Matters of church and state.

The Early Reformation on the Continent, by Owen Chadwick, Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 2001. 446 pp.

MY CORRESPONDENCE WITH Professor Owen Chadwickled eventually to several enjoyable meetings at Cambridge University, where we discussed the discipline of history, his own career, and the figures and events that make up his life's work. On one occasion at Selwyn College, I asked the distinguished church historian if he planned to write a memoir of his long academic career and the many personalities he has had the fortune to know. The response was disappointing, for he had no desire to write a memoir. The reason for this became clear to me when I came across this passage in The Early Reformation on the Continent: "It is very difficult for history to analyse such experiences [of religious conversion] because they are of the essence of autobiography and no persons judge their past accurately." While Chadwick may believe himself ill-suited to record his own personal history, he is willing and able to illuminate for his readers the lives of men and women who lived in centuries past.

Chadwick's own pantheon of historical interests includes the leaders of the European Reformation. The Early Reformation on the Continent is Chadwick's third contribution to the Oxford History of the Church series that he edits with his brother Henry. There is some overlap with Chadwick's earlier history, The Reformation, published in 1964 as part of the Pelican History of the Church series of which the author is also the editor. As the title implies, however, his new study covers a narrower range of territory in greater detail. The result is a thoroughly researched, intelligently composed, and artfully written study that covers the most pertinent features of early Reformation history.

A notable characteristic of the Reformation is the transfer of religious authority to the State. Evidence of this abdication of responsibility is found throughout Chadwick's work, and this process cannot be ignored when determining the causes of declining Christian influence in modern times. Several centuries before 1500, European states began to wrestle power away from the Western Church. This process accelerated during the Reformation, often with the encouragement of Protestant reformers. City councils, as well as princes, were directed to appoint reforming pastors, to alter liturgies, and to confiscate church property, including the endowments of monasteries.

Where the Reformation took hold, government commissioners often took inventory of monastery property in preparation for its confiscation when the house dissolved. Many state libraries were built from volumes taken from monasteries. Cataloguing, says Chadwick, "was intensely unpopular." Unlike the draconian methods used in England and in Sweden, the dissolution of German monasteries was gradual, though no less effective. Techniques used by government officials included banning the purchase of Catholic books; appointing a Protestant chaplain; requiring members to attend the sermons of a reforming preacher; preventing the wearing of habits in the house; requiring monks to use German language prayers and hymns instead of Latin; offering pensions from confiscated endowments as incentives to abandon monastic life. Monasteries and convents were prevented from accepting novices as a way to hasten the institution's demise.

Before Luther came on the scene, the desire for reform was widespread--though the confiscation of property was not an item on any would-be reformer's agenda. Indeed several previous Church councils conceded the need for change. Erasmus made reform a preoccupation and his fellow humanists endorsed his personal crusade. But Luther did something unusual in his 1520 tract To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. Justified by his priesthood of the laity doctrine, he called upon the princes to reform the Church. It was increasingly common for a prince to meddle in the affairs of the Church in his territory, but it was not typical for a Catholic theologian to encourage such interference and to do so without the permission of proper authority. And while one might argue that some intervention was necessary to counter entrenched interests that benefited from the status quo, it becomes dangerous to put so much power in the hands of those who may not have the welfare of the Church uppermost in their mind or those who may be motivated by unorthodox ideas. Besides, many bishops were chosen by secular powers because of their deference to state interests, and the popes were too weak to refuse them. To give the state moral justification for its interventions could easily open a Pandora's box of unwelcome consequences.

Reformers defended state confiscation of church property. Monastic life was thought to be useless and the funds donated to sustain the livelihood of monks and nuns could be better spent by politicians. And the politicians were enthusiastic. Chadwick described this attitude most explicitly in The Reformation: "In all the Protestant countries the need of the State for Church money was a motive in the State's support of the Reformation. In a few countries it was almost the sole motive." (1) Oecolampadius in Basle argued that the use of funds alienated from the intentions of donors was not a breach of trust but a moral act because the money was now being used to help the poor. But not all the money went for this purpose. In Table Talk for the year 1544, we read about a guest who suggested to Luther that the princes became evangelical in order to steal Church land. "The opposite is true," he replied. The Catholic princes take Church property, and they have wealthier monasteries. In Germany, said Luther, there is less to take because the monasteries are poor. What he did not say was that a smaller endowment did not discourage the princes, and for that matter the towns, from taking what they could. At various times, reformers did complain about the misappropriation of funds, but it was they who encouraged the taking.

Luther, along with Zwingli and the Anglicans, sought to expand the jurisdiction of the State in what had been, up to that point, ecclesiastical territory. For instance, Luther argued that the State and not the bishop was responsible for church visitations. For centuries the local bishop was required to visit each parish church in his diocese on a periodic basis to make sure the needs of the faithful were met. When the visitations became too infrequent, Luther demanded State intervention rather than insist that bishops live up to their obligations. Who should possess the power to excommunicate, Church or State? Having been a canon penitentiary in a Catholic diocese, Oecolampadius believed moral discipline was a Church matter. But the city of Basle disagreed: each parish should instead form a committee of two council members and a member of the congregation, but not the pastor. Berne along with Zwingli at Zurich approved. Bullinger, who succeeded Zwingli, agreed that moral discipline is the duty of the State and should be the responsibility of community leaders. Calvin disagreed. He and his spiritual offspring resisted State interference. (2) According to Chadwick, it took fourteen years for Calvin to secure from Geneva the right of the Church to excommunicate, mainly be electing a majority of his men to the city council.

Another area where the Reformation ushered in a larger state role was in education. "To see that churches and schools are in a good way is the highest duty of rulers," wrote Melanchthon in 1543. This attitude was shared by all reformers, and particularly by professors like Melanchthon, who, in this case, was pleading for more state funding. The involvement touched on more than finance. States intruded in areas where professors might object, like the appointment of faculty members. As Chadwick points out, in the Middle Ages the Church had the primary responsibility for education, while the state provided supplemental help; but after the Reformation, the roles were reversed in Protestant lands. Because marriage was no longer a sacrament, it too came within the purview of the State since the institution was now seen solely as a social bond between persons. Lawyers had to develop a new system to deal with marital disputes. Still, pastors could not resist giving moral advice. "In theory the old mess of jurisdictions between bishop and feudal lord and monastery gave way to a system where the government of the State said what ought to be done," writes Chadwick.

Contrary to the Whig historians, Protestants used the same tactics to secure their religious gains as Catholics did to preserve theirs. In The Early Reformation, we learn of Robert Estienne, a distinguished French printer who fled to Geneva in 1550 because, he said, he "cannot be free enough in Paris" since "Catholicism carries with it an excess of censorship for true scholarship." Estienne even wrote a tract against the Paris censors in 1552, Chadwick notes, but conveniently "did not mention that there was a censorship of books in Geneva." Indeed, the "possession of Catholic books" was prohibited. It might not surprise anyone that Calvin's Geneva would censor books. One must consult Chadwick's earlier history to understand the scope of the practice: "[S]cholarship everywhere was much hampered by censorship. The pile of books condemned by Protestant censors reached as high towards heaven as those condemned by Catholic censors." (3)

State efforts to neutralize the Catholic Church's institutional power was well under way by the time Luther nailed his theses to the castle church door at Wittenberg. But Protestant agitation greatly accelerated the decline of ecclesiastical power. In The Early Reformation, Chadwick downplays national feeling as a significant cause of resistance to Roman authority. In The Reformation, however, he sees a relationship between the Reformation and the development of a national consciousness characterized by the growth of efficient state government that required "restraint upon papal intervention, upon ecclesiastical privilege and exemptions, upon the legal right of an authority outside the country to levy taxes." (4) As a result, the states were getting stronger and the papacy was getting weaker, thus slowing the pace of official reform and sowing the seeds of division. The splintering of Western Christianity was therefore caused by "the decline in the idea of Christendom, through the rise of national sovereignties, which was not a result, but a cause of Protestant success." (5)

Chadwick argues that Luther, and Protestantism by extension, ultimately made toleration possible. Whether this outcome was intended is debatable, he asserts. Yet, according to him, this much is certain: "the Protest divided Europe in religion and a divided Europe was forced to tolerate or destroy itself." A few pages later, however, he hails the advent of toleration: "One of the Reformation's best gifts to posterity was preparation for a public opinion which accepted toleration, not by intention but by smashing the religious unity of central and western Europe." If the advent of toleration--a gift of posterity--required the "smashing of religious unity," one must then conclude that religious unity is undesirable. It was the religious conflict that elicited the demand for toleration. Would there have been a need for "toleration" if religious unity had been preserved in central and Western Europe?

Calls for reform were widespread well before the Reformation began. Indeed, there were fierce debates among the educated classes over what reform would look like. Efforts by religious and secular leaders to establish intellectual uniformity were sporadic and largely ineffectual because power in Europe was decentralized. As a result, more intellectual diversity existed before the Reformation than in the century that followed it. Furthermore, the pre-Reformation Church, unthreatened by internal strife, did tolerate differences of opinion in most places as long as those ideas conformed to a minimum standard of orthodoxy. (6) Luther's early calls for reform, which he intended as academic disputations and not calls for revolution, echoed the demands of many who came before him.

Calls for reform were so widespread that, as late as 1519, "Luther would not have been thought heretical by some medieval theologians." (7) The more Luther was challenged, the more extreme his ideas became. By inspiring divisiveness in others, Luther made a peaceful accommodation less likely. Sir Thomas More prophesied moral confusion and civil strife. Erasmus counseled moderation to no avail. If Luther is to be credited as the father of toleration, he is also to be blamed for the bloodshed that preceded it, and for the religious indifference of a "tolerant" modernity resulting from the diminished public authority of the Christian church.

The Christian political achievement was to free religion from secular control while preserving the Church's official status. An independent religious authority could then check the abusive exercise of secular power. The Western Church preserved its independence despite periodical concessions to Christian princes out of practical necessity. In effect, the Church sought to preserve the faith from hostile regimes or fanatical movements spreading dangerous heresies. The "protest" began as a sincere effort to reform the Western Church; it ended by establishing rival institutions that functioned largely as departments of national governments. Thus, the Reformation permanently divided Latin Christendom, and delivered the northern Church into the arms of secular magistrates, thereby weakening its moral voice. The dominant role the State played in religious life in most Protestant lands was a welcome innovation there and in time opened the door to political mischief and a weakened spiritual authority.

As the State became more efficient and trustworthy in areas where the Church long had jurisdiction--the administration of justice, for example--a transfer of responsibility and financial authority was a development appropriate for the time. However, it is unclear whether state control over education, church discipline, pastoral care, and social welfare was a necessary requirement of religious reform. The consequences of the Reformation on the status of religious belief should be open to a more thorough examination. In his 1964 history, Chadwick made this striking observation: "The Reformation was a revolution, and revolutions are always destructive." If one were to point out a weakness in this otherwise very fine study, it would be his reluctance to examine the fruits of the Reformation with the same critical eye as he did four decades before in The Reformation.

Sheridan Gilley has observed in Chadwick's writings "a notable reluctance to take sides." (8) One can understand a historian's discomfort with passing moral judgment, but that is quite different from observing the consequences of particular choices made by historical figures. Historians are more than mere recorders of events. They help us understand why events unfold as they do and whether the results are for good or ill. Chadwick has not entirely abandoned this responsibility. Yet, given the profound impact of the Protestant revolt on matters of Church and State, it is unfortunate that such a gifted historian chose not to offer in his latest study a more critical analysis of the long-term consequences of the early Reformation on the continent.

1. The Reformation (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1964), 384. 2. Calvin adopted the Catholic tradition of church independence, yet his puritan extremism served only to discredit his program in the eyes of more moderate souls. Geneva became a virtual totalitarian state under his tutelage. The abolisher of Christmas also banned dancing; established in 1550 annual home inspections of parishioners to make sure the household followed church regulations; and, after much effort, convinced the city council to make adultery punishable by death. The limits of Calvin's influence became apparent when his effort in 1546 to replace taverns with cafes failed to win over the people. Cf. The Reformation, 85-87. 3. Reformation, 299-300. 4. Ibid., 25. 5. Ibid., 365. 6. "It has been observed that the Protestant Reformation gave the Spanish Inquisition a new lease on life in the 1540s, just when it was running out of suspects," notes R. Po-chia Hsia in The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770 (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 49. 7. Reformation, 49. Euan Cameron showed how difficult it is to determine the exact point at which Luther became a heretic since many of the positions he adopted had not been formally condemned by Church authority, allowing for a wide diversity of theological opinion: "As late as the mid-sixteenth century there were those, even within the papal curia, who believed that a core of catholic truth could be extracted from Luther's message." See The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), 172. 8. See "The Historian and the Church," in The International History Review, VIII, 4 (November 1986), 614.

JOHN M. VELLA is Managing Editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review.