the groundwork had to exist. Men had to be able to make exact observations and use objective methods of observations, which necessitated new tools and instruments. Men also had to be able to make accurate measurements, requiring new devices capable of such measurements. Finally, men had to accept the attitude that the natural world was important in its own right. So through the 17^th and 18^th centuries methods of observation and measurement grew and gained acceptance. Mathematics became the all-essential tool for explaining the meaning of the observations and measurements so assiduously collected. In the hands of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), and supremely, Isaac Newton (1642-1727), mathematics became the core of a method for explaining the how of nature. The world began to open its secrets and men began to understand the wealth of knowledge and power awaiting them as they probed its mysteries. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) best expressed the motive for bending nature to man's purposes. Knowledge, he said, is power. Knowledge can be made useful to man, if man can break out of the limitations confining him.

The corollary to the rise of modern science is the idea of secular progress. When men had come to view the world as a vast mechanism which operated according to intelligible laws capable of being expressed mathematically, they gradually became aware of what this implied. Knowledge could be applied to solve problems hitherto thought impossible to solve. As mankind solved its problems, including the problems created by man's moral behavior, it was conceivable that man himself could be perfected. Thus man could be seen to be moving toward not only mastery of his world but control of his own nature. Progress seemed to be assured, in this world in this life.

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We have stated that the idea of progress is an essential component of Europe as a culture. This new emphasis, however, is on progress as a secular trend, coming in the here and now, in this world. How did the transition to this world from the next occur? Is mankind making progress?

A final illustration of the search for new authorities centering on individualism rather than communalism is that of new attitudes toward the state. This search is responsible for the diverse approaches taken towards implementing in this period the idea of the modern secular state. The outlook of the First Europe was that the state was divinely ordained to keep men out of mischief, to provide order while they prepared themselves for the world to come. The state had a moral purpose: it existed to help men be good.

Niccolo Machiavelli(1469-1527) questioned all this. What he saw in the politics of Italian cities in the late 15^th and early 16^th centuries taught him that power and the state were anything but divine. He looked and saw "what is", not "what ought to be". He separated morality and politics; he saw the state as force, not as a moral or divine institution. The purpose of the state, he said in The Prince, is its own perpetuation. The state maintains order and stability and its own continued power, or the power of the ruler, for its own ends, not those of the citizens or God.

Quite similar in practice, though not in theory, was another example of the modern secular state, the absolute monarchy found in 17^th and 18^th century France. Louis XIV (1643-1715), the epitome of French absolute rulers, acted like Machiavelli's ruler while justifying his authority with the doctrine of hereditary, divine right. Louis' state was the model for the age of the omnicompetent, bureaucratic, highly efficient state first put forward as a political idea in Renaissance Italy by Machiavelli. Not only did it regulate its affairs for its own ends (as in the theory of mercantilism), but it regulated them largely at the bidding of the king himself.

Markedly different from either Machiavelli's state or Louis XIV's were the British and American governments of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The first was given expression by the Revolution of 1688; the second was born out of the revolution of 1776. These systems combined two notions arising out of the search for new authority: the idea of the state as a modern secular instrument and the concept of man as an earthly creature possessing natural rights because he is basically good and basically rational. Both the British and American versions grounded the combination of state and individual rights in the Law of Nature.

Toward New Views of Man and the Universe

In the 14^th and 15^th centuries thinkers began to articulate new views about man and the universe which would prepare the way for the Second Europe, or the Enlightenment. The main change in outlook was the tendency to flout collective or unitary authority and accept individualism as a positive good. This tendency led in different directions which shared little in common except the conviction that the focus properly rested on the individual. Among the diverse paths taken was the claim that the individual had the right to immediate contact with God which prepared the way for the Protestant Reformation. Another was Renaissance humanism, the brash confidence that man, a rational being, could perfect himself in this life in all forms of excellence. Alongside the new attitude toward the individual grew a new attitude toward the world. Thinkers gave up the attempt of the Scholastics to blend faith and reason and settled for a view of reality which was ultimately paradoxical. Rejecting realism, they embraced an extreme nominalism which discounted conventional thinking about the universe and prepared the way for the heliocentric theories of Copernicus and Galileo and the mathematical universe of Isaac Newton.

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1. Think about this. Radical individualism, a trend of the modern era, holds the individual to be supreme and autonomous and, thus, posits the individual's overriding goal in life to be the gratification of self and personal success. Sound familiar?
2. Can you think of examples of the trend toward radical individualism? In moral thinking? There is no absolute right or wrong, just my perspective. In civil rights? I have a legal entitlement to my life style and to redress of any infringement of that life style, regardless of how deviant it is. A bizarre example? Any living creature has the same rights humans do. Look at how intense anti-fur people can be.
3. And yet growing alongside this trend toward radical individualism is a reliance on some authority (government, courts) to secure individual rights. Do we have a contradiction here? Using group authority to promote individual rights? Individual rights which challenge the stability of the group?
4. What is the logical end of radical individualism?
5. Should we have more of the good of the community? If so, how do we achieve it?

Johannes Eckhart, Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) was the greatest of those seeking direct communion with God. Eckhart, like Aquinas, was a Dominican; unlike Aquinas, he sought a mystical union with God as the way to understanding. Eckhart preached that one who wanted to truly know God must detach himself from earthly cares, deny the self-will, and surrender to God. It almost sounded like Bernard of Clairvaux. In experiencing the sense of union with God, one experienced God Himself, intuitively knowing God in the only way one could know a being who was ineffable. "The soul imbibing God," he said, "turns into God as the drop becomes the ocean." Or, "to be full of things is to be empty of God, while to be empty of things is to be full of God." Church doctrines or dogmas were inexpressible save as metaphors. The Kingdom of Heaven, for example, meant not the spiritual realm after death, but the here and now. "A man beholds God in this life in the same perfection, and is blessed in exactly the same way, as in the after life." The Incarnation meant the constant rebirth of God the Holy Spirit in the individual soul, a rebirth more significant than the Virgin Birth of Jesus from Virgin Mary. Rebirth or union with God meant a changed life immediately: "Life (emanating from God) is as it were a gushing up, a thing welling up in itself, pouring any part of itself into any other part, before it runs forth and bubbles over without." Eckhart continued, "In this birth God pours himself into the soul with light so much that the light gathers in the being and ground of the soul and spills over into the faculties and the outer self. This happened to Paul too when God bathed him in his light as he journeyed, and spoke to him. A likeness of the light in the ground of the soul flows over into the body, which is then filled with radiance." Eckhart made it clear that this mystical experience was not a leaving of the body for absorption in the divine and an ultimate eradication of the individual. It was instead a spiritual grounding which prepared the individual to live Christian truths in the world with new power.

Eckhart had a great influence on German mystics called the Friends of God, on Brethren of the Common Life in the Netherlands, and on mystics in England. What Eckhart had left implicit, however, became more explicit in the central teachings of these disciples: the truly pious would remain aloof from the Church and churchmen were corrupt. Two major figures in the Friends were disciples of Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso. Their group produced the Theologica Germanica a work with enormous influence on Martin Luther. In the Netherlands, Gerard Groote founded the Brethren of the Common Life and probably wrote the Imitation of Christ, another work of enormous influence, which was published later with emendations by Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471). Eckhart's influence also spread to England in the writings of the mystic Juliana of Norwich and others. Mysticism as a way of explaining life was one of the major new views of life pushing forward in this era.

New views of the world grew up alongside new views of life. The outlook of the First Europe valued the world as basically good as a product of God's creative will. But this did not lead immediately to a scientific interest in the world for reasons explored in an earlier section of the course. Still, the value placed on the world as basically good was a precondition for scientific thinking about the world, if two other preconditions could also occur:

(1) men needed a motive or reasons to seek scientific knowledge;

(2) thinkers needed to break free from theological preconceptions about the universe and formulate a new view independent of religious teachings.

The motive for seeking knowledge was power over nature. Even in the period 900 to 1350 a number of innovations helped encourage the belief that technology improved man's control over nature. Some of these innovations were the iron plow, crop rotation, techniques for improving land drainage, wind and water-powered mills, looms, and spinning machines, and advances in iron and other metal-working skills and knowledge. Through these improvements the idea began to develop that man could gain greater control over nature and thus improve life by experimentation. We have already seen in an earlier section that even during the First Europe certain thinkers such as Robert Grosseteste and his pupil Roger Bacon helped to prepare the way for an acceptance of experimentation or "experimental science" as Bacon called it. By the 14^th century, then, thinkers had the basics of the scientific method and knowledge of Arab science. It remained for the other precondition to be realized, the formulation of a new non-religious view of the universe.

The new world-view began with a rejection of medieval "realism" or the philosophic view that only ideas had meaning and existence. As we saw earlier, thinkers of the era of the First Europe had sharply divided over whether realism and nominalism presented the truer view of reality. By the 14^th century nominalism began to win out, helped by the trend toward individualism discussed earlier in this section. The nominalist attitude supported the notion that the universe was vastly more complex than had been thought, and, indeed, that the universe was infinite rather than the closed system envisioned by Ptolemy with the earth at the center and the heavens on the circumference of the cosmos. This outlook came into immediate conflict with accepted religious dogma. If the universe was infinite with innumerable planetary bodies, what happened to the church's teaching about Christ and salvation? Was salvation still central to the cosmic scheme of things?

William of Occam (1300-1348) pointed the way for those looking for a new explanation of reality. Occam asserted the right to follow intellectual inquiry without regard to the spiritual implications arising from new ideas. He discarded realism and its universalist categories and flatly asserted the principle that all things outside the observer were unique: "Every positive thing outside the soul is by that fact singular." Occam is best known for the principle called Occam's razor: only one cause is necessary to explain any phenomenon if one cause is a sufficient explanation. With this principle he rejected Aristotelian concept of quadruple causation and laid the way for the beginning of modern science and a new view of the world. He said that planetary motion might be due to distant attraction and repulsion and was not necessarily caused by direct force (calling into question the need for God as the Unmoved Mover). The earth itself might move, he said, perhaps the most radical of his notions since it challenged the Ptolemaic cosmos centering on the unmoving earth. The same laws governing matter and motion on the earth also controlled the heavens and mathematics held the key to understanding these laws. Once motion began it would continue until a new force acted to bring about change. Hence the universe could be infinite, since there was no need for an Unmoved Mover to keep things going.

Occam also espoused radical social and political ideas. He denied that the Pope spoke with unerring authority (what would later be defined as papal infallibility), asserted that church and state had separate and equal spheres, and insisted that individuals had the right of direct communion with God rather than solely through the Church. These ideas were developed by others into more far-reaching claims. Marsilio of Padua (1270-1342), for example, in the Defensor Pacis attacked the Church's claim to universal rule and argued for the idea of popular sovereignty. Supporters of the Conciliar Movement in the 15^th century tried without success to reform the Church by asserting the supremacy of Church Councils over papal authority.

Occam's scientific theories also led other thinkers in new directions. Nicholas of Cusa (1400-1464) combined both the mystical tendency of Eckhart and the new science suggested by Occam in De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Unknowing). Nicholas reaffirmed all Occam's major ideas: the infinity of the universe, the possibility of the earth's motion, and the idea that mathematics was the most certain of the sciences. He went beyond Occam in suggesting the existence of life on other worlds revolving around the stars. But in the end, he said, man's knowledge was still relative and contradictory. He likened the search for final truth to squaring the circle: one can approach the completion of the square but can never complete it, any more than one can attain truth. The only way to truth is to transcend science (here comes Eckhart) by mystical union with God, the center of all knowledge and of the universe. So, is this a mystical negation of rational knowledge? No, the universe Nicholas leaves us with is not a closed, finite world as envisioned by the First Europe, but an infinite world presided over by a mathematical deity.

With the work of Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei the new view of the infinite universe came to fruition. Copernicus formulated in detail what Occam had merely suggested, the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe (the geocentric theory) but rather a minor planet in a system centering on the sun (the heliocentric theory). In 1543 Copernicus published On The Revolution of Heavenly Bodies and, using Occam's razor, proposed that a sun-centered universe made clearer and simpler mathematical sense than did the Ptolemaic theory which required elaborate, complex explanations. He reasoned that the world was orderly and followed simple mathematical principles, hence it should be sun-centered. "At rest, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most beautiful temple who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time?" His theory was supported by Kepler's work formulating the three laws of planetary motion. And it was corroborated by Galileo's work in perfecting the telescope which made possible observations proving Copernicus' theory and his formulation of the laws of "local motion" or mechanics. It only remained for Isaac Newton in the late 17^th century to finish this process with the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy which demonstrated that all motion, planetary or otherwise, obeyed three laws and that all matter was subject to gravitation, a force calculable by formula.

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The Church wound up on the other side from Galileo and the astronomers proposing a new view of the world. Should the Church be taking a position about scientific theories? Is it really religious business?

A New Doctrine of Personality: The Dignity of Man and the Renaissance Ideal of L' uomo Universale

The new view of man found supreme expression in Italy in urban centers which flourished as independent city-states in the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th centuries. Although there were dozens of these cities, several of them dominated their regions: Florence, Milan, Venice, Naples, and the Roman Papal States. Lesser cities such as Pisa, Genoa, Verona, Cremona, Bologna, Ferrara, and Urbino also were important cultural centers even though they were controlled by one or the other of these larger powers at times during this period. The life of these cities stimulated and nourished a new attitude called humanism, whose basic assumption was that man is a rational being possessing an unlimited capacity for goodness and excellence.

Humanism was also a cultural and literary movement in the 14^th and 15^th centuries which emphasized the revival and study of the classics because thinkers believed that classical writers had first espoused the view of man as a creature of worth and dignity. Literary and artistic humanism began with Dante, Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) who sought to recover and study classical sources. It was enlivened following the fall of Constantinople by the influx of Byzantine scholars and further encouraged by the foundation of the Platonic Academy in Florence and by the general support given to humanist scholars by rulers such as the Medici family. Leading Italian humanists in the 15^th and 16^th centuries included Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), the philologist who disproved the Donation of Constantine and undercut the papal claim to political authority, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), a polymath whom we will discuss later, Baldasar Castiglione (1478-1529) who wrote The Courtier, a humanist model for the aristocrats of the city-states, and Giovanni Conte Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). Humanism also spread to other parts of Europe and included figures such as Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), and Thomas More (1478-1535).

Humanism interests us most not as a literary and cultural movement but as an attitude toward man and how he should live. The loftiest conceptions of man as a being of worth and dignity were those of Giovanni, Conte Pico della Mirandola whose Oration on the Dignity of Man best defined the new doctrine of personality we are discussing. In his life as well as his oration, Pico embodied the essence of this extravagant view of man's potential. An astonishingly precocious young man, Pico settled in Rome at the age of 23 and offered to debate all comers on 900 propositions encompassing all knowledge. When some of these theses were found to be heretical by the Church, Pico abandoned the debate, but wrote a defense of his views and his right to discuss them. The Oration was part of this defense.

In the work Pico has God making man, the last of His works, a unique creature with no prescribed nature or limits:

...the Supreme Maker decreed that this creature, to whom he could give nothing wholly his own, should have a share in the particular endowment of every other creature. Taking man, therefore, this creature of indeterminate image, He set him in the middle of the world and spoke to him:

We have given you, Oh Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor any endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgment and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which we have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine."

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What do you think about the humanist view of man? Has man unlimited potential to develop?

Historians have long tried to explain why this new doctrine of personality first appeared in Italian city-states in the 14^th century. Perhaps it was because of the nature of civic life. Or possibly the new doctrine shaped city life into the dynamic medium that it was. Perhaps the two factors are mutually influential. Italy in the 14^th and 15^th centuries was like a hothouse that permitted, encouraged, even forced individualism to develop, but the hothouse existed because of the resurgence of individualism. Men were no longer afraid of being exceptional, of being and seeming unlike their neighbors.

Many of the cities of Italy were dominated by despots. And despotism fostered the individuality of those who mattered under such systems. It enhanced the tyrant's individuality and that as well of the men who served him--ministers, poets, secretaries and the like. Poised at the pinnacle of power, they were all forced to plumb the depths of their own natures and to know their inward resources. Their enjoyment of life (which had come to be savored in and for itself) was intensified by the desire to obtain the greatest satisfaction from a possibly brief period of power and influence.

Even the subjects of these despotisms were swayed by the same influences. Those content with a private station and indifferent to politics or power struggles found an outlet for their individualism in the new culture of learning and artistic endeavor.

In republican cities circumstances also favored the growth of individualism. When power often changed from one party to another, the individual was induced to make the most of his time in power and to enjoy its exercise. Those out of power remembered the freedom and power they enjoyed. They were roused to greater individuality by the hope of recovering office.

The growth of a cosmopolitan spirit among the educated elite who possessed the new outlook was a mark of their individualism. Even in the 13^th century Dante, an exile from his beloved Florence, said "my country is the whole world." Others were equally bold in asserting their freedom as individuals from attachments to any country or region. Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), architect, painter, and sculptor of Florence said "Only he who has learned everything is nowhere a stranger; robbed of his fortune and without friends, he is yet the citizen of every country, and can fearlessly despise the changes of fortune." Another humanist declared, "wherever a learned man fixes his seat, there is home."

The model for new individuals was the "all-sided man" or the "universal man" (l'uomo universale). This ideal appeared when the surge of the spirit of individualism and the conditions favoring it combined with powerful personalities to produce a few universal men in Renaissance Italian city-states. The name of Leonardo da Vinci easily comes to mind because he is so much better known today than other figures of the Renaissance. But in 15^th century Florence even Leonardo did not surpass the universal qualities of Leon Battista Alberti. Alberti made sure the world knew of his all-rounded giftedness in an anonymous biography which he obviously wrote:

In all by which praise was won Leon Battista was, from his childhood, the first. Of his various gymnastic feats and exercises we read with astonishment how, with his feet together, he could spring over a man's head; how, in the cathedral, he threw a coin in the air till it was heard to ring against the distant roof; how the wildest horses trembled under him. In three things he desired to appear faultless to others, in walking, in riding, and in speaking. And all the while he acquired every sort of accomplishment and dexterity, cross-examining artists, scholars and artisans of all descriptions, down to the cobblers, about the secrets of their craft.... That which others created he welcomed joyfully, and held every human achievement which followed the laws of beauty for something almost divine.... At the sight of noble trees and waving fields of corn he shed tears: handsome and dignified old men he honoured as "delights of nature" and could never look at them enough--and more than once, when he was ill, the sight of a beautiful landscape cured him.

Immodest as Alberti sounds, he truly was universal in his interests and abilities. Best known today as an architect and the author of De re aedificatoria (Ten Books on Architecture), a bible for architects from the 15^th to the 18^th centuries, he also produced Della Pittura (On Painting), the first work which laid out the rules for painting a three-dimensional scene on a flat surface. He produced the first treatise on geography since Roman times and laid out rules for surveying and mapping a land area. He wrote the first Italian grammar. He authored a book on code-writing. He painted the first self-portrait. At the age of 20 he anonymously wrote a Latin comedy which was believed for over a hundred years to be the "discovered" work of a Roman writer.

Alberti was truly a polymath. Trained in his early youth in the classics, he later studied at the University of Bologna and received a doctorate in church law at the age of 24. Much of his knowledge was self-acquired, stimulated by his wide circle of friendships. His interest and knowledge of painting and architecture, for instance, began with his comradeship with the sculptor Donatello (1386-1466) and the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). Later he became an architectural advisor to Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) and began the reconstruction of St. Peter's and the Vatican Palace. In the last twenty years of his life he applied himself mainly to the practice of architecture about which he had written so influentially. Still he found time for writing, as in the work De Iciarchia (On the Man of Excellence and Ruler of the Family) which contains a passage suggesting the almost morbid industry with which he lived:

Although at no hour of the day could you see him idle, yet that he might win for himself still more of the fruits of life and time, every evening before going to bed he would set beside himself a wax candle of a certain measure and, sitting half undressed, he would read history or poetry until the candle was burnt up. The followers of Pythagoras used, before they slept, to compose their minds with some harmonious music. Now our friend finds his reading no lass soothing than was the sound of music to them; but it is more useful. They fall into a profound sleep in which the mind is motionless; but he, even when asleep, has noble and life-giving thoughts revolving in the mind; and often things of great worth become clear to him, which when awake, he had sought with unavailing effort.

Alberti's whole personality was pervaded by a iron will--"men can do all things if they will."

Besides Alberti and a few other universal men there were many more "many-sided men". As Jacob Burckhardt pointed out in his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1878), the merchant and statesman often knew both classical languages. He paid humanists to read the classics to him and his sons and to educate his daughters. The humanist, after studying the classics, turned to using the knowledge for contemporary needs. Besides translating plays, he turned to producing them; in addition to studying ancient politics, he became a statesman or diplomat, or secretary himself. This was the new conception of man called forth in the Renaissance and these were the types of individuals this conception produced. Life was to be lived in and for this world, not denied for the sake of the world to come. And if the new individual no longer built monuments for the life to come, he built them for this life.

The new doctrine of personality produced a new moral postulate--glory and fame as worthy goals in their won right. For humanists this took the form of desire to gain glory through their works. Even Dante, the poet of Paradise, wanted to be remembered as the first to write in the vernacular, in the new style. While recognizing the transience of fame, he still longed for it. Those who came afterward sought the same thing. Petrarch, who late in life spoke disparagingly of fame during his lifetime, still wanted it after his death and admitted his gratification at efforts to immortalize him by preserving his birthplace in Arezzo.

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We have seen some modern examples of the search for fame through infamous deeds. Name some instances.

Practically all cities sought to honor their famous humanist sons. Florence planned to make a pantheon to famous humanists, with tombs for Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and others. And any city with even a remote claim to being the birthplace or burial place for humanists or famous classical figures proclaimed that fact: Naples boasted of the tomb of Vergil; Padua, of Livy; Parma, of Cassius; and Como, of Pliny the Elder and Younger. To celebrate their distinction, cities produced literature extolling their famous sons: Padua, for instance, boasted of its "famous men...who, by their great intellect and force, deserve to be added to the saints."

The search for fame and glory had other consequences. Poets and scholars realized that they were not only celebrities, but that they could bestow, or withhold, fame, make, or unmake, reputations. Boccaccio once complained to a fair lady who remained hard-hearted despite his courtship that he wanted to keep making her famous, but that if things didn't change she might find herself with a changed reputation. (We don't know the outcome.) Humanists pestered kings to have their histories recorded and threatened with obscurity those who were indifferent to posterity or indifferent to the welfare of humanists. Sometimes, the desire for fame and glory had frightful consequences. Machiavelli, a shrewd observer in this as in other matters involving human nature, commented, "How many who could distinguish themselves by nothing praiseworthy strove to do so by infamous deeds." Certain murders and assassinations in 16^th century Florence struck him as the outgrowth of a craving to achieve fame by infamy.

We have looked at one of the signs that men were groping for a new attitude toward man, the appearance of a new doctrine of personality and a new moral postulate which accompanied it. This new doctrine foreshadowed the Second Europe's sense of the individual as worthwhile in his own right, with will and passion as valuable personality characteristics in their own right.

The End of "Europe" as Common Spiritual Aims and Values: Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther

The causes of the Protestant Reformation were many and varied, but the immediate cause was the spiritual search of Martin Luther (1483-1546). Born in Eisleben to a family with peasant origins engaged in the copper mining business, Luther as a youth spent a year in a boarding school run by the Brethren of the Common Life. Then his father sent him to the University of Erfurt, one of the best universities in Germany to study liberal arts. There he completed the baccalaureate and master's degrees. His father, wishing to push him toward the legal profession to advance the family's status, entered him in law school at the University. In 1505 while on the way back from his parent's house to the University, Luther was caught in a bad thunderstorm and thrown to the ground by a near lighting strike. Luther later reported that he prayed to St. Anne to save him and vowed to enter a monastery if spared. Within two weeks he entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt. In the next two years he took vows as a monk, began studying theology, and was ordained to the priesthood. When he celebrated his first mass, he was so overwhelmed by the solemnity and responsibility that he nearly fainted.

Luther's theological studies and life as a monk did not bring him spiritual peace. As he recounted later, no matter how much he fasted and prayed and punished himself, he still had a sense of unworthiness. The Church taught that "good works" helped to "justify" man's soul before God, but Luther despaired of doing enough good works to satisfy God's justice. His superior, seeking to help him find peace and to keep him from upsetting the monastery by his extraordinary spiritual turmoil, sent him to Rome and then to teach at the University of Wittenberg founded by Duke Frederick the Wise of Saxony. After receiving the doctorate in 1512, Luther stayed to teach theology and to preach in the Wittenberg City Church.

In teaching Luther found the path to spiritual peace he had been seeking. Working on some lectures on Romans, he was struck by the passages dealing with faith and justification. Romans 1:17 in particular gripped him: "the righteous will live by faith." Pondering this, he decided that the key to salvation was "that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith." Everything took on new meaning. Before he had been afraid of God and hated God because he could not satisfy God's justice. But with faith he found God's justice "inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven." Good works and penance were useless by themselves. Man could not please God by works alone. Only by faith could God be satisfied. Faith, a free gift of God's mercy, "justified" a man and ensured salvation. We are not saved by works, but by faith alone. Then we do good works because we want to, after we are saved. These ideas were a whole new vision for Luther. Applying this outlook to the Church, he was troubled. If salvation depended solely on faith and God's grace, what was the use of ordained priests? The hierarchy? The monastic life? Penance, pilgrimages, and indulgences?

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1.A modern psychologist, Eric Fromm, did a study of Luther which used Freudian concepts to suggest that Luther's early life and spiritual search was motivated by his relationship with his father (the Oedipus complex) and his transference to God of his feelings about his father. What do you think?

2. Are good works a prelude to salvation or a postlude? Protestantism, following Luther and Calvin, says the latter. Your view?

Luther's growing disquiet came abruptly to the surface in 1517 with the sale of indulgences in Germany. This incident eventually led Luther into a full scale revolt against the papacy and the Church and to the formation of his own church. The Church had been selling indulgences since the medieval period. As the last section of the course showed, popes proclaimed indulgences for certain occasions, the theory being that one who received one of these indulgences could expect the remission of guilt and an early release from Purgatory. The first proclamation was for those going on the first Crusade. In 1517 Pope Leo X had given Prince Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz, the authority to sell indulgences in Germany with the understanding that half the money was to go towards building St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Although indulgences were not sold in Luther's own province, Saxony, because the ruler Duke Frederick the Wise objected, Luther's parishioners bought them from Johann Tetzel, Prince Albrecht's agent, just across the provincial borders. When Luther inquired why certain parishioners were not coming to confession, they told him they no longer needed confession and penance; the indulgences offered plenary or full remission from Purgatory for the deceased as well as the living. Those who had his indulgence, Tetzel boasted, were free of any sins, past or future. Luther also heard other versions of the claims Tetzel was making for his indulgences, such as the jingle "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs."

It was the theology of Tetzel that bothered Luther more even than the actual selling of the indulgences. What Tetzel was implying was that indulgences removed not only the penalty of sin, but the guilt of sin as well. Luther was dragged into the controversy when he remarked that Tetzel's claims were false. Tetzel denounced Luther, and Luther decided to draw up a formal attack on the sale of indulgences. He sent a letter to Prince Albrecht protesting the sale of indulgences and urging that Tetzel be reined in. What happened afterward is a matter of debate among historians, but according to tradition, Luther nailed a long list of statements critical of indulgences (The 95 Theses) on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. This list was not immediately intended to be inflammatory; it was in Latin which the public could not read. However, copies soon found their way to printers who published them in German and distributed them throughout Germany. In the 95 Theses Luther challenged not only the sale but the entire theology behind indulgences.

Some of the Theses are worth quoting to clarify the controversy and to see first hand Luther's polemical style:

(5) The pope neither desires nor is able to remit any penalties except those imposed by his own authority.

(20) Therefore the pope, when he uses the words "plenary remission of all penalties" does not actually mean "all penalties," but only those imposed by himself.

(21) Thus those indulgence preachers are in error who say that a man is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgences.

(26) The pope does very well when he grants remission to souls in purgatory, not by the power of the keys, which he does not have, but by way of intercession for them.

(32) Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.

(75) To consider papal indulgences so great that they could absolve a man even if he had done the impossible and had violated the mother of God is madness.

(86) ...Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?

Thus Luther mixed with theological argument a dollop of anti-Italian sentiment (good German money ought to stay in Germany) and touched a nerve among the rulers and the populace as well. Sales of indulgences fell off, prompting the Pope to direct that a reply be sent to Luther's theses. In answer to this reply and in further exchanges Luther proceeded to a more serious challenge to papal authority and the whole structure of the Church.

When it became clear that Luther could not reconcile his views with those of the Church, he refused to retract them. He vowed that he would obey only his conscience. When friends warned him that he would bring division, violence and even his own death, Luther replied that he would not compromise on what he believed to be true. Even early in the controversy which swept over him, Luther displayed the strong, uncompromising temperament which carried him through the Reformation (and is conveyed in the strong portrait by Lucas Cranach). He was courageous and forthright, capable of fierce anger, combativeness, and stubbornness. These were qualities which stood him in good stead as he defied authority, but which also caused a bloody, savage response later when his own authority was challenged.

Luther broadened his attack on the Church and the papacy. He appealed to the German princes and to German laymen in writings such as the Address to the Christian Nobility. He declared that all baptized Christians were priests. Ordained priests and bishops had no greater spiritual powers than other Christians; they were just carrying out their duties. He attacked monasticism and asserted that priests ought to be allowed to marry. He rejected the traditional view of the sacraments. Only two sacraments, he said, were scriptural, baptism and the Eucharist. He denied the teaching of transubstantiation (that the elements of wine and bread were transformed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ during the Mass).

Finally, Pope Leo acted in 1520. He ordered that a papal bull (from the seal or bulla with which it was affixed) be drawn up excommunicating Luther. Upon receiving the document, Luther burned it, according to tradition, under an oak in Wittenberg. The German bishops and clergy called on the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, to seize Luther and punish him as a heretic. But Duke Frederick insisted that Luther have a chance to explain his views before the assembly of elector princes of the empire. So Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms in 1521. There he was asked and commanded to retract his writings and recant the heresy he had committed. He refused. His sole authorities, he said, were Scripture and conscience. Unless he could be shown by Scripture alone that he was wrong, he could not and would not recant:

"Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen."

There is no evidence from Luther's own writings that he uttered the famous words "Here I stand, I can do no other."

On his return from the Diet Luther was kidnapped by agents of Duke Frederick and taken for safekeeping to the Wartburg Castle to wait out the storm. (The emperor had declared him an outlaw after the Diet and Luther could have been killed by his enemies on sight.) At the Wartburg Luther used his enforced seclusion to translate the Bible into German and, thereby, give the people access to the authority which guided by conscience was essential to finding the truth. This version is still the most frequently used, because Luther stamped the German language with his own inimitable style. He also thought through doctrines consistent with his basic theology about Scripture and conscience.

Formally, then, Christendom was split. In 1522 Luther emerged from hiding and returned to Wittenberg to reform, organize, and administer a new German church which came to bear his name. The new German Church required leadership, doctrines, and liturgy. Luther also faced severe tests upon returning to Wittenberg. His teachings were being cited to justify what he believed to be abhorrent theories and doctrines. The priesthood of all believers and the sole authority of Scripture led some to adopt radical new ideas and practices. One such group were the Anabaptists who got their name from their opposition to infant baptism. But it was the social and economic beliefs of some of the more radical Anabaptists that Luther reacted to most strongly. They wanted the equalitarianism which they said the New Testament taught; some of them advocated a violent uprising against all established order. (One of Luther's own followers, Thomas Munzer, was a leading figure in preaching violence against the established order). When a Peasant Revolt against the feudal and manorial order began in Germany in 1524, Luther condemned it violently. He took a very conservative view of social and political matters, believing that the authorities alone had the right to make social changes. In a work entitled Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants he urged the rulers to put down the rebellion without mercy, to kill the rebels as "mad dogs". And they did. Luther said later, "all their blood is on my head. But I throw the responsibility on our Lord God, who instructed me to give this order."

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Your reaction to Luther's turning on the peasants?

Luther also reacted violently towards those who disagreed with him theologically. As the Reformation continued to engender a rich smorgasbord of theological ideas, Luther found himself in the paradoxical position of having, as a theological rebel, to quell theological dissidence. He called preachers who espoused doctrines contrary to his own "blasphemers". Like persons who committed sedition they should be executed. To the argument that those who disagreed were simply exercising their spiritual rights as believers, Luther replied that one had to be properly "qualified" to be worthy of interpreting Scripture. Eventually, it was necessary to define what Lutheranism was since all sorts of ideas were being generated in the name of reform. In 1530 Luther and his followers declared an orthodox Lutheran position--the "Augsburg Confession"--drafted mainly by Luther's supporter, the humanist theologian, Philip Melancthon. This Confession was basically a moderate statement of Luther's views on the sacraments, the relationship between faith and works, and on justification by faith.

The emperor Charles V hoped to suppress the Lutheran Church and the German princes who had supported Luther and had adopted his views. Although some of the German princes and rulers supported the emperor, he could not marshal sufficient force early enough to overwhelm Lutheranism. The struggle split Germany along religious lines. Lutheranism even spread to Scandinavia as rulers there also adopted the Lutheran Church as the official religion. Finally in 1555 a truce was agreed upon called the Peace of Augsburg which recognized the political and religious fact of Lutheranism. Each prince was free to choose either Catholicism or Lutheranism for his realm. If a ruler converted, however, so did his people.

Rulers, nobles, and the middle class were Luther's strongest supporters. His theology also appealed to a growing German patriotism. The laity tended to feel comfortable in the Lutheran Church. All baptized Christians were on the same spiritual plane as their ministers. Those who lived the ascetic life were no longer spiritually superior. Those who lived workaday lives were equally esteemed: secular society and its emerging middle class values had received a considerable boost from the new Church.

Wherever Lutheranism prevailed the pattern was generally the same as the rulers adopted the new faith and worked out the details of the religious transformation. In each country the ruler appointed a superintendent to oversee the church, subordinating the church to the state. Thus the principle of central authority was retained; there was no local church autonomy. Religious buildings and properties of the Roman Catholic Church were signed over to the new church, the rulers keeping land belonging to the bishops and abbots. Monastic orders were abolished. Ministers were allowed to marry. (Luther lived in a converted monastery, married to a former nun, Katherine von Bora by whom he had six children). The new church abandoned the veneration of saints and relics. But the liturgy remained basically the same, in German rather than Latin. Luther also kept music and art within the church and its worship, unlike Calvin and his followers. Luther even composed several hymns himself.

When Luther died in 1546 the movement and Church he began was strong enough to survive the onslaught of the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Church.

But once begun, the movement had no logical end. If there was no one Church, there could be any number of churches. And so the religious movement known as the Reformation proliferated into an apparently endless procession of churches and theological persuasions. "Europe" was no longer a unity of faith and values as it had been up to 1517.

John Calvin

Luther’s own spiritual quest loosed a variety of singular religious ideas as we saw above in the case of the Anabaptists. And it also produced another great leader of the Reformation, John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin and Luther shared some fundamental beliefs such as the primacy of Scripture and conscience and a hatred of detestable Roman practices. But they also disagreed about some fundamentals, emphasizing again the end of Europe as one spiritual entity. Calvin’s influence has rivaled Luther’s over the centuries. In many countries of the newly emerging nation-state system Calvin was the stronger of the two. And in America itself Calvinism is arguably much more significant.

Calvin was born in 1509 in Noyon, France to a prosperous middle class family; the father worked for the local bishop as an administrator. Calvin the elder intended that his son go into the priesthood and sent him at the age of 14 to Paris to study in preparation for the university. There he learned not only the classics but also began to imbibe Lutheran ideas which were circulating among the scholars of Paris, as well as most other European universities. By 1533 Calvin had moved to Orleans to study law and had gone so far in his commitment to the Protestant cause to speak openly against the Roman church and to call for reforms. He also underwent what he called a conversion experience (variously dated from 1528 to 1533) which he later wrote about in a commentary on the Psalms:

Since I was more stubbornly addicted to the superstitions of the Papacy than to be easily drawn out of that so deep mire, by a sudden conversion, He subdued my heart (too hardened for my age) to docility. Thus, having acquired some taste of true piety, I burned with such great zeal to go forward that although I did not desist from other studies I yet pursued them more indifferently, nor had a year gone by when all who were desirous of this purer doctrine thronged to me, novice and beginner that I was, in order to learn.

Calvin’s speech caused such opposition that he fled to Switzerland for safety. Passing through Geneva, he was prevailed upon by a local reformer, Guillaume Farel (1489-1565), to stay and take part in the reformation of that city. He stayed to preach and lecture from 1536 until 1538 when he was asked to leave by city authorities because of conflicts with opponents. In 1541, however, he was recalled by the city and became the dominant figure in making Geneva a haven for persecuted Protestants and an experiment in the organization of a society along reformed lines. Until his death in 1564, Calvin preached, lectured and wrote (the grave may not be his; he stipulated that he be buried in an unmarked plot). His greatest work was the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a massive and detailed exposition of what came to be called “Calvinism.”

How does one organize such a society? By using Scripture as a model both for the structure and the laws of such a society. In so thinking Calvin was not entirely original. His ideas drew immediately from Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), leader of the reformation in Zurich, Switzerland, and ultimately from the Bible, particularly the Book of Acts. Zwingli stressed the primacy of Scripture as authoritative: if it’s in the Bible, it must be done; if it’s not in the Bible; it must be rejected. Calvin totally agreed. But he went even further and made this conviction the basis for a new society. Geneva’s new statutes became the strict moral code of the Bible. Calvin also turned to the Book of Acts to the example of the early Church, setting up a hierarchy of four levels of civic authority: (1) five Pastors who held authority over religious matters; (2) a group of Teachers who were responsible for teaching doctrine to the city; (3) twelve Elders chosen by the city council to oversee everything; and (4) a group of Deacons whose job it was to care for the sick, the elderly, the widows and the poor. In the church itself, Calvin set up a governing body known as a “presbytery,” a body of elders who were elected by the congregation because of their spiritual gifts and the evidence of their call to such a position. (More later about predestination and the place of the elect.) Above the church presbytery was a hierarchy of courts with responsibility over local churches. But any member of a church might aspire to and win election to membership in these governing bodies if sufficiently qualified by an exemplary spiritual state. To this new heaven on earth, religious refugees came from all over Europe. Many also departed to take Calvinism to other places: England; Scotland; France; Germany and the Low Countries. They may have come to Geneva as reformers of differing persuasions; they left as committed Calvinists.

What were Calvin’s teachings and wherein does his significance lie? The most important of his teachings was the doctrine of predestination:

When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things have ever been, and perpetually remain, before His eyes, so that to His knowledge nothing is future or past, but all things are present: and present in such a manner that He does not merely conceive of them from ideas formed in His mind, as things remembered by us appear present to our minds, but really beholds and sees them as if actually placed before Him. And this foreknowledge extends to the whole world and to all the creatures. Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which He hath determined in Himself what He would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others.

If God is sovereign of history, He surely knows who is going to be saved and who isn’t, from the beginning of time to the end. Thus, what God knows cannot be simply a matter of human choice. You may want to be saved, but God alone knows whether you are, whether you have been “elected” to salvation or damnation. Will you lead a godly life if elected? Probably. But godly living is no assurance in itself that you are elected. Only God knows. On the other hand, leading a dissolute, sinful life is hardly evidence of election. So it’s a tricky business: an exemplary life isn’t a guarantee, but you don’t want to give up hope and go the dissolute route either. Imagine the impetus to lead a spiritual life. Also, think about another possible implication: if God has elected you, has He favored you with blessings? Are you successful because of your calling and election and because of God’s blessings? If you are not successful, what does that mean? I wrote at the beginning of the lecture about the doctrine of success. In American history it has had a long and sometime controversial history. It is not in vogue today among the “thinking” class, but until recent times it held a lot of sway. Calvin is responsible for that idea.

Another idea traceable to Calvin is the principle of voluntarism as a basis for association: we elect to join a church because we think its members form a desirable group; a church receives us because it thinks us desirable members. As an organizational principle this is a natural corollary of the idea of the priesthood of all believers. All are equal if each is a priest. Any of us has as much right to exercise leadership as another, based on our own talents and abilities. In Scotland, where John Knox took Calvinism, this became a basis for challenging royal authority. So too did it in the American colonies in the 17^th and 18^th centuries when Calvinism arguably caused opponents of the Crown to take the route of rebellion. Many of the leadership of the American Revolution were Presbyterians used to directing their own affairs and determined to have it in civil as well as religious matters. In fact, King George III called the revolution “a Presbyterian rebellion.”[1]

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1. Do you get the picture? Imagine the anguish and burden. All based on a principle which goes back to St. Augustine and perhaps to St. Paul, called the idea of predestination.

2. Would you want to live in Calvin’s Geneva?

Toward a New View of the State: Niccolo Machiavelli and the Modern Secular State

As men became conscious of themselves as men living in this world and sought to realize their highest potential in this life, they also developed a new attitude towards society. They began to look on the state in a new way and to regard political power in terms of "what is" rather than "what ought to be." No longer content to accept the state as divinely ordered, they wanted to reflect on it and to analyze it. The apostle of this new view was Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, about whom we will have more to say later.

Why this new attitude towards the state appeared is difficult to explain. But it is easy to describe how it developed. It appeared first as a theory in Italy, although the fact of the modern secular state also occurred elsewhere in Europe. The theory developed during the political evolution of the northern Italian cities from feudal control to political independence. As we discussed earlier in the course, northern Italy was dotted by cities large and small. During the 11^th, 12^th and 13^th centuries they began to assert their autonomy and vie with each other for power in their regions. They expanded their authority into the countryside so that political power rested in urban centers drawing on what today would be called metropolitan areas. Where this occurred as a rebellion against local feudal lords, whether secular or church, the struggle for independence led to the early overthrow of feudal relationships and to the rejection of medieval political ideals.

How can this story of political development be summarized accurately? It looks chaotic, with a bewildering variety of city-states and different histories. But two general trends stand out in the development of cities: (1) the political evolution of each city depended on the nature of the city's economic life and the conflicting interests of the classes of people; (2) in most cities self-government fell apart and was replaced by despotism.

These trends are visible in the evolution of Florence which is as good an example as any, since Florence was one of the leading cities of Renaissance Italy. Like most cities, Florence began as a republic once it had overthrown the authority of its local lord. At its inception the Florentine republic was a simple burgher democracy. But the rich merchants who had led the struggle for political and legal independence came to rule city affairs as a new aristocracy. In the 13^th century they were challenged by a new rising class of merchants, industrialists, and bankers who wanted to take their place as the ruling elite. This group is the first of three distinct classes of citizens. The name for them was popolo grasso (the fat people). Beneath them was another class consisting of shopkeepers and professional men called the popolo whose economic interests were in local trade and ran counter to the economic interests of the popolo grasso. At the bottom was the class called the popolo minuto, the propertyless wage-earning class. When pushed to make a choice, the popolo usually sided with the popolo grasso rather than the popolo minuto. But during the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th centuries these three classes drove the political evolution of Florence by first excluding the aristocrats and then by attempting to seize power either singly or in combinations with others.

In brief, the political situation runs like this. The popolo grasso excluded the aristocrats in the 13^th century. They admitted the popolo to a minor share in power, but combined to keep out the popolo minuto. In the mid 14^th century, the popolo minuto rose up and gained power for a short time. Then they lost out to the popolo grasso again. Finally in the 15^th century after civil strife had plagued Florence for decades and weakened republican traditions, the Medici family came to power. The same story is replicated in other cities. Republican government was weakened and discredited, unable to provide security, peace, and leadership in war.

Florence, like other cities, turned to despotism to end factional strife and give strong direction to state policy. Despots came to power in a variety of ways. Some cities turned over power to military leaders for specified periods. In other cities strong men seized power by demagoguery, inciting the populace to follow them by offering direction and purpose. Sometimes the cities elected a strong leader as Captain of the People. All these methods of gaining power could and often did lead to life dictatorships which in time became hereditary.

What was the nature of these despotisms, the end product of the evolution of cities? Their nature was such that it is immediately clear how the new attitude sprang up in their context. Despots possessed a very weak legal foundation, if they had any legal foundation at all. They were always fearful of treachery and insecure in their positions. They held power primarily because of force. And they seldom lasted very long. Those were their weaknesses. But they also possessed strengths as despots. They were not hampered by legal traditions nor bound by legal theories. They could experiment boldly. They took over established governments with taxing powers and functioning institutions. All they had to do was keep going concerns going. They succeeded by fostering business interests, by keeping order and maintaining stability.

It is easy to see why the government of Italian cities was more rational and viewed with a more coldly analytical eye than in countries where the feudal tradition persisted as government emerged from feudal relationships. Urban Italians had thrown over the feudal relationship with its core of personal loyalty among the ruling class. They had also discarded moral conceptions about the state and political theory. They were inclined to justify any means that would increase the power of the ruler. They tended to think of personal morality and public morality as separate and distinct spheres. Accordingly, keeping a political promise or perform