A History of Political Thought in the 16th Century (Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 16)

J. W. Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135026936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

This presentation of the main phases and features of political thought in the sixteenth century is based on an exhaustive study of contemporary writings in Latin, English, French, German and Italian. The book is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the new thought of Protestantism. The rest describes special ideas that emerged in England, France and Italy.

PART I

LUTHERANISM AND CALVINISM

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

AMBIGUOUS as are the words standing at the head of this section, they are far less ambiguous than the word Protestantism. Loose talk about something called ‘Protestantism’ is one of the more serious difficulties that students of the sixteenth century must contend with. It is a word used in many different senses and sometimes, it seems, with no precise sense at all. It is even possible to use it in two senses within the same paragraph, and that once done no sense remains. The word is often used to signify rejection by Christians of the claims of the Papacy. That is a use alluring in its apparent simplicity. But, in that sense, Anglo-Catholics, old and new, are Protestants for all their protests and the Eastern churches are equally Protestant. Also the question might well be asked: ‘What claims of what Papacy ?’ Rejection may be partial; and the line between complete and incomplete rejection may be very fine. Cardinal Bellarmine certainly rejected the extreme claims put forth on behalf of Pope Sixtus V and he was rewarded with a place on the Index. The French Gallicans of the later years of the century went much further still in rejection; and it is not so easy to distinguish between the official view of King Henry VIII of Engand and the views of Louis Servin, ‘Catholic’ minister of Henry IV.¹ Even for the sixteenth century alone, and putting aside the ambiguity already attached to the word ‘Christian’, this use of the term ‘Protestant’ leads into difficulties.

Less superficially the word ‘Protestantism’ has been used to signify a rejection not merely of Papal claims but of the conception of the Church as an institution of divine ordainment, organization and inspiration, furnished with an apostolic succession of priests and bishops endowed by ordination with mysterious, sacramental powers. This use of the term attempts, at least, to go deeper than the other; but anyone who tries to make consistent use of it in this sense in reference to the sixteenth century, will find himself involved in hopeless difficulties. Was Luther himself in this sense a Protestant ?

It has been suggested that the essential feature of Protestantism was its denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation. But, apart from the evident inconvenience of a definition of Protestantism by reference to a mere negative, the line between transubstantiation and consubstantiation is surely a fine one. If we say that what Protestantism as such denied was that any substantial or objective change took place in the sacramental elements after consecration, we are in little better case. We shall then be compelled to say that Luther, for instance, was not a Protestant. It will follow also that it was possible utterly to deny the validity of Papal claims and yet be a Catholic. It is surely evident that no dividing line can accurately or reasonably be drawn here.

Intellectually, perhaps, the deepest difference between Lutherans or Calvinists on one side and Romanists on the other was on the question of free will. It was Luther's De Servo Arbitrio that made it for ever impossible for Erasmus to enter the Lutheran camp, whether or not other considerations would have restrained him. But to define Protestantism by reference to a particular doctrine of predestination would be to say that Hans Denck and Castellion and Coornhert were not Protestants. Also, and of course, very few people concerned themselves with this fundamental question or even understood what the question was.

What may be called the Protestant tradition, in this and in other countries, has been and is a serious stumbling-block in the way of understanding. There has even existed a tendency to use the word Protestantism as though, in the sixteenth century, all, or almost all, profound religiousness was Protestant. This illusion, just comprehensible in Calvin and Beza, has long been bereft of excuse. Protestantism has been represented as an effort to establish some kind of direct and personal relation between the individual soul and God. But within the Roman Church that effort was continuously being made; and of intense consciousness of God I do not think there was more to be found among Lutherans or Calvinists than among Romanists. The religion of St. Teresa was far nearer to Hans Denck's than his was to Calvin's. That Luther, as he professed, learned much from Tauler, merely illustrates the fact that one of the roots of early Protestantism was Catholic mysticism. It seems that in the deeps of religious consciousness there is little room for distinction and for disputation none.

That denunciation of abuses more or less notorious, or revolt against the actual condition of the Church in one respect or another, did not, in the early sixteenth century, make a ‘Protestant’, should hardly be worth saying. Indeed it seems a pity that the word Reformers, with a capital R, should habitually be used exclusively of Protestants. If all who denounced abuses and strove for reform in any sense were Protestants, then must we reckon as Protestants Erasmus and Contarini, Ignatius Loyola and Pope Paul IV.

It has been said that the essence of Protestantism consisted in an assertion of the right of the individual as such to think things out for himself and to reach conclusions without deference to any sort of authority. This notion appears in various and in different forms. A Protestant, it is said, is a person who abides faithfully by the reason or unreason that is in him, in defiance of thrones, principalities and powers that be. A Protestant is a person who claims a right to speak of things as he sees them, and in particular to work out his religion for himself and worship in his own way. Consequently, it is asserted, Protestantism was essentially a claim to freedom for the individual, a claim that no man should be coerced into saying he believes what he does not believe or into refraining from expression of his beliefs.

But little comment, I think, is needed. Who was it, in the sixteenth century, who made these claims or these assertions ? There would seem to be confusion. To claim that I am right in my conclusions is not to claim a right for other people to differ from me. To assert that someone or something claiming authority is entirely and wickedly mistaken is not a claim on behalf of the individual as such. A claim to worship in your own way is not a claim that every one has a right to do so. As to thinking for yourself, every one must do that who thinks at all. It is impossible to accept the authority of the Roman Church without first coming to the conclusion that it ought to be accepted. That conclusion may, of course, be reached without any systematic reasoning: but so equally may a conclusion to the contrary effect.

We are faced with awkward consequences. If the essence of Protestantism is a claim to liberty for the individual to reach his own conclusions about religion in his own way and express them freely without interference, who, in the sixteenth century, was a Protestant ? I am not denying that there were a few: there were more than seems to be generally supposed. But certainly Calvin was not a Protestant, nor Beza nor Knox nor Whitgift. Luther had leanings to Protestantism, but finally went over to the other side. Even Hooker stopped just short of Protestantism. To say that the development of Protestant Churches and systems of belief actually led to the establishment of religious toleration is, even so far as it is true, not in the least relevant. If the early Reformers had had their way, it would have led to no such thing. All things, in fact, worked together for that result; and that consummation was a complete defeat of Protestantism as Calvin understood it.

The absurdity of all this unhistorical generalization seems to me to be glaring. It appears that it was not Protestants who stood for liberty: it was the spirit of Protestantism. The implied divorce of spirit from body is not easily comprehended. Where is this spirit to be found ? If we look at the mere facts we shall find many spirits at work. Or will it be said that the inmost essence of Protestantism was scepticism or denial of the validity of Christian beliefs ? That Protestantism did, to a great extent, issue in such scepticism is certainly true; but that, for it, was defeat, not victory. Nothing in the sixteenth century was so profoundly antagonistic to official Protestantism or to Protestant religious systems, as the scepticism and the pseudo-paganism that developed with the Renaissance.

It is of the first importance to a student that he should realize to the full the ambiguities involved in the term ‘Protestantism’.¹ So he may hope to escape the bewildering effects of loose talk and audacious, and empty, generalization and himself be freed from these besetting sins. But the ambiguity remains and is radically inescapable. Certainly no attempt will be made here to define the term, for in dealing with actualities no definition defines. And the thing to be defined is, in this case, so complex and multiform, so compounded of incongruities, so much a matter of thoughts, sentiments and desires completely distinct even though to some extent converging, that any definition must needs be even unusually inadequate.

It is with the actualities of the sixteenth century that we have here to deal; and these, if they escape definition, can at least be examined and described to a point. We know who those were who in that century were called Protestant; we can see the formation of Protestant churches and of Protestant creeds; we know who were in communion with Rome and who were not. There may be little in common between these things and people; but that fact need not disturb us. We can use the term Protestantism of what we know, in a strictly historical sense. People, it is true, became Protestant for every conceivable reason. The desire to annex Church property and jurisdiction made very stout Protestants. A man bent on realizing some conception of national sovereignty might well become a Protestant, even though he had no religious convictions whatever. We must accept the consequences: the absurdity, if any, is in the facts themselves. We can always, when necessary, distinguish between the Protestantism that was definitely religious and that which was not.

What I propose to examine in this section is the political thought that was intimately, and indeed necessarily associated with Protestant systems of religious belief and the organization of Protestant Churches. If we are to understand that thought and see it in its actual relations, we must begin, I fear, by ridding our minds of all unifying concepts concerning Protestantism and certainly of all that can only be expressed by reference to its spirit. Such concepts are completely unhistorical and breed nothing but confusion. As I have said already, there are very many spirits concerned. The first questions that we must ask seem to be these following: How far was any kind of political thought or any political ideal absolutely involved in any of the forms taken by early Protestantism ? What questions were directly and necessarily raised by the assertions made by the early Reformers ? What answers were given to these questions from points of view at once religious and Protestant ?

Certain partial answers to these questions may here at once be given in general terms. As early as 1520, in his three great treatises of that year, Luther utterly rejected all the claims of the Papacy. He asserted broadly that no coercive power whatever belonged properly to clergy, bishops or Pope, that clergy were subjects of the secular magistrate like other people and that the whole body of canon law was without validity. From these negative declarations positive consequences followed. Of the two sets of magistrates, civil and ecclesiastical, theoretically governing a united Christendom, the latter was, in the view of the early Reformers, simply abolished: the former survived as the sole recognized authority. At a blow Christendom was resolved, or dissolved, into a group, if not of ‘states’, at least of independent, secular, territorial magistracies, governing persons and governing bodies. The sacerdotium was abolished and the regnum stood alone. Henceforth the civil magistrate was to be the only guardian of law and order and the only authority that could undertake a legal reform of the Church.

Before any conception of the State as a body independent of any external authority could be logically developed, the validity of the claims of the Roman Church had, of course, to be denied. But no kind of religious Protestantism was needed for that denial: the denial indeed could be made more simply from a completely unreligious point of view. That no coercive power belongs rightly to the Church had been asserted in the Defensor Pacis nearly two hundred years earlier.¹ The work of John of Jandun and Marsilio of Padua was more or less known to the early Reformers, and Luther himself appears to have read it. He may even have borrowed some weapons from the scriptural armoury of the second Part of the book; but whether or no he had read the first Part, he never showed a sign of having understood it. Its thought was beyond him, and had he understood, he would assuredly have been profoundly shocked. For all that, the assertion that no civil magistrate was, in any sense or degree, bound to obey the Pope or recognize canon law as valid, was, for the early sixteenth century, both revolutionary and highly suggestive.

This assertion was made by all the early Reformers, and it was one they could hardly have avoided making. It was not for them to appeal, as Kings had done earlier, from the Pope to a General Council. The only General Council that could conceivably have helped them would have been a Council in which Protestant Churches were at least represented. But in 1520, there were no Protestant Churches. Their only possible allies were the secular Governments. The assertion that coercive authority rests solely with them simply had to be made. But there was really in their minds little more than a negative. Their positive assertion was that the claims of Pope and clergy were based on nothing but imposture and superstition. Later on, of course, the claims of the sacerdotium were revived, in an altered form, by Calvinism. The earlier reformers simply denied them.

It is difficult, or impossible, to estimate with any exactness the importance of the fact that Protestantism must have more or less abruptly released many min...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• dedication
• Preface
• Publisher's Note
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 Lutheranism and Calvinism
• Chapter I Introductory
• Chapter II Luther and Melanchthon
• Chapter III The Anabaptist Protest
• Chapter IV Calvin
• Chapter V The Toleration Controversy
• Chapter VI The Break from Calvin
• Part 2 England
• Chapter I Preliminary
• Chapter II The Doctrine of Non-Resistance
• Chapter III The Very and True Commonweal
• Chapter IV The Theory of Royal Supremacy Under Henry VIII
• Chapter V The Supremacy of Elizabeth
• Chapter V The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
• Chapter VII The Catholic Protest
• Chapter VIII The Puritan Protest
• Chapter IX The Question of Toleration
• Chapter X Theories of the Constitution and of Sovereignty
• Part 3 France
• Chapter I Preliminary
• Chapter II Le Grant Monarchie De France
• Chapter III Constitutional Theories
• Chapter IV The Huguenots and Their Allies
• Chapter V Salamonius and Buchanan
• Chapter VI The Catholic League and its Allies
• Chapter VII The Divine Right of Kings
• Chapter VIII Jean Bodin
• Part 4 Italy
• Chapter I Preliminary
• Chapter II Machiavelli
• Chapter III Guicciardini
• Chapter IV Later Italian Thought
• Conclusion
• Bibliographical Notes
• Index