A History Of Christianity Part 9

Inevitably in the storm now spreading throughout the continent, Erasmus was urged to confront Luther, and he needed to do so in order to refute the charge that his own delicate sarcasm at the Church's expense had sp.a.w.ned this monstrous rebel. Erasmus chose his question carefully. The choice reflected his own distaste for the Augustinian theology which meant so much to Luther: has humanity retained free will to respond to G.o.d's offer of grace? He set out his attack in September 1524: A Diatribe on Free Will A Diatribe on Free Will. Fully aware that he must play by Augustinian rules, Erasmus emphasized that the initiative in grace was with G.o.d. After that, however, he sought to avoid a dogmatic single formula on grace; for him this was Luther's chief fault. His attack was as much on Luther's way of doing theology as on the resulting theology: Luther was exposing controversial questions to public excitement when there was no need to do so. Erasmus preferred to seek consensus, put forward an opinion which seemed most probable - that process is actually the technical meaning of the word diatribe diatribe. Erasmus was a humanist pleading for people to be reasonable - and also saying bluntly that unreasonable people should not be brought into technical discussions of theology. Moreover, he believed that human beings could indeed be reasonable, because when Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden, their G.o.d-given capacity to reason had not been fully corrupted, only damaged.

Luther by contrast was a prophet proclaiming an inescapable message to all fallen humanity. In his response, uncompromisingly ent.i.tled On the Slavery of the Will On the Slavery of the Will ( (De servo arbitrio, published in December 1525), Luther set out a pitiless message that human beings could expect nothing but condemnation, and had nothing to offer G.o.d to merit salvation: If we believe that Christ redeemed men by his blood, we are forced to confess that all of man was lost; otherwise, we make Christ either wholly superfluous, or else the redeemer of the least valuable part of man only; which is blasphemy, and sacrilege.16 This parting blow in his book was the very heart of the Reformation's rea.s.sertion of Augustine, proclaiming that the humanist project of reasonable reform was redundant. It was not surprising that Erasmus went on fighting, in two bulky and bitter volumes published in 1526 and 1527, in which he showed how Luther had forced him back to reaffirm his loyalty to the imperfect structures of the old Church: 'Therefore I will put up with this Church until I see a better one; and it will have to put up with me, until I become better.'17 Wearily he was confronting not only Luther, but also his own humanist sympathizers like Luther's brilliant young university colleague Philipp Melanchthon, who had likewise determined to favour Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the Church. Wearily he was confronting not only Luther, but also his own humanist sympathizers like Luther's brilliant young university colleague Philipp Melanchthon, who had likewise determined to favour Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the Church.18 THE FARMERS' WAR AND ZWINGLI What degree of change was Luther proclaiming, and what needed changing? Many ordinary people, especially those defending their livelihoods against new exactions by their lords and by governments, saw Luther's defiance of authority as a sign that all authority was collapsing in G.o.d's final judgement on human sin. The Last Days had arrived, and everyone had a duty to hurry along G.o.d's plan, which included overthrowing G.o.d's enemies in high places. In 1525 large areas of central Europe were convulsed by revolts against princes and Church leaders: the Bauernkrieg Bauernkrieg , often misleadingly translated into English as the 'Peasants' War', but better rendered the 'Farmers' War' to get a sense of the sort of prosperous people - not so different from Luther's family - who in their righteous anger and excitement led the crowds. The revolts were brutally crushed - and Luther, terrified by the disorder, applauded the rulers' brutality. Another text from Paul lit up for him: Romans 13.1, 'Let everyone obey the superior powers, for there is no authority except from G.o.d'. This has been described as the most important text of the Reformation. Many humanist scholars now drew back from the Reformation in fright; others committed themselves to an ordered, modulated programme of change. For many of the cowed, resentful rebels, the Reformers' message of liberation now seemed as big a sham and betrayal as the pope's old offer of salvation. Luther and his supporters would have to find some other means for pursuing their revolution than their first idealistic appeal to the good sense of all G.o.d's people. , often misleadingly translated into English as the 'Peasants' War', but better rendered the 'Farmers' War' to get a sense of the sort of prosperous people - not so different from Luther's family - who in their righteous anger and excitement led the crowds. The revolts were brutally crushed - and Luther, terrified by the disorder, applauded the rulers' brutality. Another text from Paul lit up for him: Romans 13.1, 'Let everyone obey the superior powers, for there is no authority except from G.o.d'. This has been described as the most important text of the Reformation. Many humanist scholars now drew back from the Reformation in fright; others committed themselves to an ordered, modulated programme of change. For many of the cowed, resentful rebels, the Reformers' message of liberation now seemed as big a sham and betrayal as the pope's old offer of salvation. Luther and his supporters would have to find some other means for pursuing their revolution than their first idealistic appeal to the good sense of all G.o.d's people.

What they did was to woo the 'magistrates': the term which sixteenth-century Europe used to describe all its temporal leaders outside the Church hierarchy. These magistrates were indeed the superior powers referred to in Romans 13.1, just as the Roman emperor had been when Paul was writing. The leaders of the Church, the bishops, for the most part did not defect from the old organization, particularly those who were 'prince-bishops' of the Holy Roman Empire, temporal rulers as well as heads of their dioceses. Other magistrates might well be interested in a reformation which stressed theologies of obedience and good order, and also offered the chance to put the Church's wealth to new purposes. The first prince to come over was a major coup from a rather surprising quarter: the current Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a Hohenzollern and cousin of Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz. The Teutonic Order had met increasing reverses in its long struggle with Poland-Lithuania (see pp. 516-17), and demoralized by major defeats in 1519-21, many of the Grand Master's knights had turned to evangelical religion, quitting the order. To save himself from ruin, he begged another cousin, King Sigismund I of Poland, to remodel the order's Polish territories in east Prussia into a secular fief of the Polish kingdom, with the Grand Master himself as its first hereditary duke; he did his first act of fealty to a gratified Sigismund in Cracow in April 1525. Naturally such a radical step as secularizing the territory of a religious order needed a formal act of rebellion against the old Church, and Albrecht of newly 'ducal' Prussia, who had already sounded out Luther in a face-to-face meeting in Wittenberg in late 1523, inst.i.tutionalized this during summer 1525, creating the first evangelical princely Church in Europe.19 Before Albrecht of Prussia, the initiatives in backing evangelical religious change had come from the self-confident towns and cities of the Holy Roman Empire, who enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy from emperor or princes. The first in the empire proper had been the Free City of Nuremberg, a great prize because the central legal and administrative inst.i.tutions of the empire were sited there; the Nuremberg authorities allowed evangelical preaching in 1521. But a move of even greater significance came from a wealthy city in Switzerland, whose ties to the empire had been nominal since a victory of combined Swiss armies over Habsburg forces in 1499. Amid various cantons and free jurisdictions which made up the Swiss Confederacy, Zurich became home to another variety of evangelical Reformation which had little more than an indirect debt to Luther, and whose chief reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, created a rebellion against Rome with very different priorities. Certainly at the heart of it was a proclamation of the freedom of a Christian to receive salvation by faith through grace, and although Zwingli would never acknowledge his indebtedness to Luther on this point, it has always seemed rather more than coincidence that the Swiss Reformer should stumble independently on the same notion during the same European-wide crisis.

While Luther was a university lecturer who never formally had pastoral responsibilities for any congregation, Zwingli was a parish priest who, as an army chaplain, had seen the most extreme of pastoral experiences - that traumatic episode left him with a long-term commitment to Erasmus's arguments against war (contradicted at the last, as we will see). Parish ministry mattered to him deeply. A charismatic preacher at Zurich's chief collegiate church, the Grossmunster, he won a firm basis of support in the Zurich city council, which pioneered a Reformation steered by clerical minister and magistrate in close union. In Lent 1522, he publicly defended friends who had in his presence ostentatiously eaten a large sausage, thus defying Western Church discipline which laid down strict seasons and conditions for abstinence in food. Later that year, he and his clerical a.s.sociates made an even more profound breach with half a millennium of Church authority than the inappropriate sausage by getting married. It took Martin Luther three years to follow suit.

Now not Rome but Zurich city council would decide Church law, using as their reference point the true sacred law laid down in scripture. From the early 1520s, Zwingli's Church was the city of Zurich, and the magistrates of Zurich could hold disputations to decide the nature of the Eucharist, just as they might make directions for navigation on Lake Zurich or make arrangements for sewage disposal. With their backing, Zwingli's clerical team, untrammelled by any major monastery, university theology faculty or local bishop, forged a distinctive pattern of evangelical belief with a great worldwide future. By the end of the sixteenth century, this Protestantism would be called Reformed, which crudely speaking meant all varieties of consciously non-Lutheran Protestantism. Often Reformed Protestantism has been called 'Calvinism', but the very fact that we are beginning to discuss it in relation to an earlier set of Reformers than John Calvin immediately reveals the problems inherent in that label, and suggests that it should be used sparingly.

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18. The Holy Roman Empire in 1530 The term 'Calvinist' began life, like so many religious labels, as an insult, and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it persisted more among those abusing Reformed Protestants than among the Reformed themselves. There has never been any imposed uniformity among the Reformed family. Reformed Protestantism from the beginning differed from Luther's Reformation - much to his fury - in several key respects, princ.i.p.ally its att.i.tude to images, to law and to the Eucharist. The seeds of division were actually sown even before there was much contact between Wittenberg and Zurich, since, from 1521 onwards, Luther's independently minded colleague in Wittenberg University Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt had already started to push the logic of what Luther had said, in regard to these same questions. As Luther immediately failed to find common ground with Karlstadt, and eventually got him expelled from Wittenberg, it was not surprising that he failed to reach agreement with the reformers of the faraway Swiss city when he found that they were making similar statements.

It was Zwingli's friend Leo Jud, pastor of St Peter's across the river from the Grossmunster, who in a sermon of 1523 pointed out quite rightly that the Bible ordered the destruction of images in no less prominent a setting than the Ten Commandments. Jud (as that nickname 'Jew' indicated) was a distinguished Hebrew scholar: he noticed the significant oddity, forgotten by most of the Western Church, that there were two contrasting ways of numbering the Commandments, and that the system to which Augustine of Hippo had long ago given his authority conveniently downplayed the command against images. So Jud was reopening the question of images which had nearly brought the Byzantine Empire to ruin in the eighth and ninth centuries (see pp. 442-53), and which had been only briefly and partially reopened by John Wyclif and the avengers of Jan Hus a century before - Wyclif had noted that same numbering anomaly in the Ten Commandments. Now Zurichers started pulling down images from churches and from the roadside. This frequently involved disorder, and disorder has never enthused Swiss society. The city council took action: in October 1523 it arranged a further disputation, leading to the first official statement of doctrine produced anywhere in the Reformation. First, images were systematically removed from churches in June 1524 and then, in April 1525, the traditional form of the Ma.s.s itself was banned in the city. Until that latter moment, astonis.h.i.+ngly, Zurich still remained in communion with its traditional ally the Pope, who had let politics blind him to the seriousness of what was happening there, and who never made any official condemnation of the man who was steering events in the city.

On the matter both of images and of the Eucharist, Luther was less inhibited than the Pope, and strongly and publicly disagreed with Zurich. Thanks to Karlstadt he had already faced image-smas.h.i.+ng in Wittenberg in 1522, when he was alarmed enough by the disorder to hurry back from the Wartburg to preach against it, standing in the pulpit pointedly dressed in a brand-new monk's habit of his Augustinian Order.20 After that bruising episode, Luther decided that the problem of sacred art was no problem at all. Once the most obviously absurd images had been removed in orderly fas.h.i.+on, destroying sacred art was actually a form of idolatry: it suggested that images had some power, and in fact they had none. What could be wrong with beautiful pictures of G.o.d's mother or of Christ hanging on the Cross? Luther used a battery of biblical arguments to offset the Ten Commandments; as early as 1520, when preparing teaching material on the Commandments, he showed his characteristic ability to play fast and loose with scripture by omitting all reference to the Commandment prohibiting images. He was certainly not going to adopt the 'Zurich' renumbering: the result, bizarrely, is that the Churches of western Europe still number the Ten Commandments differently, and the split is not between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but between on the one hand Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and on the other all the rest - including the Anglican Communion. Luther produced a formula to convey the usefulness of images: ' After that bruising episode, Luther decided that the problem of sacred art was no problem at all. Once the most obviously absurd images had been removed in orderly fas.h.i.+on, destroying sacred art was actually a form of idolatry: it suggested that images had some power, and in fact they had none. What could be wrong with beautiful pictures of G.o.d's mother or of Christ hanging on the Cross? Luther used a battery of biblical arguments to offset the Ten Commandments; as early as 1520, when preparing teaching material on the Commandments, he showed his characteristic ability to play fast and loose with scripture by omitting all reference to the Commandment prohibiting images. He was certainly not going to adopt the 'Zurich' renumbering: the result, bizarrely, is that the Churches of western Europe still number the Ten Commandments differently, and the split is not between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but between on the one hand Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and on the other all the rest - including the Anglican Communion. Luther produced a formula to convey the usefulness of images: 'zum Ansehen, zum Zeugnis, zum Gedachtnis, zum Zeichen' ('for recognition, for witness, for commemoration, for a sign'). After 1525, he rarely felt the need to enlarge on these points.21 Great principles were at stake. Zwingli did not share Luther's negative conception of law, and because he so strongly identified Church and city in Zurich, he found the image of Zurich as Israel compelling. Israel needed law; law forbade idols. Where Luther had contrasted law (bad) and Gospel (good), Zurich now contrasted law (good) and idolatry (bad). Despite being a talented and enthusiastic musician, Zwingli even banned music in church, because its ability to seduce the senses was likely to prove a form of idolatry and an obstacle to wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d. Turned into a point of principle by Zwingli's successor Heinrich Bullinger, this ban lasted until 1598, when bored and frustrated Zurich congregations rose in rebellion against their ministers and successfully demanded the satisfaction of singing hymns or psalms in their services, since by then all other Reformed Churches allowed sacred music. The printers of Zurich had in fact been happily printing hymnals for those other churches for the previous fifty years.22 Equally profound was the two men's disagreement about the Eucharist. Zwingli, a thoroughgoing humanist in his education and a deep admirer of Erasmus, emphasized the spirit against the flesh. A favourite biblical proof-text with him was Erasmus's watchword, John 6.63: 'The Spirit gives life, but the flesh is of no use' (see pp. 596-9). Luther, he thought, was being crudely literal-minded to flourish Christ's statement at the Last Supper, 'This is my body . . . this is my blood', as meaning that bread and wine in some sense became the body and blood of Christ. When Luther had jettisoned the idea of the Ma.s.s as sacrifice and the doctrine of transubstantiation, why could the obstinate Wittenberger not see that it was illogical to maintain any notion of physical presence in eucharistic bread and wine? Jesus Christ could hardly be on the communion table when Christians know that he is sitting at the right hand of G.o.d (this argument pioneered by Karlstadt may seem cra.s.s now, but it became a firm favourite with Reformed Christians). In any case, what was a sacrament? Zwingli, as a good humanist, considered the origins of the Latin word sacramentum sacramentum, and discovered that the Latin Church had borrowed it from everyday life in the Roman army, where it had meant a soldier's oath. That struck a strong chord in Switzerland, where regular swearing of oaths was the foundational to a society whose strength came from mutual interdependence and local loyalty. It also resonated with that ancient Hebrew idea which has repeatedly sounded anew for Christians: covenant.

So the sacrament of Eucharist was not a magical talisman of Christ's body. It was a community pledge, expressing the believer's faith (and after all, had not Luther said a great deal about faith?). The Eucharist could indeed be a sacrifice, but one of faith and thankfulness by a Christian to G.o.d, a way of remembering what Jesus had done for humanity on the Cross, and all the Gospel promises which followed on from it in scripture. And what was true for the Eucharist must be true for the other biblical sacrament, baptism. This was a welcome for children into the Lord's family the Church; it did not involve magical was.h.i.+ng away of sin. For Zwingli, therefore, the sacraments s.h.i.+fted in meaning from something which G.o.d did for humanity, to something which humanity did for G.o.d. Moreover, he saw sacraments as intimately linked with the shared life of a proud city. The Eucharist was the community meeting in love, baptism was the community extending a welcome. This n.o.bly coherent vision of a better Israel, faithful to G.o.d's covenant, was a reformed version of Erasmus's ideal of how the world might be changed. It was utterly different from the raw paradoxes about the human condition, the searing, painful, often contradictory insights which const.i.tuted Luther's Gospel message.

Therefore the two could never agree on the Eucharist, even when in 1529 their frustrated princely supporter Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse, brought them face to face at Marburg to heal the breach. Such was the bitterness that in 1530 Luther told his followers that they should get married and have their children baptized in Catholic churches rather than among Zwinglians, as Zwingli was far more in error than the Pope.23 This was all the more remarkable because Luther, as much as Zwingli, found that he was reliant on German princes for help in two directions: first, against ordinary people who did not want to be reformed and who needed orders from princes to move them along; second, against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who had outlawed him after Worms, and who now wished to destroy him and his whole programme. In fact from princely support came a new label for the movement, when a group of the princes supporting Luther made a protest against the decisions of the Imperial Diet at Speyer in 1529. They were accordingly nicknamed Protestants, the first time this word had been thus used; the nickname stuck. At the next imperial Diet, at Augsburg in 1530, the party of Luther's supporters presented a statement of doctrine to Charles V, drafted by Philipp Melanchthon, which in its studied moderation was intended to win the Emperor's a.s.sent. It failed in that purpose, but the group who were increasingly being styled 'Lutheran' retained this 'Augsburg Confession' as their flags.h.i.+p statement of faith. This was all the more remarkable because Luther, as much as Zwingli, found that he was reliant on German princes for help in two directions: first, against ordinary people who did not want to be reformed and who needed orders from princes to move them along; second, against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who had outlawed him after Worms, and who now wished to destroy him and his whole programme. In fact from princely support came a new label for the movement, when a group of the princes supporting Luther made a protest against the decisions of the Imperial Diet at Speyer in 1529. They were accordingly nicknamed Protestants, the first time this word had been thus used; the nickname stuck. At the next imperial Diet, at Augsburg in 1530, the party of Luther's supporters presented a statement of doctrine to Charles V, drafted by Philipp Melanchthon, which in its studied moderation was intended to win the Emperor's a.s.sent. It failed in that purpose, but the group who were increasingly being styled 'Lutheran' retained this 'Augsburg Confession' as their flags.h.i.+p statement of faith.

REFORMATIONS RADICAL AND MAGISTERIAL: ANABAPTISTS AND HENRY VIII.

So the period after 1525 was one in which the dark memory of the Farmers' War ended any chance of a united continent-wide popular revolution. Instead a 'magisterial' Reformation was created: these were the Protestant movements led by the magistri magistri, the theologically educated masters, and magistrates of all descriptions - kings, princes, city councils. The description 'magisterial Reformation' is worth using, and I will frequently use it in this narrative, because there were nevertheless still many radical Christians, who proposed their own versions of religious revolution, and whose radical Reformations remained very different in character and belief from magisterial Protestantism. In Switzerland, some were inspired by their realization that Zwingli was much more systematic and logical in his rejection of the past than Luther. They took up Zwingli's thinking on Eucharist and baptism. If Zwingli said that the sacraments were pledges of faith by Christian believers who had already received G.o.d's gift of saving faith, surely Christian baptism ought to be a conscious act of faith by the person baptized - 'believers' baptism'. Clearly babies could not make such an act, so baptism ought to be reserved for adults. After all, the New Testament contained not a single explicit example of infant baptism. Historically, this was correct, but the argument against infant baptism had hardly ever been made before in Christian history, and it came as an unpleasant shock to magisterial Reformers. Because the radicals sought to give a new and genuine baptism to those who had been baptized as infants, their enemies called them in cod-Greek 'rebaptizers' or Anabaptists. Clearly no proponent of believers' baptism would see what they were doing as rebaptizing; their self-image would better be expressed in the neutral term which German uses for them, Taufer Taufer (baptizers). (baptizers).

Zwingli was appalled at this logical deduction from his own theology, because it contradicted another axiom of his thought, that the Church of Zurich embraced the whole city of Zurich. To opt in to baptism as an adult was to split the wholeness of the community, into believers and non-believers. That would end the a.s.sumption which both he and Luther held as dear as the Pope, that all society should be part of the Church in Christendom. So from 1526 Zurich, embittered by the recent Farmers' War, persecuted Anabaptists to the extent of drowning four of them in the River Limmat, just at the time when the old Church began persecuting champions of the magisterial Reformation. The Anabaptists were harried out of ordinary society. Their one alliance with a magistrate, when Count Leonhard von Liechtenstein allowed them to take over the Moravian town of Nikolsburg and form an established Church professing believers' baptism, ended abruptly in 1527 on the orders of the Count's Habsburg overlords; the Habsburgs burned at the stake the would-be Zwingli of Nikolsburg, a former senior academic called Balthasar Hubmaier. Accordingly, radicals began stressing their difference from ordinary society.

When they turned to the Bible for guidance, such people noticed quite correctly that early Christians had separated themselves from the world around. The Book of Acts talked of Christians holding all goods in common (see pp. 119-20). 'Do not swear at all,' said Jesus Christ (Matthew 5.34). 'Commit no murder,' said the Ten Commandments. So radicals looked for the rare corners of Europe where they had a chance to create their own little worlds, in which goods could be held in common, where no one would force them to swear the oaths which governments and magistrates required, or take up the sword when rulers ordered them to. They took a selective view of the demand for obedience in Romans 13.1, infuriating and frightening the superior powers. Many looked back to the nearest thing that 'Anabaptists' ever had to a common confessional statement: articles drawn up in 1527 at the Swiss town of Schleitheim, which were insistent on 'separation from the Abomination'. Their princ.i.p.al author was a former Benedictine monk, Michael Sattler, and it is tempting to see the communal inst.i.tutions of radicals as a new effort to return to the early Benedictine ideal. Yet one feature was far from Benedictine: it returned radicals to a still earlier Christianity, which had suffered from official persecution. 'True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anguish and tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death, tried in fire, and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by slaying the physical but the spiritual,' wrote the young Zurich patrician Conrad Grebel to Thomas Muntzer, a year before Muntzer, a leader in the 1525 revolts, was cut down by the vengeful soldiers of princes.24 More frightening still for Christendom was that, even after the defeats of 1525, some radicals continued to believe that they needed force to usher in the Last Days. They heard Jesus say, 'I have come not to bring peace, but a sword' (Matthew 10.34), and they wanted to help G.o.d fulfil his political programme in the Book of Revelation. So in the early 1530s, groups from the Low Countries began joining with other radicals in converging on the western German city of Munster. They arrived in thousands; they took over Munster's civic Reformation, which had begun in conventionally Lutheran mode, and their charismatic leaders proclaimed the new Jerusalem. A joint force of Lutherans and Catholics besieged them. Under pressure, with the city running short of food, the radicals' revolution turned to nightmare. Their final leader, a young Dutchman, Jan Beuckelszoon ('John of Leyden'), lived as their king in insane luxury, surrounded by his harem, as his followers starved and died defending him. In the end, the besiegers breached the defences in 1535 and Munster Anabaptists were s.a.d.i.s.tically suppressed. Radicalism thereafter turned from militancy to quiet escapes from ordinary society, tolerated by some rulers who recognized that such gathered communities were actually industrious and honest-dealing. Yet Munster remained as a constant dark memory: peaceable, inoffensive Anabaptists were burned and harried because of what John of Leyden had done.25 The challenge of radicalism to Western Christianity was in fact more long term and subtle than this.26 Perhaps basic to all of it was a newly negative view of the Emperor Constantine I - 'the Great', as he had so long been called. It was a general conviction among radicals that over the previous millennium the Church had made a grave error in entering into alliance with the powerful, after a decisive wrong turn in Constantine's alliance with Christianity. Radicals noted that a very great deal of the Church's doctrine had been formulated by agreements of councils in that tainted period after Constantine's seizing of the doctrinal reins at Nicaea in 325 (see pp. 214-15), and if that was so, all such doctrine was ripe for rea.s.sessment. If one looked at the Bible with fresh eyes, where were some of the central doctrines of traditional Christianity which the Church said were there, such as the Trinity? Obstinately, many Bible readers continued to fail to find infant baptism mentioned in its pages. Some went further and came to the conviction that the Bible was not the ultimate guide to divine truth: they called it a 'paper Pope', and affirmed that G.o.d spoke to the individual as he (or even she) pleased through 'inner light'. If so, it was unlikely that there was any one normative perception of truth, un-Christian to coerce any beliefs and even undesirable that there should be one single Church. The radicals in the Reformation may posthumously claim success, for something of all these notions can now be found in Churches which are the heirs of the magisterial Reformation, and even within the Church of Rome. Perhaps basic to all of it was a newly negative view of the Emperor Constantine I - 'the Great', as he had so long been called. It was a general conviction among radicals that over the previous millennium the Church had made a grave error in entering into alliance with the powerful, after a decisive wrong turn in Constantine's alliance with Christianity. Radicals noted that a very great deal of the Church's doctrine had been formulated by agreements of councils in that tainted period after Constantine's seizing of the doctrinal reins at Nicaea in 325 (see pp. 214-15), and if that was so, all such doctrine was ripe for rea.s.sessment. If one looked at the Bible with fresh eyes, where were some of the central doctrines of traditional Christianity which the Church said were there, such as the Trinity? Obstinately, many Bible readers continued to fail to find infant baptism mentioned in its pages. Some went further and came to the conviction that the Bible was not the ultimate guide to divine truth: they called it a 'paper Pope', and affirmed that G.o.d spoke to the individual as he (or even she) pleased through 'inner light'. If so, it was unlikely that there was any one normative perception of truth, un-Christian to coerce any beliefs and even undesirable that there should be one single Church. The radicals in the Reformation may posthumously claim success, for something of all these notions can now be found in Churches which are the heirs of the magisterial Reformation, and even within the Church of Rome.

The magisterial Reformers went on battling for the minds of rulers, partly because they were appalled by hearing any selection of such beliefs. They succeeded in much of Germany and Scandinavia; they failed in Jagiellon Poland, Valois France and the Habsburg lands. Yet through much of central Europe, n.o.bility were receptive where monarchs were not, sensing the advantages of challenging the religion of their overlords. In 1525 the Estates in Upper Austria backed the Habsburg King Ferdinand's suppression of the Farmers' War, but their price for further cooperation in suppressing Anabaptists was to force him to tolerate evangelical activists and preachers in the mould of Luther. From the mid-sixteenth century, the overwhelming majority of the Lower Austrian n.o.bility, and of the inhabitants in the Habsburg capital Vienna, were avowed Lutherans, despite all Habsburg efforts to obstruct this growth, and Lutheranism quietly consolidated itself elsewhere.27 In central Europe, a defining catastrophe for traditional authority was the Ottoman victory at Mohacs in 1526, when the Holy Roman Emperor's twenty-year-old brother-in-law, King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, was killed, along with a large proportion of his n.o.bility, five bishops, two archbishops and sixteen thousand of his soldiers; the Turks occupied a wide sweep of the former kingdom. Quite apart from the shattering of a ruling elite, the blow to the old religion's prestige was severe; the situation was wide open for many varieties of religious reform, and individual n.o.blemen took up the cause of Reform as they pleased. In central Europe, a defining catastrophe for traditional authority was the Ottoman victory at Mohacs in 1526, when the Holy Roman Emperor's twenty-year-old brother-in-law, King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, was killed, along with a large proportion of his n.o.bility, five bishops, two archbishops and sixteen thousand of his soldiers; the Turks occupied a wide sweep of the former kingdom. Quite apart from the shattering of a ruling elite, the blow to the old religion's prestige was severe; the situation was wide open for many varieties of religious reform, and individual n.o.blemen took up the cause of Reform as they pleased.

The early Reformation gained a curious sort of victory in England, where the murderously opinionated monarch Henry VIII found an alliance with Reformers useful during his eccentric marital adventures. Determined to rid himself of his tiresomely loyal first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to secure a legitimate male heir, he found himself frustrated by the Pope's refusal to accept his contention on theological grounds that the marriage had never actually taken place. Henry demanded that it should be recognized as null so that he would be free to marry whomever he wished - by the late 1520s that meant a spirited young lady at Court, Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII was under pressure from Queen Catherine's nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was rather nearer to hand than the King of England, and who in 1527 had demonstrated what that might mean when his soldiers (mostly Lutheran sympathizers) rampaged through Rome itself uncontrolled for weeks on end, bringing horror and chaos within earshot of the terrified Pope taking refuge in Castel Sant'Angelo.

Henry, increasingly convinced that the Pope was G.o.d's enemy as well as England's in denying him his annulment, conceived the idea of repudiating papal jurisdiction. He was the first king in Europe to do so, and in order to underpin this revolutionary measure with wide political consent, he used the organizing skills of a newly recruited royal minister, Thomas Cromwell, to secure legislation in his Parliament enacting a break with Rome. His new wife, Anne Boleyn, was a none-too-discreet sympathizer with evangelical Reformation, and was able to encourage evangelicals at Court.28 Among them was Cromwell, who was working closely with another new recruit, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, appointed in 1533 to formalize Henry's annulment and new marriage. Between them, from 1534 Cromwell and Cranmer discreetly encouraged a piecemeal dismantling of the old Church, not always in harmony with the King's wishes; in 1540, Cromwell was disgraced and executed, partly because of this, and partly because of his disastrous recruitment of yet a fourth royal wife who turned out unacceptable. Among them was Cromwell, who was working closely with another new recruit, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, appointed in 1533 to formalize Henry's annulment and new marriage. Between them, from 1534 Cromwell and Cranmer discreetly encouraged a piecemeal dismantling of the old Church, not always in harmony with the King's wishes; in 1540, Cromwell was disgraced and executed, partly because of this, and partly because of his disastrous recruitment of yet a fourth royal wife who turned out unacceptable.29 By then, Henry was twice a widower. Queen Anne had failed to provide the much-sought male heir. Henry could not foresee that the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1533 had furnished a worthy successor to the throne, and in default of any boys, Anne preceded Cromwell to the scaffold, beheaded in 1536 on absurd charges of adultery and incest. Her replacement, Jane Seymour, suited the king well, and provided the vital male heir, Prince Edward, but she died of post-partum infection. Through all these crises and more, Cranmer's survival skills were sorely tested. By then, Henry was twice a widower. Queen Anne had failed to provide the much-sought male heir. Henry could not foresee that the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1533 had furnished a worthy successor to the throne, and in default of any boys, Anne preceded Cromwell to the scaffold, beheaded in 1536 on absurd charges of adultery and incest. Her replacement, Jane Seymour, suited the king well, and provided the vital male heir, Prince Edward, but she died of post-partum infection. Through all these crises and more, Cranmer's survival skills were sorely tested.

One of King Henry's most celebrated executions was done by proxy, the victim dying on the command of the Emperor Charles V. He was William Tyndale, one of the geniuses of the English Reformation; after Henry's agents secured his kidnap while he was in exile in Antwerp, he was strangled at the stake before his corpse was burned near Brussels. He bequeathed the English nothing less than the first translation of the New Testament and Pentateuch in their own language since the by then archaic version of the Lollards 150 years before. Tyndale, an Oxford scholar from Gloucesters.h.i.+re, made the English Bible his life's work, had to flee his native land to continue his labours on it and lost his life because of it. He brought not just evangelical fervour and an exceptional skill in Greek and Hebrew to his task, but an exceptional ear for languages, perhaps borne of his childhood spent in English western borderlands, where the sound of Welsh was almost as familiar as English. He understood that English might actually be closer than Latin to Hebrew in its rhythms and driving narrative force, and the results coruscate with life and energy - here is the moment at which Adam and Eve fell from obedience to G.o.d, that greatest tragedy of humankind in the Christian story: And the woman saw that it was a good tree to eat of and l.u.s.ty unto the eyes and a pleasant tree for to make wise. And took of the fruit of it and ate, and gave unto her husband also with her, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, that they understood how that they were naked.30 Or we can sample of Tyndale's own vigorous words introducing his translation of Deuteronomy (it is noticeable that when he started translating the Books of the Law in the Tanakh, he abandoned his previous practice of filching the individual prefaces of books from Martin Luther's Bible to translate or paraphrase in his English prefaces, and instead expressed his own thoughts): This is a book worthy to be read in day and night and never to be out of hands. For it is the most excellent of all the books of Moses. It is easy also and light and a very pure gospel that is to wete, a preaching of faith and love: deducing the love to G.o.d out of faith, and the love of a man's neighbour out of the love of G.o.d.

The New Testament which Tyndale prepared first had an immediate impact when clandestine copies arrived in England in 1526-7: nothing else was so important in creating a popular English Reformation which was independent of King Henry's whims. By the time of Tyndale's martyrdom in 1536, perhaps sixteen thousand copies of his translation had pa.s.sed into a country of no more than two and a half million people, with a very poorly developed market for books.31 And in one of the religious ironies with which Henry's reign was replete, the King came to authorize the translation made by the man whose murder he had in effect arranged. Only a year after Tyndale's death Thomas Cromwell secured a royal order for every parish in England to buy a complete Bible, most of whose text was in fact Tyndale's translation (Henry VIII never seems to have realized this). It is the ancestor of all Bibles in the English language, especially the 'Authorized' or 'King James' version of 1611 (see pp. 649- 50); Tyndale's biographer David Daniell has bluntly pointed out that 'Nine-tenths of the Authorized Version's New Testament is Tyndale's.' And in one of the religious ironies with which Henry's reign was replete, the King came to authorize the translation made by the man whose murder he had in effect arranged. Only a year after Tyndale's death Thomas Cromwell secured a royal order for every parish in England to buy a complete Bible, most of whose text was in fact Tyndale's translation (Henry VIII never seems to have realized this). It is the ancestor of all Bibles in the English language, especially the 'Authorized' or 'King James' version of 1611 (see pp. 649- 50); Tyndale's biographer David Daniell has bluntly pointed out that 'Nine-tenths of the Authorized Version's New Testament is Tyndale's.'32 By the time King Henry died in 1547, England's traditional religion was under severe attack. The Bible was now available to Henry's subjects in a complete version created by English evangelicals building on Tyndale's achievement, although with a characteristically unpredictable swing of policy in 1543, the King sought to ban his less well-educated subjects from reading it, deeply troubled at the possibility that they might have radical thoughts as a result of irresponsible thumbing through its pages. Despite this major setback for evangelicals, a terrible blow had been delivered to the old faith by the closure of all monasteries, nunneries and friaries in England and Wales (1532-40). This was the swiftest and most thoroughgoing such campaign in Europe, against one of the continent's best-administered groupings of religious communities, whose place in English life stretched back for a thousand years. The dissolution had been masterminded by Thomas Cromwell during his years of power, but even after Cromwell's execution, the King and his advisers extended the attack on traditional centres of intercession for the dead by a systematic dissolution of chantry foundations, although they did not give ideological reasons for what they were doing, simply announcing that King Henry needed the money.33 The way lay open in 1547 to a more coherently ideological Reformation for England, presided over enthusiastically by Henry's young son, Edward VI. The way lay open in 1547 to a more coherently ideological Reformation for England, presided over enthusiastically by Henry's young son, Edward VI.34 Magisterial Reformations in the city-states of mainland Europe took their cue from Zurich. They also took note of the disaster which rewarded Zwingli's ambitious aim of steering the city into becoming a militant new Israel, leading a Reformation through Switzerland and perhaps even further. The Catholic cantons of Switzerland defeated Zurich's armies on its border at Kappel in 1531, and among those who died there was Zwingli himself, cut down in full armour on the hillside battlefield, in a drastic consequence of abandoning his pacifist principles (Luther showed rather distasteful Schadenfreude Schadenfreude about this). Zurich never again took up such an aggressive programme, but the young cleric hastily chosen to take over leaders.h.i.+p from Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, proved a most effective and wise ecclesiastical statesman over more than four decades. One of the Reformation's most prolific letter-writers in the face of formidable compet.i.tion for that t.i.tle, he revealed a talent for sustaining friends.h.i.+ps and intervening helpfully in the troubles of Reformed Churches right across the continent. He was one of the sixteenth century's most successful communicators, both through his collected and systematized sermons, the about this). Zurich never again took up such an aggressive programme, but the young cleric hastily chosen to take over leaders.h.i.+p from Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, proved a most effective and wise ecclesiastical statesman over more than four decades. One of the Reformation's most prolific letter-writers in the face of formidable compet.i.tion for that t.i.tle, he revealed a talent for sustaining friends.h.i.+ps and intervening helpfully in the troubles of Reformed Churches right across the continent. He was one of the sixteenth century's most successful communicators, both through his collected and systematized sermons, the Decades Decades, and because of his sensible little book on marriage, which had the advantage of forming the perfect wedding gift in serious-minded households throughout Protestant Europe.35 STRa.s.sBURG, ENGLAND AND GENEVA (1540-60).

One of the most apparently promising solutions to the relations.h.i.+p of Church and temporal power in the first three decades of the Reformation was developed in the city-state of Strasbourg (then the overwhelmingly German-speaking Stra.s.sburg), led by a former Dominican friar, Martin Bucer. Until the middle of the century, it looked as if Stra.s.sburg would become the centre of the future Reformation, for Bucer was a self-proclaimed (though fatally verbose) broker of consensus amid the Reformers' disagreements, and the city lay at the heart of European trade and culture. It attracted a good many radical enthusiasts, but thanks to Bucer's unwearying powers of argument and obvious concern for the purity of the Church, it was rather better at persuading radicals back into the mainstream than most Protestant states and generally more humane in its reaction to them.36 Nevertheless, Stra.s.sburg was soon to fall away from European leaders.h.i.+p because of military defeat, and then there would be other contenders: first England, followed by Geneva. Nevertheless, Stra.s.sburg was soon to fall away from European leaders.h.i.+p because of military defeat, and then there would be other contenders: first England, followed by Geneva.

Prospects for a civilized religious settlement and the reunion of the Western Church were high around 1541-2, but they ended in disappointment. This was the time when Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, the only prince-bishop in Germany to try meeting the Reformation halfway, was attempting to lead his archdiocese in a Reformation whose planning involved not just his own clergy but also Martin Bucer. In the next few years, however, he failed, defeated by fierce opposition from traditionalists in his own Cathedral Chapter and by firm intervention from Charles V which eventually saw him ejected from his see. If von Wied's plans had worked, Cologne might have been an example to other Catholic prelates of how to find a middle path of change within the old structures.37 With the failure of discussions between Protestants and Catholics around the imperial Diet at Regensburg in 1541 (see pp. 662-3), the time for humanist moderation was evidently past; against this background, in 1545 a council of the Western Church convened by the Pope at last began meeting at Trent, in a mood of aggressive confidence, to take new initiatives in the papal Church. By the late 1540s, it looked as if the Reformation's opponents were triumphing. Luther died in 1546, by which point Zwingli was long dead. The Holy Roman Emperor confronted the military alliance formed by his Lutheran princes, the 'Schmalkaldic League', and in 1547 roundly defeated them (see Plate 55): as part of his victory, he ended the independent career of the Reformation in Stra.s.sburg, which had with uncharacteristic rashness committed itself to the Schmalkaldic alliance. With the failure of discussions between Protestants and Catholics around the imperial Diet at Regensburg in 1541 (see pp. 662-3), the time for humanist moderation was evidently past; against this background, in 1545 a council of the Western Church convened by the Pope at last began meeting at Trent, in a mood of aggressive confidence, to take new initiatives in the papal Church. By the late 1540s, it looked as if the Reformation's opponents were triumphing. Luther died in 1546, by which point Zwingli was long dead. The Holy Roman Emperor confronted the military alliance formed by his Lutheran princes, the 'Schmalkaldic League', and in 1547 roundly defeated them (see Plate 55): as part of his victory, he ended the independent career of the Reformation in Stra.s.sburg, which had with uncharacteristic rashness committed itself to the Schmalkaldic alliance.38 Martin Bucer hastily left Stra.s.sburg for England, where the group of politicians ruling in the name of Henry VIII's young son, Edward VI, after Henry's death in 1547 now had the chance to propel England into the leaders.h.i.+p of the Reformation throughout Europe. Archbishop Cranmer, one of their number and now a hardened political operator, led a thoroughgoing destruction of the traditional devotional world in England. His Reformation owed most to the example of Stra.s.sburg and the Swiss, though in his vernacular liturgy for the English Church, the Book of Common Prayer Book of Common Prayer of 1549, revised in more uncompromisingly Reformed style in 1552, Cranmer was ready to draw on any useful precedent. Those included the more conservative Lutheran forms of wors.h.i.+p recently devised in Germany (he had married a German theologian's niece in the conservatively Lutheran city of Nuremberg when on emba.s.sy there for Henry VIII in 1532). of 1549, revised in more uncompromisingly Reformed style in 1552, Cranmer was ready to draw on any useful precedent. Those included the more conservative Lutheran forms of wors.h.i.+p recently devised in Germany (he had married a German theologian's niece in the conservatively Lutheran city of Nuremberg when on emba.s.sy there for Henry VIII in 1532).39 Consequently the English Prayer Book, only lightly revised in 1559 and finally given a slightly more Catholic-leaning makeover in 1662, has remained an extraordinarily flexible vehicle for a form of Western Christianity which, in its development as 'Anglicanism', has sometimes looked with some distaste on its Reformation inheritance from the Cranmer years. Consequently the English Prayer Book, only lightly revised in 1559 and finally given a slightly more Catholic-leaning makeover in 1662, has remained an extraordinarily flexible vehicle for a form of Western Christianity which, in its development as 'Anglicanism', has sometimes looked with some distaste on its Reformation inheritance from the Cranmer years.

One incomparable aspect of the book is the language in which it was written, which even those who distrust its theological content can unreservedly admire. The processes of the Prayer Book's original construction will probably always remain obscure, but it is evident that a single powerful voice lies behind its phrasing and that can only be Cranmer's. The unity of the book, and the subtle way in which it draws on and transforms an astonis.h.i.+ng variety of earlier texts in Latin, German and English, indicate that Cranmer was very much more than simply the chairman of a drafting committee. His particular literary genius was narrowly for formal prose, without the range of conversational or dramatic tones of which Tyndale was capable, but prose which can be spoken generation on generation without seeming trite or tired - words now worn as smooth and strong as a pebble on a beach. The Archbishop bequeathed first England and then the whole world a liturgical drama which he wished to be enacted by all those present in an act of wors.h.i.+p; and so it has proved. The words of his Prayer Book have been recited by English-speakers far more frequently than the speeches and soliloquies of Shakespeare. Fragments remain even with the unchurched: 'for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part', or from another resonant moment in human experience, 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust'.40 Cranmer's words are the common inheritance of all those who use English, that language which in his age was so marginal to European cultural life, yet is now so universal. Cranmer's words are the common inheritance of all those who use English, that language which in his age was so marginal to European cultural life, yet is now so universal.

Besides its prose, Cranmer's Prayer Book has left one liturgical legacy to all Western Christendom: an evening service or 'office' called Evensong. Evensong is the part of the Prayer Book now most regularly performed in Anglicanism, and so it is there that Cranmer's superbly dignified prose is still most frequently appreciated in its proper context. Cranmer had a particular apt.i.tude for creating the short prayers known as 'collects', of which he wrote a set for the changing weeks of his new English liturgical year (considerably simplified from the pre-Reformation yearly kalendar of holy days). These small jewels of prayers are rarely simply his own work, but their expression and the delicately precise choice of language are his. One of the briefest of all, second of the Evensong collects used throughout the year, is also one of the most memorable. It was a translation of an existing eighth-century collect from the Latin West, but Cranmer tweaked the text in his own way. Taking its controlling metaphor from the setting of the service in the fading evening light, the collect is a perfectly balanced threefold structure: a pet.i.tion of two thoughts is followed by an appeal to the Trinitarian relations.h.i.+p of Father and Son. Cranmer has characteristically added a pairing of words, 'perils and dangers', in place of the Latin insidias insidias for 'snares' - and crucially, at the end, he has enriched the Trinitarian idea with the word 'love': for 'snares' - and crucially, at the end, he has enriched the Trinitarian idea with the word 'love': Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen Amen.41 Anglican Evensong has proved such a dignified and compelling approach to the divine that it has brought spiritual consolation way beyond the borders of the Anglican Communion, to Protestant and Roman Catholic alike. There is some paradox in its use today, because Cranmer did little to hide his contempt for both cathedrals and elaborate church music, yet nowadays Evensong is most characteristically encountered sung by the choirs of Anglican cathedrals, and draws on a rich five-centuries-old inheritance of specially composed anthems and settings. It is possible that Cranmer's quiet sense of humour might make him appreciate this strange outcrop of his attempt to provide England with a decently Reformed vehicle for the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d.

Yet this English experimentation abruptly ended when Edward, after a healthy and a.s.sertive childhood in which he bade fair to be as over-life-size as his formidable father, died young in 1553.42 With dramatic speed, England rejected Edward's chosen Protestant successor, his cousin Jane Grey. Against the expectations of English politicians and foreign amba.s.sadors alike, widespread popular fury challenged the deal done in Westminster, more decisively than at any other moment in the Tudor age. Armed demonstrations across south-eastern England forced the kingdom's leaders to accept the claim to the throne made by the dead king's Catholic half-sister, the Lady Mary. With dramatic speed, England rejected Edward's chosen Protestant successor, his cousin Jane Grey. Against the expectations of English politicians and foreign amba.s.sadors alike, widespread popular fury challenged the deal done in Westminster, more decisively than at any other moment in the Tudor age. Armed demonstrations across south-eastern England forced the kingdom's leaders to accept the claim to the throne made by the dead king's Catholic half-sister, the Lady Mary.43 Although Mary's status as King Henry's daughter probably mattered to the kingdom more than her religion, once she had thrust aside Queen Jane, she embarked on as great an experiment as that of Edward, but in mirror-image. She returned an entire kingdom to Roman obedience and the possibility of innovations in Catholic reform. In the process she burned at the stake some of the leading English Protestant reformers, Thomas Cranmer included. She also overcame the objections of English politicians to her marriage plans to King Philip II of Spain, which promised to bind the future of her kingdom to the most powerful Catholic monarchy in Europe (see pp. 671-5). The hopes for a.s.serting G.o.d's word seemed doomed through most of Europe. The Last Days had not arrived; many had rejected the message. What could be done? Although Mary's status as King Henry's daughter probably mattered to the kingdom more than her religion, once she had thrust aside Queen Jane, she embarked on as great an experiment as that of Edward, but in mirror-image. She returned an entire kingdom to Roman obedience and the possibility of innovations in Catholic reform. In the process she burned at the stake some of the leading English Protestant reformers, Thomas Cranmer included. She also overcame the objections of English politicians to her marriage plans to King Philip II of Spain, which promised to bind the future of her kingdom to the most powerful Catholic monarchy in Europe (see pp. 671-5). The hopes for a.s.serting G.o.d's word seemed doomed through most of Europe. The Last Days had not arrived; many had rejected the message. What could be done?

The man who led Protestantism out of stagnation in the 1550s was an exiled French humanist legal scholar who had wandered Italy and Switzerland and ended up by accident in 1536 on the margins of the Swiss Confederation in the city of Geneva: John Calvin.44 He probably never liked Geneva very much, but he felt that G.o.d had sent him there for a purpose, and so he resigned himself to a dour struggle to stay there and lead G.o.d's work in the city. After one false start, he was thrown out of Geneva, but that gave him the chance to go to Bucer's Stra.s.sburg and see how a Reformation might be put into practice. When the Genevans faced chaos and in desperation called him back, he was ready to build a better Stra.s.sburg in Geneva. In a set of He probably never liked Geneva very much, but he felt that G.o.d had sent him there for a purpose, and so he resigned himself to a dour struggle to stay there and lead G.o.d's work in the city. After one false start, he was thrown out of Geneva, but that gave him the chance to go to Bucer's Stra.s.sburg and see how a Reformation might be put into practice. When the Genevans faced chaos and in desperation called him back, he was ready to build a better Stra.s.sburg in Geneva. In a set of Ecclesiastical Ordinances Ecclesiastical Ordinances which the city authorities ordered Calvin to draft in 1541, he put into practice a scheme to restructure the Church which Bucer had envisaged for Stra.s.sburg: a fourfold order, rather than the threefold traditional order of bishop, priest and deacon. which the city authorities ordered Calvin to draft in 1541, he put into practice a scheme to restructure the Church which Bucer had envisaged for Stra.s.sburg: a fourfold order, rather than the threefold traditional order of bishop, priest and deacon.45 Bucer had a.s.serted that the New Testament described four functions of ministry, pastors, doctors, elders and deacons. Pastors carried out the general ministry of care of the laity exercised by medieval parish priests and bishops; doctors were responsible for teaching at all levels, up to the most searching scholarly investigations of the Bible. Together, pastors and senior doctors who were obviously close to them in ministry (notably Calvin himself) formed a Company of Pastors. Elders bore the disciplinary work of the Church, leading it alongside the pastors in a Church court called a consistory. It was government by committee; in other contexts, the committees were called presbyteries, so the system is generally labelled presbyterian. Calvin was not particularly worried about the forms that this fourfold system might take, as long as all its functions were properly carried out, but the next generation of 'Calvinists' tended to be more doctrinaire about forms than he was, and tried to copy exactly what had been done in Geneva - developing, for instance, a hostility to the office of bishop which Calvin himself never exhibited, and which other Reformed Churches, such as those of Zurich, Hungary/Transylvania and England/Ireland, did not share (see Plate 14).

It took Calvin years to secure the stability of his Reformation, but the Genevans never dared lose face by throwing him out a second time, and they were also shrewdly aware that he was good for business. He attracted talented foreign exiles to the city (and did his best to ensure that poor exiles were not a burden on city finances), while his writings and those of his friends sold dynamically through much of Europe and were the making of the city's new printing industry.46 In the end, one event which we might regard as tragic made Calvin's name on a European-wide scale. In 1553 he was faced with the arrival in Geneva of a prominent radical intellectual, an exile like himself, Michael Servetus from Spain, on his way to join secret sympathizers in Italy, and appearing with baffling rashness in public in Calvin's city. Servetus, with the Islamic and Jewish heritage of his country in mind, denied that the conventional notion of the Trinity could be found in the Bible; he had already been condemned by a Catholic inquisition as a heretic, with Calvin's connivance. Calvin saw his duty as clear: Servetus must die. So the Genevan city authorities burned Servetus at the stake, though Calvin wanted a more merciful death, such as beheading. Thus Calvin established that Protestants were as determined as Catholics to represent the mainstream traditional Christianity which had culminated in the Council of Chalcedon in 451. In the end, one event which we might regard as tragic made Calvin's name on a European-wide scale. In 1553 he was faced with the arrival in Geneva of a prominent radical intellectual, an exile like himself, Michael Servetus from Spain, on his way to join secret sympathizers in Italy, and appearing with baffling rashness in public in Calvin's city. Servetus, with the Islamic and Jewish heritage of his country in mind, denied that the conventional notion of the Trinity could be found in the Bible; he had already been condemned by a Catholic inquisition as a heretic, with Calvin's connivance. Calvin saw his duty as clear: Servetus must die. So the Genevan city authorities burned Servetus at the stake, though Calvin wanted a more merciful death, such as beheading. Thus Calvin established that Protestants were as determined as Catholics to represent the mainstream traditional Christianity which had culminated in the Council of Chalcedon in 451.47 Consistently with this, from 1536 Calvin published and repeatedly rewrote a textbook of doctrine, the Inst.i.tution of the Christian Religion Inst.i.tution of the Christian Religion - commonly known as the - commonly known as the Inst.i.tutes Inst.i.tutes.48 This was designed to lay claim to Catholic Christianity for the Reformation: since the Pope obstructed the Reformation, he was Antichrist, and P