Religious toleration? No way!
A century and a half of religious polarisation, segregation and war after the Reformation. Why it was impossible to reach an agreement: about tolerance as a crime and the role of the devil.
The Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross became famous in 1969 with her five stages of grief and loss: successively denial, anger, negotiating/fighting, depression, and finally acceptance. Empirical research later nuanced this well-known theory, but it is still pretty much established that emotional reactions often play a role in grief and loss. (But they do not always appear in the order mentioned, and personality and culture also have an influence.)
One might perhaps also see the Reformation as a historical trauma, with different emotional reactions.
Choosing an identity felt awkward
In the coming episodes we will reflect on the various reactions that followed the trauma. Do not underestimate the impact. Until the Reformation, one was born as a Christian and automatically belonged to the Christian church. But now believers could (or had to) choose which religious movement they belonged to, a choice with far-reaching social consequences. For many, it was the first time that they could make a reasoned choice for a personal identity. Until then, one’s identity consisted mainly of innate characteristics: the region one came from, one’s social class, and physical characteristics. Not everyone felt the need for a religious identity; that was one of the reasons why many people opposed the Reformation, did not want to join a Protestant community, or advocated religious neutrality. In the first decades after the Reformation, almost half of Dutch people refused to go to church. It was no longer necessary, or perhaps there was no desire to make a choice, to adopt a religious identity.
The Christian polarisation also offended many. The average Christian had little idea what their faith was about. The mass was in Latin; the Bible was hardly read. Everyone was Christian out of tradition; Most people knew the rituals, but theological insights were foreign to most. When the Reformation broke out, it suddenly became about theological issues that were simply over the heads of most believers. Heated debates about the Trinity, predestination and redemption? Whatever, they'll just figure it out.
Toleration was far from a mainstream ideal
The Reformation would very gradually arrive at religious toleration, that is the reasoning according to traditional historians. At a certain point, people got tired of fighting, the reasoning goes, and the camps resigned themselves to the fact that reconciliation was no longer possible and that Catholic and Protestant camps could not defeat each other. This was followed by the Enlightenment, with a greater emphasis on down-to-earth knowledge. The existence of a god who cares about people was difficult to reconcile with this.
Tolerance was far from a virtue. On the contrary!
But that theory is flawed in a number of respects. In this and future episodes I'll try to figure out what mechanisms were in fact at work. Because it is undeniable that religious toleration became the mainstream view among the right-minded bourgeoisie at the end of the 18th century. Tolerance became a virtue; it certainly wasn't one in the 16th and 17th centuries. For most it was at most a reality that was accepted with bad grace for lack of anything better. What happened in the meantime, and whether one led to the other, has still not been fully explored. Do not expect the final word from me, but perhaps we can at least try to unravel what happened.
In the coming episodes I will successively consider the following dimensions:
Polarisation and segregation
Pragmatism
The voice of reason
So polarisation and segregation first, in this episode, in response to the anger and sadness of the division. The voice of reason and toleration in theological matters has always sounded, with Erasmus and Castellio leading the way in the 16th century. That voice has never been silenced and has been highlighted over the centuries. The arguments of proponents of religious toleration such as Jean Bodin, Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle will be discussed in detail later. But to understand them properly, we will also have to delve into the arguments of their opponents. Why did the authorities not accept freedom of choice in religious matters? Why weren't Calvinists, Lutherans, and Mennonites simply tolerated? This episode is about those questions.
Monarchs become more powerful
In an earlier newsletter, I described the pathetic position of the pre-modern monarch. Formally he pulled the strings, but in reality he had very little influence on society. Communication was slow, he couldn't trust anyone, the treasury was usually empty, and the people just went about their business. This started to change in the 16th and 17th centuries. Communication and taxation became more effective, legislation was enforced, and monarchs gained more control over the armed forces.
And religion became an object of politics. Religious division sowed discord. Religious affiliations created political alliances. In France, conflicts between Calvinists and Catholics flared up continuously from 1560 to 1598; a civil war was never far away. The same had happened before in Germany. Monarchs were concerned about the religious divisions in their empire.
Religious concord in their kingdom was in the interests of the monarchs; they would even derive extra legitimacy from that. If a monarch had the choice between toleration in a religiously divided country and religious unity under his leadership, he would certainly choose the latter, even if it had to be achieved by brute force.
Religious uniformity is in the national interest
Earlier, I described how ethnicity and religion have traditionally been intertwined, all over the world. The monarch may not always have been the spiritual leader of the people, but it is unthinkable that parts of the people would worship other gods than their king did. Only when peoples of a different religion were conquered and dominated did kings sometimes leave the religion of the conquered people undisturbed. Forced conversion of conquered peoples is asking for trouble, but so is a conquered people that keeps its own religion. A wise ruler patiently and subtly strives for religious unity in his realm. Attach the outsiders to a rubber band, as it were, and secretly pull that band tighter, step by step.
But with the Reformation a new phenomenon occurred: religious discord arose among people that had everything else in common: the same ethnicity, the same monarch.
The instinctive reaction was repression. It was unthinkable that a country with different faiths could be governed. In 1560, the French statesman Michel de l'Hospital explained in his speech to the states general how a prudent monarch should deal with religious divisions. The principle was: une foi, une loi, un roi: one faith, one law, one king. At the same time he recognised that forced conversion would be unchristian: faith remains voluntary. And violent repression would only lead to rebellion. Gentle urges to return to the mother of all christians were the only prudent course.
But not everyone thought this way. On the one hand, discussions began to arise in France, whether multiple faiths under one king would really be such a disaster. On the other hand, there were staunch monarchs who would not tolerate any religious division at all. The Habsburg Charles V and his son Philippe II in particular were on that track, with the blessing of the Vatican. This challenging attitude would remain dominant in Europe for a long time, partly because of Protestant violence. It was not about enforcement of religious unity per se, but about restoring order. At least, that’s what they said.
Toleration is blasphemy
The monarchs were supported in this belief by the zeitgeist. Religious toleration was seen as a sign of weakness. The Calvinists were the most adamant about this. Anyone who advocates toleration for heretics is a blasphemer, because he goes against God's word, Calvin wrote. His wing man Theodore de Bèze went one step further: heretics and blasphemers deserve the death penalty. This also applied to those who advocated religious toleration, for they contaminated the church from within with their blasphemy.
Catholics thought the same way. In July 1560, a Calvinist printer was hanged in Paris. A man in the crowd, one Robert Delors, protested. Not against the death penalty itself, or against the reason for his conviction, but against the cruel treatment on the scaffold. He was arrested and charged with sedition and blasphemy against God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Four days later he found himself on that very same scaffold.
Advocating religious toleration was a dangerous activity at that time. And monarchs only resigned themselves to religious toleration when all other options had been exhausted.
Toleration is dangerous
In 1606 the Black Death struck again, this time in Bohemia (part of today's Czech Republic, then part of the Holy Roman Empire). Emperor Rudolf II took it personally: he had been too lax towards the Protestants. God had punished the country for its toleration.
But danger was not only to be feared from the supreme being: religious minorities were generally viewed with suspicion. Catholics in particular were notorious: they had remained loyal to a foreign monarch, the Pope, who would not hesitate to interfere in domestic affairs if he had the chance. Catholics formed a fifth column, it was thought. This suspicion was especially common in Protestant England. Even John Locke, in his plea for religious toleration, made an exception for the papists. That danger was not entirely out of the blue. A hundred years earlier, in 1569, a group of English nobles attempted a coup against the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. The Pope stood on the sidelines cheering, and issued a bull relieving the queen of her duties (which, of course, she ignored).
In 1580, King Philippe II of Spain issued a fatwa against the Prince of Orange, “whereby everybody is authorised to harm him, to attack him and to eliminate him, with wages and prizes for those who do or will assist in doing so.” The French lawyer Balthasar Gérard carried out that mission four years later, in consultation with (Catholic) Southern Dutch nobility and clergy. The Archbishop of Utrecht, Sasbout Vosmeer (1548-1614), not only received his assignments from Rome but was also connected to the Spanish regime. In the Vatican he argued (in vain) to canonise Orange's murderer as a martyr. For a long time, the Vatican's influence was seen as hostile to the state. Even in 1814, the bishops still advocated declaring Catholicism the state religion in the Netherlands.
There were nice and devout Catholics everywhere. Law-abiding people who meant no harm. But they did maintain a system, an organisation with bishops and the Pope at the head, which would use every means to undermine Protestant states. To be sure, members of religious minorities were therefore usually not eligible for official positions, even in areas where there was a certain religious toleration, such as in the northern Netherlands.
No toleration for the antichrist
I honestly think that most believers felt that the adversaries were possessed by absolute evil. In any case, that belief came from their spiritual leaders. Even in the early Catholic Church, heretics were depicted as tools of Satan. That mentality was far from gone in the 16th century. Luther was in contact with the devil. Luther in turn dismissed the Pope as literally the Antichrist himself. Calvinists called the church of Rome the synagogue of Satan. Suppose you thought it was true, then you wouldn't give the devil and his minions an inch, would you?
It was only temporary
Division of the church was no one's ideal. Every Christian believed in one Christian church, but of course organised along to their own insights. Catholics saw the Reformation as an eruption. Eventually the believers would realise that returning to the one and only church of Christ was the only option. That required coercion; the devilish influence on the reformers had to be combated with a heavy hand. And, many Catholics admitted, the church of Rome also needed to be purified, and the Reformation provided an excellent occasion for this. “As soon as our Church is regulated and reformed, it will appear completely new and will provide the Protestants with a perfect opportunity for return without scruples,” wrote the French (Catholic) lawyer Étienne de la Boétie in the mid-16th century.
The reformers also had one church in mind, naturally under their inspiring leadership. Back to a church according to evangelical instructions was the only way. It would be a long road, but in the end it was the only acceptable one. If the Church of Rome were disintegrated, the faithful would be united under the one source that binds them: the holy scripture.
For both Catholics and Protestants, this perspective justified a heavy hand. If persuasion did not succeed, then all other means were justified to enforce unity of the church, if necessary with the sword in hand.
Don't give space to dogmatists
An interesting perspective came from the humanist Justus Lipsius. Lipsius was an intellectual, inspired by Stoic ideas. One would expect him to make a plea for religious toleration. But the opposite seemed to be the case. In his book Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589) he wrote: “Here there is no room for clemency; to be burned, to be cut in pieces, for it is better that one member should be thrown away than that the whole body should perish.” This plea is strongly reminiscent of that of Tomasso d'Aquino from 1265, namely that sinners should be killed if they threaten to contaminate the community with their sinfulness. Tomasso's position was also cited by the Calvinists to justify their heretic burning of Serveto. How could an Erasmian intellectual like Lipsius take such a harsh position?
The southern Netherlander Lipsius was not only a stoic, but also a sceptic. In this he felt a kinship with Michel de Montaigne, with whom he shared his attitude to ataraxia: we don't know anything for sure, we just do what we do. If you fight passionately for your beliefs, you will face a life of pain and frustration. He regarded Reformers as fanatics, who drew not only themselves but also their followers into a spiral of violence, based on beliefs that no right-thinking person could have a sensible opinion about.
Lipsius had a point there. Before the Reformation, the Church of Rome was more tolerant than we now think. As long as you kept your beliefs to yourself and did not want to start a dissident movement, the church generally did not bother you. And even within the church, differing theological views were no objection, as long as you did not get riotous and did not undermine the authority of the Vatican. Lipsius was therefore on the side of Erasmus, who shared many of Luther's objections in substance, but was very concerned about the wave of violence that his challenging attitude would lead to. The difference is that Lipsius also drew the ultimate conclusion: that inveterate religious firebrands should, if necessary, be crushed. A single, broad religion in a state context ultimately provides more individual freedom of conscience than polarising conflict between fanatics, he thought.
But Lipsius not only hated the provocative attitude of the reformers, he also criticised the reaction of the church, which only facilitated escalation with its harsh attitude. Lipsius thus continually wavered between Catholicism and Protestantism, and between the Spanish side and that of the Dutch rebels. He invariably chose the side that at that moment offered the best prospects for a peaceful solution to the conflict. It will not be surprising that, ultimately, Lipsius had few friends left.
Wars of Religion in Europe
Until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, almost all of Europe was suffering from religious wars, civil wars or wars between Protestant and Catholic nations.
Germany
The most large-scale was the Thirty Years' War which had begun in 1618. In essence, this was the struggle of a monster alliance against the power of the Catholic Habsburgs. Not only Protestant states such as Sweden, Denmark, Saxony, Brandenburg and England were involved, but also Catholic France, and even the Ottomans, for geostrategic considerations.
Before that, there had been several wars and skirmishes with a religious dimension in Germany, starting with an uprising of peasants and lower nobility in 1524-1525, known as the German Peasants' War. When the Protestant princes and cities united in the Schmalkaldic League in 1531, it was a matter of time before an armed conflict would erupt against the emperor’s catholic troops. That finally happened in 1546. That war ended in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) between the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and the alliance of Lutheran princes. More about that later.
France
France was a centrally governed country: the king was in charge. Initially, there was little in the way of Calvinism; King François I sympathised with it, and found it especially useful that the Protestants were making things so difficult for his rival, the German emperor. Support grew, especially among the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. François' successor Henri II began to actively combat the growth of Protestantism from 1557 onwards, but there was no large-scale violence yet. That would change after his death in 1559. A number of weak kings followed, and the fight against Calvinism resulted in a series of civil wars between Protestant nobility and troops of the king and Catholic nobility, welcomed by the Vatican, the Huguenot wars of the 1560s. In 1572, the infamous Bartholomew's Night took place in Paris, a massacre in which the Protestant nobility lost their leaders.
But still about ten percent of the population was Protestant. King Henri IV, who had once been a Huguenot himself, wanted a lasting peace, which took shape in the Edict of Nantes of 1598. Protestants were given the right to practise their own religion in certain areas under the Catholic French king. There was some autonomy for protestant regions, but the Catholic Church remained dominant. Protestants had to pay church taxes to Catholics. The Edict was not a principled choice, but rather a pragmatic one, to prevent the country from being torn apart by civil war. The Edict remained controversial. It did not turn into a civil war, but tempers had certainly not calmed down yet. Protestant uprisings took place here and there, which were violently suppressed. Under Cardinal Richelieu, the autonomy of the Protestants was reversed in the 1620s. In 1685, the Edict of Nantes was revoked with the Edict of Fontainebleau: Protestantism was declared illegal again. The suppression of Protestantism was successful: it gradually became a marginal phenomenon in France. It would take until 1789 before religious freedom became a reality in France, but by then Protestantism in France had already been decimated.
The Netherlands
After the death of his father Charles V in 1558, Philippe II did not inherit the German Empire, but he did inherit the kingship of Spain and the rule over the Netherlands. Philippe was a devout Catholic and pragmatism was foreign to him. Rebellious Protestant nobles and cities in the Netherlands could count on a harsh settlement. It would culminate in a revolt that would last no less than eighty years, ending in 1648 with the secession of the northern Netherlands. The provinces united as a republic and officially became Calvinist.
Although numerically a minority, the Calvinists managed to manoeuvre themselves into the dominant religion in the Netherlands, but at a price. The Reformed Church, in which the Calvinists dominated, never became a state religion. And provided they behaved modestly, there was little in the way of the worship of Mennonites, Lutherans, and even Catholics and Jews. This religious toleration and the limited role of the Calvinists was encouraged by a patriciate who often did not care much for religious fanaticism and sometimes almost openly admitted that they only went to church for outward reasons.
Great Britain
Fairly soon after the Reformation, King Henry VIII of England decided in 1534 to get rid of papal interference. England could do well with its own church, he thought, officially Protestant but with many Catholic influences, led by the king himself.
Not all Britons followed the king in his split. Nobles in the north of England, and large parts of Ireland remained loyal to Rome. Catholic property was expropriated, but Catholic worship was not banned until 1550 by Henry's son Edward VI. Still, the English kings attempted to maintain a degree of religious toleration until a daughter of Henry, Mary I, came to the throne in 1553. Mary was Catholic and she started clearing out. Hundreds of Protestants were executed, including the archbishop. Mary was succeeded five years later by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I, who returned to the moderate Protestant line before Mary. Catholics were largely left alone, and Elizabeth flirted with Catholic symbols. But Catholics still had no worship of their own, were ineligible for government positions, and in some respects were considered second-class citizens. Meanwhile, a Calvinist movement had also emerged in England, the Puritans. Those Protestant radicals could not count on Elizabeth's toleration. Elizabeth ruled for almost fifty years.
Elizabeth's cousin James I continued her policy, but was surprised in 1605 by a foiled assassination attempt, the so-called gunpowder plot. Disgruntled Catholics found themselves marginalised and attempted a coup by blowing up the House of Lords. That attempt was thwarted. Afterwards, Catholics were even more frowned upon. His son Charles I succeeded him in 1625. Even more than his predecessors, he had to contend with the rise of Calvinism, especially in Scotland. It was at this time that large numbers of British Calvinists sought refuge in the new colonies in North America. Charles must have done something wrong, because a civil war broke out under his rule. Calvinists, separatists and campaigners for more rights for parliament found each other in their aversion to the king. Ultimately they won the battle, and in 1649 Charles ended up on the scaffold. A chaotic interregnum of eleven years followed, led by Oliver Cromwell. Although he was a Puritan, Cromwell lacked the will and power to radically change religious policy. After Cromwell's death, the interregnum collapsed and Charles I's son returned from exile. Charles II was able to regain the throne in 1660 if he promised to listen obediently to parliament and to be religiously conciliatory. Twenty-five years later, Charles was succeeded by his Catholic son James II. His Catholicism was not accepted, and three years later he got the sack. He was succeeded in 1689 by his Protestant daughter Mary II and her husband Willem van Oranje. The religious status quo would not change since then: primacy for the Anglican Church and moderate toleration for Catholics and Calvinists.
Whose realm, their religion
I already mentioned the Peace of Augsburg of 1555. It laid down the principle that would determine European religious policy in the turbulent century that followed: cuius regio, eius religio (whose country it is, also determines the religion). The monarch therefore determines what is believed in his kingdom. Those who did not want to accept this could pack their bags. In fact, this had already become the practice, with Luther's approval. He couldn't afford to have too many enemies. He had discovered that along the way. The Catholic Church made things difficult enough for him. In areas where the Lutheran church became dominant, the local monarch also wanted to have something to say. He also had that power among Catholics, so why not among Protestants? Luther then gradually developed a theory in which the monarch rules 'by the grace of God'. As long as the monarch promoted and protected the true Protestant faith, he had legitimacy in Luther's view. This is how the Lutheran state churches came into being.
Many German princes began to scratch their heads, especially in areas where the population had already converted to Luther's rebellious movement. Luther promised the monarch legitimacy, but another consideration was simply pragmatic: the Roman Church had great interests in all principalities. The Roman Church was a major landowner and in fact no monarch had freedom of action without the consent of the local archbishop. The ability to get rid of it, and to expropriate church property was worth the risk of a conflict with the emperor, armed if necessary.
In the German Empire, cuius regio, eius religio was doable. The Empire consisted of a patchwork of principalities. Those who wanted to stick to their own religion but met the 'wrong' prince, could quite easily pack up and settle in a principality a little further away. The situation was more complicated for France, England and the Netherlands.
France, where large parts of the population had also become Protestant, was not part of the Habsburg Empire. The Peace of Augsburg did not apply there. The country was too big for Protestants to pack their bags. This also applied to England, where the Catholics were left behind. In the Netherlands the situation was complex for other reasons. The Peace of Augsburg did not apply there either, but the king of Spain was the legitimate monarch of the Netherlands. According to the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, the Netherlands would have remained Catholic. But partly due to the inflexible actions of Philippe II, that was a thing of the past.
It is therefore not surprising that frantic debates were held, especially in France, the Netherlands and England, about the possibility of multiple religions under one monarch. We will discuss those debates in the next two episodes. The first will be about the origins of religious pragmatism. The next episode will deal with more principled arguments for religious toleration.
For further reading
Richard Tuck, Scepticism and toleration in the seventeenth century, in: Susan Mendus (ed.), Justifying toleration. Conceptual and historical perspectives (1988)
Martin van Gelderen, The political thought of the Dutch revolt 1555-1590 (1992)
Jonathan Israel, The Dutch republic: Its rise, greatness, and fall 1477-1806 (1995)
István Bejczy, Tolerantia: a medieval concept, Journal of the History of Ideas (1997)
Rainer Forst, Toleranz im Konflikt. Geschichte, Gehalt und Gegenwart eines umstrittenen Begriffs (2003)
Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by faith. Religious conflict and the practice of toleration in early modern Europe (2007)
Jeffrey Collins, Redeeming the Enlightenment: new histories of religious toleration, The Journal of Modern History (2009)
This was the twelfth newsletter in a long series: Toleration and Christianity. An overview of all articles in this series can be found in the overview article Toleration in the history of Christianity.
The next episode in this series will be about pragmatic religious toleration. To maintain the tension, the series on Morality and Toleration will have to wait a little longer.