Radicals and Rome - Responses to the Magisterial Reformation (16th Century)

I. PROLOGUE#

Martin Luther’s defiance was like a spring rain that became a thunderstorm. On the one hand, the Reformation revealed long-standing social discontent and pent-up frustration with the abuses of the church.

If Luther could defy the emperor and the church and live to talk about it, then anything was possible. On the other hand, if Luther thought the Catholic Church would not respond to ascendant Protestantism with an “equal and opposite reaction,” he was gravely mistaken.

As it inevitably turned out, some of Luther’s original allies, such as Andreas von Karlstadt, became his fiercest critics, who judged him not revolutionary enough.

By February 1522 the city was in such an uproar that the city council begged Luther to return. He returned to Wittenberg in March, and calm was restored. Luther reasserted his leadership of the reform movement and inevitably marginalized Karlstadt.

Upheaval in Germany continued to escalate in other ways. Franz von Sickingen took up the cause of Luther and led what came to be known as the “Knights Revolt”.

As a German knight, Sickingen belonged to a warrior class of soldiers who served various royal patrons, but mostly offered their military prowess for personal gain. In 1519 Sickingen befriended the humanist knight and supporter of Luther, Ulrich von Hutten, who called for a reformation by military force.

The two German knights decided to lead a popular revolt against the Roman Catholic Church in support of Luther. Sickingen convened a “Brotherly Convention” of knights and was able to assemble an army from the upper Rhineland. Then in August 1522, Sickingen declared war on his old enemy, the archbishop of Trier, and marched against the city. Trier managed to hold off the assault until reinforcements arrived on the scene, and Sickingen was forced to retreat to his fortified castle, Burg Nanstein at Landstuhl.

The Knights Revolt came to an ignoble end when the combined forces of the archbishop of Trier, Philip of Hesse, Elector Palatine Louis V, and knights of the Swabian League marched on Burg Nanstein. Sickingen refused to negotiate and was seriously wounded during the bombardment of his castle. On May 6, 1523, Sickingen surrendered, but died the following day.

B. Disappointment with Luther#

Luther was not unmindful of the existence of social injustices in Germany, but that was not his battle. Little did he anticipate that his gospel message would capture the imagination of many thousands of economically oppressed peasants who linked his message of doctrinal reform with a demand for social reform, thus contributing to the largest mass uprising in Europe before the French Revolution.

When Luther’s book Freedom of the Christian Man was published in 1520, he intended it to be read by theologians and the German intelligentsia, but he had no idea that it would touch a raw nerve among the peasant classes of German society. The notion that Christians were “free” proved intensively inspirational to peasants, who had a history of rebellion when faced with economic and social inequities. Professor Peter Blickle calculates that Germany had experienced sixty peasant uprisings from 1336 to 1525.

In March 1525, Swabian peasants met in the city of Memmingen and summarized their grievances in the so-called Twelve Articles. The prime authors were Sebastian Lotzer, a local furrier, and Christoph Schappeler, a Lutheran pastor in Memmingen, whose very occupations represent the convergence of economic concerns with religious conviction. These articles clearly reveal that the peasants understood the Lutheran gospel vision to include socioeconomic justice.

The Memmingen manifesto begins and ends with religious statements of conviction.

The first article asserts the right of each community to choose its own pastor. This was no doubt engendered by Luther’s 1523 pamphlet titled Proof of Holy Scripture that a Christian Congregation or Community has the Right and Power to Judge All Doctrine and to Call, Install and Depose its Teachers.
Article 3 explicitly conjoined the gospel with a revolutionary call for the abolition of serfdom. It was argued that since Christ gave himself to death on the cross, Christians are liberated from the dominion of sin and are therefore liberated from feudal servitude.
The remaining articles center on the social and economic injustices inflicted on the peasants by the feudal lords.
The final article returns to a Lutheran fundamental of the faith, namely, that if anything in the Twelve Articles is found to be in violation of the clear teaching of Scripture, then it will be retracted.

For the peasants, Luther’s reformation not only was about doctrine, but also incorporated their social and economic well-being.

Luther responded to the Twelve Articles in his Admonition to Peace, in an effort to avert a full-scale rebellion. Reviewing each of the articles, Luther plainly informed the peasants that their concerns had nothing to do with the gospel, but rather were centered on “worldly matters.” This admonition left the peasants deeply disappointed with Luther. His advice was rejected, and within a month, massive revolts broke out in Swabia, Franconia, and Thuringia.

Angered at their rejection, Luther took the side of the feudal lords, even as they slaughtered thousands of peasant rebels.

His harsh treatise Against the Robbing and Murdering Peasants only served to deepen the sense of betrayal peasants felt toward Luther.
Catholic apologists seized the opportunity to ridicule Luther with tracts such as the one by Johannes Findling, titled Luther Speaks with Forked Tongue, or How Luther on the One Hand Led the Peasants Astray, While on the Other, He Condemned Them (1525).

Such writings had a distressful impact on the peasants. Feeling betrayed by the Catholic Church’s abuse of power and then betrayed by Luther’s message of Christian freedom, the surviving peasants often found refuge among the emerging Swiss Anabaptists.

Sickingen’s revolt, Karlstadt’s radical reforms, the iconoclasm in Wittenberg, the Zwickau Prophets, and the peasant revolts were signs of the turbulent times. These volatile events of 1521–25 immediately following Luther’s defiance at Worms reveal that his message was a spark that fell into a German tinderbox of pent-up spiritual, social, and political frustrations.

These episodes were a mere foretaste of the troubles that would plague the new movement and thus validate one of the fundamental fears of Rome: rebels beget rebels.

II. THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD#

A. Reformers and Revolutionaries#

Although it was not his intention, Luther’s reform movement opened the floodgates of long-standing, deep-seated social and ecclesiastical discontent.

The magisterial reformers emphatically denied they were revolutionaries. They sought orderly reform through the city magistrates and princes — thus the term “magisterial.”

The reformers sought to return and rebuild the true historic church, which they were convinced had been corrupted by centuries of greed and idolatry sanctioned by Rome.

The magisterial reformers ardently sought to distance themselves from the revolutionaries, who were viewed as anarchists, charlatans, or demon-possessed lunatics stirring up violent mobs of illiterate and uninformed peasantry. This pejorative assessment was shared by magisterial reformers and Catholic conservatives alike. Indeed, the greatest threat to a civil society was neither a Protestant nor a Catholic, but a radical.

B. Radicals and Anabaptists#

Among the maze that emerged from Luther’s revolt were disparate clusters of disgruntlement that have generally come to be known as Anabaptism or simply as “the Radicals.”

Because of the complexity of this “other” movement (in contrast to the Lutheran and Reformed movements), it has resisted easy categorization and remains difficult to define, in part because it was not a single movement with a primary leader or a coherent set of doctrines. Rather, it was a series of reactions and ripostes, which were out of sync not only with the mainstream Reformers and Rome, but often with other so-called radicals.

Were they radicals or Anabaptists? To be sure, these various groups were indeed “radical” according to the accepted norms of the sixteenth century.

Some claimed to have experienced or observed miracle healings, glossolalia, and even resurrections.
Some declared they were prophets in direct communication with the Holy Spirit
Many were convinced the end of the world was imminent
Some in imitation of the early church turned to Christian communism
Others embraced pacifism

Many believed they should separate from the ungodly, and in a few rare instances, some even advocated violence against the ungodly. Many affirmed the authority of the Bible (and its literal interpretation) over the authority of the medieval church. In the main, they took a memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper.

From the outset, it was the sacrament of baptism that came to be the primary signifier of this diverse conglomerate of individuals and ideas. All, or nearly all, rejected infant baptism and affirmed the need for “rebaptism”—hence the term “Anabaptist”, from the Greek words ana (again) and baptiz (baptism). It was the one theologically distinctive conviction that was common amid all the diversity.

To embrace adult baptism was in effect a public declaration of independence from the authority of the medieval church and its traditional interpretation of the Bible. Therefore “Anabaptist” became the signature designation for a host of other theological convictions, all of which depended on an individual interpretation of the Bible.

It is noteworthy that baptism also had significant political overtones. To reject infant baptism was tantamount to treason.

For our general purposes, we will use the term “Anabaptist” broadly to refer to the more typical groups and reserve the term “Radical” in a more restrictive sense of those who went beyond even the Anabaptist mainstream in their advocacy for violence or rejection of cardinal and historic Christian teachings.

Anabaptists did not aspire to be identified as Protestants. Instead, they actually repudiated the Protestantism of the Lutherans and Reformed. Anabaptists acknowledged that Protestants were right to break away from the Roman Church, but they judged that the Protestants fell well short of the more extensive social, moral, ecclesiastical, and theological reforms that were needed and had succeeded only in creating another institutional church, to which the Anabaptists were equally opposed.

C. Monogenesis and Polygenesis#

The traditional view holds that the Anabaptist movement arose from the Swiss Brethren.

The origins are dated quite specifically to January 21, 1525, when Conrad Grebel baptized Felix Manz in the home of George Blaurock in the Swiss canton of Zürich. This view generally argues that Swiss Anabaptism was transmitted to southern Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and northern Germany, where it developed into its various branches.

However, in a seminal 1975 essay titled “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis”, leading Reformation scholars James Stayer, Werner Packull, and Klaus Deppermann dispute the traditional idea of a single origin (monogenesis) of Anabaptism in favor of a multiple-origins (polygenesis) theory. According to the latter, the Anabaptist movement had three points of origin:

Zürich in 1525, when the biblical literalism of Zwingli inspired Grebel to baptize Manz
Augsburg in 1526, when Hans Denck baptized Hans Hut, inaugurating a Spiritualist brand of Anabaptism drawn partly from Rhineland mysticism
Emden in 1536, when Melchior Hoffman ignited an apocalyptic-millennialist version of Anabaptism in northern Germany.

The best evidence seems to favor the traditional view — namely, that a movement with a distinctive stress on rebaptism of adults began in Zürich but mutated somewhat as it spread to Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. Local conditions determined the particular strain of Anabaptism.

III. THE MANY FACES OF REVOLT#

Anabaptists were composed of such diversity that modern scholars have struggled to find appropriate categorizations. George Williams, in his famous work The Radical Reformation, has provided what is perhaps the most helpful analysis by subdividing Anabaptists into three groupings according to their primary authority.

First, there were the “mainstream” Anabaptists who, like the mainstream Reformers, looked to the Bible as their final authority.

They also tended to idealize the early church and sought to return to its doctrines and practices. This grouping is generally identified with the Swiss Brethren; Grebel and Michael Sattler were key representatives, and adult baptism was a leading theological distinctive. In general, these Anabaptists were evangelical in orientation.

Williams has labeled a second grouping the “Spiritualists.”

This Anabaptist subgroup tended to rely heavily on the subjective experience of the Spirit of God, in some cases asserting direct communication with God. The German laymen Hans Hut and Hans Denck are typical representative Spiritualist Anabaptists. In the case of Hut, the Spiritualist inclinations were further excited by an intense apocalypticism, which in turn could lead to violence. Hut actually participated in the Peasants Revolt of 1525 led by Müntzer, but managed to escape the vengeance of the feudal lords. For our purposes, we have distinguished the nonviolent Spirituals from those with a proclivity for violence; these we have categorized as “Revolutionaries”.

The final category identified by Williams is the “Rationalists,” who, as the name suggests, placed ultimate confidence in their reason.

While such rationalists generally rejected infant baptism, it was not central to their outlook. They were truly “radical” in that they were willing to reject traditional doctrines if they did not measure up to rational scrutiny. Representatives of this group include Michael Servetus, Johann Faust (Faustus), and Lelio Sozzini, all of whom rejected the traditional doctrine of the Trinity as well as the eternal deity of Christ (that is, Jesus was divine in the same sense as God the Father). These historic Christian doctrines were judged false because they violated reason. Since respectable mainstream Anabaptists would not have wished to be identified with these anti-Trinitarians, they are best viewed as marginal to the broader Anabaptist movement.

Although those belonging to this category judged that the mainstream Reformers had not gone far enough, they were in fact far removed from the mainstream Anabaptist movement.

A. Archetypal Anabaptists#

1. Swiss Brethren#

As the Peasants Revolt was being crushed in Germany, a sacramental revolt was taking place in Zürich.

A movement developed in Zürich whose highest ideal was a literal hermeneutic of the Bible, and the conspicuous doctrinal manifestation of that hermeneutic was a stress on adult baptism upon a profession of faith. These Anabaptists were concerned that the mainstream Reformers were still under the influence of the medieval church and had failed to do justice to the teaching of the New Testament.

Perhaps the most representative brand of mainstream Anabaptism came from the former Benedictine monk Michael Sattler. Sattler had been the prior of the Black Forest monastery of St. Peter at Freiburg im Breisgau, but some scholars believe the peasant revolts in Germany triggered his transition to Anabaptism.

After the Peasants Revolt, he turned up in Zürich, where he seems to have embraced the Anabaptist ideas of the Swiss Brethren.
Forced to flee Zürich, he made his way to Strasbourg, where he had cordial relations with Martin Bucer. By early 1527 he had returned to the Black Forest, where his destiny was tragically forged.

By most accounts, Sattler was the primary author of the Schleitheim Articles, which resulted from a secret meeting of Swiss and southern German Anabaptists on February 24, 1527. The seven articles assert that:

baptism is contingent on repentance and a moral life
brethren who fail to live according to the Christian code of ethics are to be banned from the community
a memorialist or Zwinglian view of the Lord’s Supper is the correct one
there should be a radical separation of Christians from secular society
the pastor must maintain high moral standards in his life and ministry
true Christians must not serve the civil government
all oaths to the state are to be prohibited

Beneath the specific articles one can easily discern two main currents: separation from the world, and maintenance of moral purity within the Christian community.

Sattler and Swiss Anabaptists were unsettled by what appeared to be antinomian implications from Luther’s doctrine of justification. Sattler certainly opposed Catholics who stress works while neglecting faith, but he also rejected the notion of faith without works. For him, true faith must be accompanied by good deeds.

Mainstream Protestants and Catholics alike perceived in Sattler’s articles a sinister challenge to the stability of society. The late medieval feudal worldview understood society to be locked in a delicate equilibrium between church and state (Corpus Christianum). If the equilibrium were upset, then all of society would crumble into chaos. Thus, to separate church from the state was tantamount to sedition.

In the minds of Catholics and mainstream Reformers alike, there was no substantial difference between the violent apocalypticism of Thomas Müntzer and Sattler’s Schleitheim Articles. Many perceived in the Schleitheim Articles an effort to continue the Peasants Revolt under a different guise. If its fundamental principles were followed, social upheaval would inevitably result. Neither Catholics nor mainstream Protestants were willing to tolerate such ideas.

Sattler sought to live in the light of the Schleitheim Articles and soon became a “shepherd in the church of God,” in the little town of Horb in Württemberg. Soon after taking up his new pastorate, he was arrested by Catholic authorities along with his wife, Margartha, in March 1527, less than a month after composing the Schleitheim Articles. He was given a trial, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

After gruesome torture, Sattler was burned at the stake on May 20, 1527, at Rottenberg am Neckar.
When Margartha repeatedly refused to renounce the views of her husband, she too was put to death by drowning in the Neckar River.

Even in death, the Anabaptists were mocked. At least one magisterial reformer, Martin Bucer, opposed the execution of Sattler.

2. Pacifism#

The Swiss Brethren, harkening back to the ancient Christian centuries, early on embraced absolute pacifism as a Christian virtue. To be sure, Christian pacifism was nothing new, but it had received a renewed emphasis in the writings of Erasmus.

Based on his reading of the New Testament, Conrad Grebel’s letter to Thomas Müntzer in September 1524 clearly asserted that “killing has been done away with altogether.” Grebel advocated an absolute pacifism in which the Christian should not take up the sword for any reason, and his vision of pacifism became normative for the Swiss Brethren.

Sattler also had affirmed the same pacifism in the Schleitheim Articles, although he acknowledged that the state has biblical authority to employ the sword in defense of the good and punishment of evil.

Balthasar Hubmaier was in broad sympathy with Grebel’s pacifism except in the case of self-defense. He argued that Christians could serve in the military and that the Christian magistrate could take up the sword for defense or justice. Hence, Hubmaier’s followers became known as the “Schwertler” (sword carriers). But the prevailing view was that of Grebel, whose advocates were called the “Stäbler” (staff carriers).

Although there is no clear connection with the Swiss Brethren, Menno Simons was in basic alignment with the pacifism of the Swiss Anabaptists.

3. Anabaptism and Communalism#

Early on, both Erasmus and Zwingli recognized the sharing of wealth and goods as a Christian ideal. It was, after all, characteristic of the early Christians in Acts 2 and 4.

In Zürich, Zwingli did not require the sharing of goods, but neither was it disparaged.
As the Swiss Brethren rose up, they tended to embrace more fully the notion of Christian communalism.
In the first Anabaptist congregation in Zollikon (a village church within the canton of Zürich pastored by Johannes Brötli), all goods were held in common.
Felix Manz made it clear that alongside adult baptism, he also advocated “the community of all things, as in Acts 2.”

The Swiss Anabaptists increasingly came under attack from established churches that accused them of being unwilling to pay their debts and even desiring the property of others. As a consequence, some Swiss Anabaptists began to retreat from the New Testament ideal.

The Bavarian Anabaptist theologian Hubmaier, who sought refuge in Zürich in the wake of the Peasants Revolt, was tortured by the authorities and forced to renounce his Anabaptist views. Later he bitterly remarked that Zwingli advocated theological education by torture. Hubmaier fled to the south Moravian community of Nikolsburg in 1526, where he garnered the support of Count Leonhard von Liechtenstein, who was himself rebaptized as an adult.

The Anabaptist church in Nikolsburg became a beacon for many alienated Anabaptists throughout the region, especially from Tyrol in Austria. Disenfranchised Anabaptists flocked to Nikolsburg in droves and brought with them their cultural and religious diversity. These differences led to controversy in 1527.

One group, the Gemainschaffter (“community people”), under the leadership of Jacob Wiedmann, insisted that it was a Christian duty to share all things with immigrants. The controversy reached a boiling point in March 1528, when Wiedmann and the Gemainschaffter were expelled from Nikolsburg.

Dispirited and in disarray, they eventually settled in the Moravian town of Auspitz, and that is where Jacob Hutter first encountered them in August 1533.

utter had become a disciple of the Swiss Anabaptists under the influence of George Blaurock in Tyrol. After Blaurock’s execution in September 1529, Hutter assumed the leading role among the Tyrol Anabaptists. When persecution intensified, Hutter made his first contact with the remnants of the Gemainschaffte community in Moravia and formed a strong bond with Wilhelm Reublin, one of the early Swiss Brethren in the canton of Zürich. By 1533 the Tyrol persecution compelled Hutter to resettle in Moravia among the Anabaptists at Auspitz.

For two years Hutter and his Anabaptist community were able to live in relative peace. However, in the wake of the Münster Debacle (1534–35), the fires of persecution heated up, and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria pressured the lords of Liechtenstein to expel the Hutterites, leaving them vulnerable to greater misery. Hutter was arrested in late 1535 and executed on February 25, 1536.

In spite of the intense harassment, the Hutterites persevered, and when the persecution abated, they again found refuge in Moravia. Their distinctive Christian communalism has remained intact to the present day.

B. Spiritualists#

A second distinct form of Anabaptism arose in southern Germany and Austria that was especially indebted to Hans Denck. He was educated at the University of Engolstadt, but his earliest influence was German humanism.

In 1523 he made his way to Basel to bask in the glow of Erasmus and German Reformer John Oecolampadius, the latter assisting Denck in securing the post of principal at the prestigious St. Sebald’s School in Nuremberg. During his brief tenure in Nuremburg, Denck’s humanist inclinations fused with the mystical piety of Johann Tauler and the Spiritualism of Thomas Müntzer, which alarmed some of his fellow Reformists there.

Although his theology at this point is somewhat ambiguous, Denck too came under suspicion because of his association with some Anabaptists, and he was expelled in January 1525. He made his way to Augsburg, where he had a fateful encounter with Hubmaier, who persuaded him to be rebaptized. Thus Denck entered the ranks of the Anabaptists.

At least two key influences shaped Denck’s distinctive brand of Anabaptism.

First was his humanist background, which put him at odds with Luther’s doctrine of sola fide.
Second, the influence of the German mystics led Denck to question any outward religious forms that might be construed as mediating God’s grace.

These two features established the basic contours of the southern German and Austrian brand of Anabaptism.

Denck found himself repeatedly expelled from Protestant cities— Nuremburg in 1525 and Strasbourg in 1526. Exhausted by the violent persecutions of the Catholics and magisterial reformers and disillusioned with some of the excesses of the early Anabaptist movement, he sought refuge again in Basel with Oecolampadius.

Denck was allowed to return, but he was required to submit an acceptable doctrinal statement of his views. In his personal statement of faith, he still regarded infant baptism as unbiblical, but he no longer insisted on rebaptism. In general, this statement represents perhaps a shift away from Anabaptism toward a more distinctive Spiritualism.

Shortly after submitting his doctrinal statement, Denck contracted the plague and died in 1527, but not before inaugurating a distinctive Spiritualist form of Anabaptism.

IV. REVOLUTIONARIES#

A. Melchiorites#

Although a center of magisterial reform, Strasbourg was rather tolerant of religious dissenters and therefore, inevitably, collected a wide variety of marginal religious sectarians.

A third distinctive brand of Anabaptism arose in tolerant Strasbourg that was associated with the furrier and lay preacher Melchior Hoffman (c. 1495–1543). Before coming to Strasbourg, Hoffman had been an early advocate of Luther’s ideas in Scandinavian lands from 1522 to 1529, but ran afoul of the Lutherans and was banished to southern Germany.

It was not until he arrived in Strasbourg in 1529 that Hoffman embraced the Anabaptist movement.

He fell in with the so-called Strasbourg prophets — Barbara Restock and Leinhard and Ursula Jost — who persuaded Hoffman that he was Elijah of the last days (as prophesied in Revelation 11:3).
Hoffman progressively absorbed various radical strains, especially the Spiritualism of Hans Denck and the divinization Christology of Kaspar von Schwenckfeld.

Hoffman’s most distinctive teaching was his apocalypticism. He declared that Strasbourg was the “New Jerusalem,” where Christ would establish his millennial kingdom upon his return.

Borrowing from the medieval Calabrian Joachim of Fiore, Hoffman believed that the third stage of history was imminent (the Old Testament being the age of the Father, and the New Testament being the age of Christ).
In this final stage God would pour out his Holy Spirit upon 144,000 apostolic messengers (Rev. 14:1–5), who would spread the gospel throughout the world, and the false religious leaders would be destroyed (although Hoffman did not advocate violence).

All of this would take place before Christ’s return, which Hoffman predicted would be in 1533.

Hoffman traveled throughout the upper Rhineland and Holland, where he gained a following for his millennial ideas. One of his Dutch converts was Jan Mathys.

Hoffman returned to Strasbourg in 1533, where he was arrested and imprisoned. Reformers Bucer and Wolfgang Capito attempted to persuade Hoffman to moderate his views, and he did in fact yield on the issue of requiring adult baptism (although he still rejected infant baptism). Hoffman languished in prison until his death in 1543.

His theology was an unstable mixture of late medieval mysticism, Joachimite apocalypticism, quasi-Lutheranism, Zwinglian sacramentarianism, Spiritualism, and Anabaptism. The Melchiorite movement continued to gain adherents until his ideas were disastrously linked with the justification of violence in the Münster tragedy.

B. The Radical Kingdom of Münster#

It did nothing to reassure Catholic or Protestant concerns when radicals seized control of the Westphalia city of Münster in 1532. Their worst fears were realized and even surpassed.

Bedeviled by a series of tribulations — friction with the Catholic bishop, the plague, and crop failure — this city of 15,000 near the Dutch border in northwest Germany found itself in crisis. Bernard Rothmann, a dissident Catholic priest, capitalized on these tensions in 1532, pressing for religious reform and eventually persuading the city council to reject Catholic authority in favor of the new religion (March 1533).

Rothmann’s early theological influences were varied.

In most respects, he was a follower of Luther, but he tended toward a Zwinglian view of the Eucharist.
Melchior Hoffman’s prophecy that Christ would return by the end of 1533, bringing an end to world history, apparently affected Rothmann dramatically, and he adopted the radical apocalyptic vision for the imminent end of the world.
Soon other Melchiorites found their way to Münster, and then leadership shifted to the charismatic Dutch radical Jan Matthys.

When the second coming failed to materialize, Matthys prophesied a new date (Easter/April 5, 1534) and amid the frenzy sent his proxy John of Leiden (Jan Bockelson) to prepare the way in January 1534. Unusual astral phenomena appeared in the sky in mid-February, and Matthys himself arrived shortly thereafter to take personal control of the city he now declared was the New Jerusalem. Following the example of the early Christians, he pronounced Münster to be a communist state with all property held in common.

This new way of life was mandatory, not voluntary. Many people fled the city, but many more radicals arrived. At the same time, the bishop, Count Franz of Waldek, began to lay siege to the city. Matthys advocated the Melchiorite apocalyptism that the elect should wield the sword against all ungodly persons in preparation of the millennial reign of Christ. He announced plans to slay all the “godless”—that is, those who refused to be rebaptized — but he was persuaded to banish the ungodly instead of executing them.

Easter arrived, but the Messiah did not. In a vain attempt to enhance his dwindling credibility, Matthys claimed to have received a divine vision in which he was told he was invulnerable to the weapons of the godless. So he launched a suicidal attack on the much larger besieging army outside the city wall and was immediately struck down. Matthys’s death led to madness in Münster.

Upon hearing that Matthys was dead, his lieutenant, John of Leiden, assumed the prophetic mantle.

In early May, Leiden ran naked through the streets and fell into a trance for three days, after which he insisted on absolute obedience upon penalty of death.
He soon introduced polygamy, arguing an Old Testament precedent and asserting that the resultant population growth in the New Jerusalem would hasten the second coming.

In reality, he seems to have hankered after Matthys’s beautiful young widow, Divara. In short order, he accumulated a harem of sixteen wives. When one of his new wives resisted his authority, Leiden himself publicly beheaded her in the marketplace.

After successfully resisting attacks from the Catholic army (May and August 1534), Leiden, full of messianic pretension, declared himself the “king of righteousness” and absolute ruler of the New Jerusalem. He controlled the city through his twelve “elders of Israel” and identified himself as the new King David, who would rule the world as a warrior king in preparation for the return of the “peaceful Solomon.”

In one of the oddest alliances in the sixteenth century, the specter of a radical Münster persuaded Philip of Hesse to send his Protestant troops to join the Catholics besieging the city. As the siege tightened its grip, famine ravaged the city and reports of cannibalism seeped out. Finally in June 1535, two hungry Münster deserters revealed the vulnerable points in the city’s defenses.

After a furious battle, the city was taken on June 25. “King John” was captured and held up to public display for several months before his execution (January 22, 1536). His body (along with those of two fellow radicals) was thrown into an iron cage and hung from the tower of St. Lambert’s Church in Münster as a visual reminder to all of the end result for radicals.

C. Menno Simons the Anti-Revolutionary#

There is perhaps no greater indication of the dramatic differences among Anabaptists than the disparity between Menno Simons (1496–1561) and the radical kingdom of Münster.

Although Menno’s own theological heritage arises out of the same Melchiorite wing as the Münster radicals, he absolutely rejected the use of violence. In most respects, his theological and ecclesiological ethos resembles the Swiss Brethren.

The rise of Anabaptism predates Menno’s enlistment in the movement by a decade, but his role among the Dutch Anabaptists was so significant that it has taken his name, “Mennonites.”

Around 1525 he was serving as a village priest in Pingjum, East Frisia, when he came into contact with Protestant writings and seems to have acquired doubts about the doctrine of transubstantiation, but harbored his doubts in secret.

In 1531 Menno began to question infant baptism, but again said nothing publicly and continued his ministry as a Catholic priest. Three years later, followers of Melchior Hoffman visited Menno’s new parish of Witmarsum and began promulgating Anabaptist ideas.

His brother, Pieter Simons, cast his lot with followers of the revolutionary Münsterites and stormed the Cloister at Bolsward in Friesland, only to lose his life in the retaliation of the authorities. His brother’s death marked a turning point for Menno.

Deeply angry, Menno wrote (but did not publish) a tract condemning the leadership of the Münster revolt titled The Blasphemy of Jan van Leyden. By January 1536, Menno fully embraced Anabaptism and dedicated himself to rescuing the scattered remnant from Münster and giving it a nonviolent focus.

Menno’s basic beliefs are summarized in his magnum opus, The Fundamentals of Christianity. In this many see an Erasmian soteriological orientation in which repentance must precede divine grace.

Like other Anabaptists, Menno’s literal biblical hermeneutic led him to reject infant baptism.
His primary pastoral emphasis was on discipline.
He organized his irenic Anabaptism around the apostolic model in which the Christian community mutually supports one another on the path of sanctification.

Although the Mennonites faced internal divisions, they were able to retain their distinctive communal and pacifistic ethos down to the current day.

D. Rationalists#

One other intriguing vector materialized in the Reformation period that transcended the theological and ecclesiological norms of sixteenth-century Christianity and, indeed, went beyond the pale of the Swiss Brethren, the Spiritualists, and the Radicals. This very loosely affiliated group was designated the “Rationalists” by George Williams, because they typically elevated reason above the traditional doctrines of historic Christianity.

Although some of the rationalists rejected infant baptism, they bore little resemblance to the Anabaptists and Spiritualists. Generally, they shared with the other renegade groups a preference for pacifism and the imminent return of Christ, but exhibited a tendency to minimize or dismiss entirely the sacraments. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this third grouping is their rejection of the historic doctrine of the Trinity.

One of the most prolific of the rationalists was the Spaniard Michael Servetus. He published at least four works on the Trinity.

His earliest composition, On the Errors of the Trinity, was published in 1531.
That was followed by two treatises in 1532, his Dialogue on the Trinity and The Reign of Christ.

In each of these volumes Servetus defended a modalist understanding of the Trinity, that is, the one God revealed himself under three names or modes.

His magnum opus, The Restitution of Christianity, was published in 1553.

It appears that Servetus drew inspiration from two early hesiarchs, Paul of Samosata and Sabellius, both of whom were condemned by the early church.

Although Servetus never established a church, Italian anti-Trinitarians Valentino Gentile and Giorgio Biandrata carried Servetus’s books to Poland, Lithuania, and Transylvania. Others such as Francis David and Jacob Paleologus translated sections of Servetus’s writings into Polish and Hungarian and helped lay the foundation for Unitarianism.

Servetus also may have inspired the founders of Socinianism, Lelio and Fausto Sozzini. In 1552 Lelio Sozzini came into contact with the writings of Servetus in Padua through his friend Matteo Gribaldi. Although Lelio never went public with his views, he did leave behind a manuscript titled A Brief Explanation of the First Chapter of John, composed in 1561. When his nephew, Fausto Sozzini, discovered the manuscript in 1562, it exercised profound influence on his theology.

Both uncle and nephew felt compelled to measure traditional doctrines according to the ultimate standard of reason, which led them to a strict adoptionist view of Christ. They explicitly denied the preexistence of Christ, arguing that he was a mere mortal to whom God gave divine qualities. While Socinian anti-Trinitarianism is not the same as the modalism of Servetus, these two strains together contributed to the development of Unitarianism in eastern Europe.

In many respects, these sixteenth-century rationalists were precursors to the Enlightenment.

E. The Triumph of Anabaptism#

As Luther and Zwingli discovered, a consequence of sola scriptura was a myriad of interpretations. There was, in fact, considerable disenchantment with the pace and substance of Luther’s reform movement.

This disillusionment took varied forms.

Some, like Thomas Müntzer, linked spiritual disaffection with social unrest and thus joined the Peasants Revolt of 1524–25.
Some, such as Melchior Hoffman, concluded that the world was on the precipice of the millennial kingdom and embraced an apocalyptic vision.
Others such as Hans Denck, inspired by medieval mysticism, turned inward to the voice of the Spirit.
Still others, including Servetus, turned to the rational capacities of the mind and judged that the traditional doctrine of the Trinity is both irrational and unbiblical.

These variations on the Reformation theme tended to be disjointed, erratic, and localized movements. The broad outlines of a movement characterized by a vision of a restored New Testament Christianity with a pronounced emphasis on discipleship (Nachfolge), biblical literalism, the power of the Holy Spirit, a conception of church as pure and independent of state control, as well as a commitment to nonviolence and the sharing of goods.

These were radical ideas for sixteenth-century Catholics and Protestants and seemed to hold the prospect of social upheaval. This fear was realized in the Peasants Revolt and the Münster Debacle, which led to the wholesale rejection of Anabaptists as revolutionaries. For this, Anabaptists were persecuted to death.

Estimates vary, but as many as 5,000 of them were executed in the sixteenth century, by both Protestants and Catholics. Only three groups survive in our day: the Mennonites, the Hutterites, and the Unitarians.

The Anabaptist movement has been described as an “abortive counter revolt within the Reformation.” Yet, ironically enough, the values and principles of the Anabaptists have become part and parcel of American evangelicalism.

The separation of church and state, advocacy of religious toleration, the proliferation of independent churches as voluntary associations, and the Spirit-led Pentecostalism are all fundamental, not only to the American evangelical landscape, but to the emerging global Christianity.

Perhaps the Anabaptist movement was not abortive after all.

V. CATHOLIC RIPOSTE#

By its very nature, Protestantism was an aggressive movement. Almost like dominoes, Catholic principalities fell to the promise of Protestantism. Significant inroads were made in Germany, France, England, and Scandinavia, and Protestantism seemed to be sweeping over what remained of Catholic Europe.

The popularity of Luther’s protest caught the papacy and Catholic monarchs off guard.

Initially, the papacy did not take seriously the protests of the German monk.
Besides, much of Europe was mired in kingly feuds between Francis I of France and Charles V, who was King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor (and called himself “God’s standard bearer”).
Even more ominous was the threat of Suleiman the Magnificent and his Ottoman Turks.

The papacy and the Catholic monarchs had more to worry about than the grumblings of a “drunken German monk,” as Pope Leo X salaciously described Luther.

By the mid-1560s, however, the progress of the Protestant movement had slowed to a crawl, gaining only one new principality to its cause in the Netherlands. There were some reversals: Poland and Lithuania, which were predominantly Protestant for some time, were won back to the mother church. The reason for the slowdown was that a reenergized Roman Catholicism was fighting back with renewed vigor, and the Counter-Reformation was born.

Not all Catholics were hostile to Protestant ideas. Two competing factions existed within the Catholic Church itself, each with quite different attitudes toward Protestants.

The spirituali led by Cardinal Gaspar Contarini sought reconciliation.
Led by the severe Neapolitan Pope Paul IV (Gian Pietro Caraffa), these zelanti (zealots) advocated suppression of Protestantism by force if necessary.

These spirituali Catholic progressives were painfully aware of the need for ecclesial reform. Some even harbored a certain affinity for Luther’s understanding of justification. The other faction was equally convinced of the need for reform, but by retrenchment into traditional doctrines rather than reconciliation with heretics.

By 1542 the zelanti triumphed over the spirituali and launched an aggressive counterattack against the Protestants. This counteroffensive took place on several different fronts: prohibiting heretical books, a reinstituted inquisition, a new brigade of Jesuits, and a general church council.

A. Prohibition and Inquisition#

The invention of the printing press by the goldsmith from Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, around 1440 has been hailed as one of the greatest achievements of the early modern world, comparable to the creation of the Internet.

Unbeknownst to Luther, copies of his Ninety-five Theses were translated, printed, and circulated throughout Germany. He had discovered the power of the printing press.

1. Index of Prohibited Books#

The Catholic hierarchy discovered that the proliferation of books could also be a problem.

By 1521 theological faculties at Paris and Louvain became alarmed at the growing mountain of Protestant writings. Pope Paul IV was concerned to protect the faith and morals of the faithful, so in 1559 he issued the first authorized list of prohibited books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum).

Catholic authorities reasoned that only by controlling what came off the printing press could they prevent the spread of heresy. A revised form (the Tridentine Index) was authorized at the Council of Trent. The index was aimed primarily at Protestants, but also encompassed dubious Catholics such as Erasmus.

Perhaps the most startling prohibitions were the many editions of the Bible, as well as editions of the church fathers, unless granted special permission by bishops and Inquisitors.

2. Inquisition#

Inquisitional courts have a long history in the medieval church.

The most notable was the Spanish Inquisition, which first arose in the fifteenth century (1478) to combat Judaism and Moriscos (secret Muslims). With the emergence of Protestantism, the Spanish Inquisition turned its attention to ferreting out suspected Protestants and their sympathizers, which included Erasmian humanists. The Spanish Inquisition acted with impunity, largely because of its close ties with the Spanish monarchy.

Impressed with the effectiveness of the Spanish Inquisition, Italian Cardinal Gian Pietro Caraffa pressured Pope Paul III to introduce the inquisition to Italy as a necessary measure to suppress the advance of Protestantism.

The Roman Inquisition was thus inaugurated in July 1542 with the bull Licet ab initio, and its authority extended over all of Christendom. Caraffa was appointed one of six General Inquisitors. He was so eager to activate his newly acquired inquisitional powers that he actually set up interrogation rooms in his own home.

With Caraffa’s elevation to Peter’s chair as Pope Paul IV in 1555, the Roman Inquisition shifted into high gear.

B. The Jesuits#

Especially since the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), many within the Roman Catholic Church were fully aware that reform was an urgent matter.

This reform impulse was manifested in the emergence of new religious orders dedicated to personal piety.

Matteo de Bascio (d. 1552) sought to return the Franciscans to the primitive simplicity of St. Francis.
The Capuchins were established and quickly became one of the most influential orders of their day.
The Theatines were inspired by the ideals of the Oratory of Divine Love (a confraternity of laymen and priests dedicated to charitable works and spiritual renewal) and sought to reform the church by imposing an austere spirituality on the clergy.

It was, however, another religious order that was to have the greatest impact in the Reformation period: the Society of Jesus, more popularly known as Jesuits.

1. Ignatius of Loyola#

If the Roman Inquisition was a defensive measure against the rise of Protestantism, then the Jesuits represented the offensive weapon of the Counter-Reformation.

There was no person who embodied the Counter-Reformation more than the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola. Born into a noble family in the Basque region of northern Spain around 1491, Loyola was baptized Ignacio López de Loyola. He later adopted “Ignatius” as his name because he thought it was more acceptable among foreigners.

In 1509 Ignatius became a career soldier, serving the Duke of Nájera. On May 20, 1521, while defending the city of Pamplona against the army of Francis I, his life was changed forever when a French cannonball shattered his right leg and injured the other leg. While convalescing in his hometown of Loyola, Spain, he underwent a profound conversion experience. During this time he read De Vita Christi (The Life of Christ) by Ludolph of Saxony.

Loyola resolved that he would henceforth be a soldier for Christ. After his physical recovery, he visited the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat (March 25, 1522), where he placed his sword before an image of the Virgin Mary and walked away from his military career. He then spent a year in seclusion outside of Manresa, near Barcelona.

After a year of rigorous asceticism and mystical experiences, he emerged with a clearer vision of how he would serve God, now as a soldier for Christ. He began writing down his insights, which became the basis for his Spiritual Exercises, although this work did not reach final form until 1541.

After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1523, Loyola returned to Spain and pursued education at the famous University of Alcalá de Henares. Ironically, he was briefly imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, which suspected him of heresy. Exonerated, he continued his education at the University of Paris, where he remained seven years (1528–35) and received his M.A. at the age of forty-three.

By 1534 Loyola had gathered a group of six like-minded students who also dedicated themselves to becoming “a soldier of God.” These six became the nucleus of what would become the Society of Jesus and included:

Francis Xavier, a missionary to Japan and India
Diego Laínez, an influential theologian at the Council of Trent and Loyola’s successor.

Initially, they called themselves the “Company of Jesus”, which had military overtones as in an infantry company, but later settled on the name “Society of Jesus”.

2. The Society of Jesus#

Ignatius and his six comrades intended to go to Jerusalem as missionaries to the Muslims, but war between the Venetian Republic and the Turks interrupted those plans. Instead, they offered themselves in service to Pope Paul III.

On September 27, 1540, the Society of Jesus was approved as a new order with the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae (To the Government of the Church Militant). Membership was initially limited to sixty, but this restriction was removed through the bull Injunctum nobis on March 14, 1543.

Loyola was elected the first Superior General of the Society of Jesus. In the opening words of the “Formula of the Institute,” Ignatius describes each member of the new order as “a soldier of God under the banner of the cross,” whose mission was “to serve the Lord alone and the Church his Spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth.”

The very term “Jesuit” originally was a derogatory term referring to one who employs the name of Jesus too quickly and too often. Ignatius himself never used the term, but over time, members of the society rehabilitated the term, and it became the normative designation.

As Loyola envisioned the new society, it was to be an elite order organized along military lines and distinguished by its iron discipline and obedience to the papacy.

They recruited only the most dedicated and gifted candidates.
Ignatius insisted on an extremely high level of academic preparation.
After two trial years as novices, the candidates took the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
This was followed by ten years of rigorous academic study of philosophy and theology, and training in practical aspects of ministry.

Only then were they allowed to take the special oath of obedience to the pope and thus were formally incorporated into the Society of Jesus.

In the Jesuit Constitutions, Ignatius stressed that obedience to the pope must be perinde ac cadaver (“in the manner of a corpse”), which was Ignatius’s way of demanding absolute obedience. This is a soldier’s survival creed. In the midst of battle there is little time to ponder complexities; a good soldier must obey superiors without thinking.

The Jesuits were often viewed as willing to do anything to further their goals. The unofficial Jesuit motto Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam (“For the greater glory of God”) reflected the conviction that no act is evil if performed with the intention of bringing greater glory to God. The conviction that the ends justify the means was a hallmark of Jesuits and a key to their success.

As the Jesuits developed, they concentrated on three primary activities.

First, they established schools and universities throughout Europe.
Second, they were committed to missionary activity abroad.
Their third objective, which became preeminent, was to stop the advance of Protestantism.

To a remarkable degree, the Jesuits were successful. By the time of Ignatius’s death, the Jesuits were already operating a network of seventy-four colleges on three continents.

Perhaps one of the most significant accomplishments is that Jesuits were largely responsible for stopping the progress of Protestantism and even managed to reverse Protestant gains in Poland, Lithuania, and southern Germany.

Ignatius died in Rome on July 31, 1556, as a result of the “Roman fever,” a severe strain of malaria. Many of the details of his life and philosophy were dictated to his secretary, Gonçalves da Câmara, in his waning days.

He was beatified by Pope Paul V on July 27, 1609, and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on March 13, 1622. Not surprisingly, Ignatius is venerated as the patron saint of Catholic soldiers.

VI. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT#

Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine in 1520, demanding that Luther repent of his sins. In a bold act of defiance, Luther replied by publicly burning the papal bull before a crowd of cheering Wittenberg students. By 1522 Emperor Charles V also concluded that the only means of unifying the church and settling the Reformation controversies was a church council.

On the other hand, Pope Clement VII (1523–34) vehemently opposed the idea of a council, fearing the specter of a revived conciliarism.

Once the Great Schism (1378–1417) was resolved, Pope Pius II officially renounced any lingering conciliarism in his bull Execrabilis (1460), which asserted papal supremacy over general councils.
Pope Clement was loath to do anything that might renew conciliar ideas.

Luther did live to see a general church council convene in Trent, but by that time the religious differences had hardened into religious bulwarks.

When the Protestant Reformation would not go away, Pope Paul III (1534–49) had to face the awkward reality that a general church council was necessary despite his fear of conciliarism. When he proposed the idea to his cardinals, it was unanimously rejected. Nonetheless, he pressed forward and issued a decree for a general council in Mantua, Italy, to begin on May 23, 1537.

Luther responded by preparing the Schmalkald Articles for discussion at the general council, but the council failed to convene after yet another war broke out between Francis I and Charles V. An effort to move the council to Vicenza found little enthusiasm, and it was postponed indefinitely on May 21, 1539.

A. The Nineteenth General Church Council#

It was not until December 13, 1545, just two months before Luther’s death, that the long-awaited council held its first session at Trent (Trento) in Italy.

Amid the constant jockeying for control, the pope and the emperor had finally settled on a location at Trent.

This imperial free city (ruled by a prince-bishop) satisfied the pope because it was in Italy
It pleased the emperor because it was within the empire.

The pope had the last laugh, because the voting structure was amended so that individual votes would be cast rather than voting by nation, as was the case with previous church councils. This gave the papacy an advantage, since Italian representatives far outnumbered those from other nations.

The nineteenth general church council at Trent extended over nearly twenty years and under three popes during three distinct phases:

1545–47 (under Paul III) included sessions one through eight
1551–52 (under Julius III) encompassed sessions nine through fourteen
1561–63 (under Pius IV) incorporated sessions fifteen through twenty-five

The tenuousness of the council was evidenced by the fact that during the intervals its continuation was often in doubt.

Trent began inauspiciously with only about thirty prelates in attendance, most of whom had little firsthand knowledge of the writings of the Reformers.

The Italian and Spanish prelates were vastly preponderant in power and numbers.
At the passage of the most important decrees, no more than sixty clerics were present.
Of particular significance was the presence of Jesuits, who were viewed as papal theologians and thus invested with special authority.

The council found its focus by the third session (1546), when the council goal was clarified as the “rooting out of heresy and the reform of conduct [of the clergy].” It was decided that the council would weave together both goals so that reform and doctrine would be considered concurrently.

B. Politics and Prelates#

As mentioned earlier, there was bad blood between the two most powerful Catholic monarchs of the Reformation period — Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain. For there to be a general church council, the political desires of these two titans had to be considered.

The matter of a general church council was further complicated by the fact that the popes were caught in the middle between these two Catholic combatants. Therefore, the calling of a church council depended on a condition of peace, or at least a truce, between the warring monarchs.

The council itself was repeatedly interrupted by papal and imperial maneuverings.

In March 1547, Pope Paul attempted to transfer the council to Bologna on the pretext of avoiding the plague, but the emperor saw through the gambit and resolutely opposed any move that would bring the council into the papal orbit of influence. This confrontation paralyzed the council until it was officially suspended in September 1549.
The council reconvened at Trent on May 1, 1551, under the auspices of Pope Julius III (1550–55), but it too was interrupted when Maurice, the Lutheran Elector of Saxony, launched a surprise attack and nearly captured Emperor Charles V in April 1552.

The council was delayed for more than a decade during the pontificate of the virulent anti-Protestant Paul IV. It was finally reconvened at Trent by Pope Pius IV (1559–65) for the last time, meeting from January 18, 1562, until its final adjournment on December 4, 1563.

The great council concluded with further acclamations of acceptance of the decrees of the council and of anathema for all heretics.

Trent was important for a myriad of reasons, but perhaps most significant is that it gave formal affirmation to doctrines that had not received formal clarification in previous centuries. For the most part, it offered its affirmation of doctrines and practices only after they had achieved normative status in the church.

Surprisingly, the church had not yet pronounced on the matter of justification by the sixteenth century, nor had it addressed precisely the matter of the dual authority of Scripture and Tradition. This explains in part why Luther called for a church council: the official understanding was yet undefined.

C. Scripture and Tradition#

The first phase of Trent was particularly significant, since it was during those sessions that the more important work was done. One of the most disputed issues between Protestants and Catholics centered on authority.

Luther famously coined the phrase sola scriptura to indicate that the Bible is the final authority, not the church or its councils. Trent responded by affirming two sources of authority — Scripture and Tradition.

Along with its affirmation of the authority of Scripture and Tradition, Trent declared the Latin Vulgate (along with the Apocrypha) as the only authorized version of the Bible.

D. Justification#

It was also in the first phase, during 1546–47, that Trent devoted its sixth session to the issue so close to Luther’s heart, the doctrine of justification.

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Trent was the presence of high-ranking theologians who were somewhat open to Luther’s new doctrine.

The general of the Augustinian friars, Girolamo Seripando, took up the mantle of these moderates and pressed for a doctrine of “double justification”

Double justification means that there are two causes of justification: God’s gracious forgiveness of human sin, and the obedient human response to the moral demands of the gospel.

The Augustinian general was passionately opposed by the Jesuit Diego Laínez, who in a three-hour harangue challenged Seripando’s orthodoxy.
Cardinal Pole, who was a presiding papal legate, excused himself at a crucial moment of the debate on justification and did not vote.

Pole, whose own views were sympathetic to Luther, had seen the writing on the wall and realized that the conservatives would not allow any concessions on this matter, so he feigned illness so that he did not have to register a vote.

Trent defined justification somewhat negatively as “not only the remission of sins, but sanctification and renovation of the interior man through the voluntary reception of grace and gifts, whereby a man becomes just instead of unjust and a friend instead of an enemy.…” The canons that follow extrapolate further.

Canon 9 states rather unequivocally, “If anyone says that a sinful man is justified by faith alone … let him be anathema.”
Canon 11 adds, “If anyone says that men are justified either through the imputation of Christ’s justice [righteousness] alone, or through the remission of sins alone … let him be anathema.”
With Luther clearly in view, canon 32 declares: “If anyone says that the good works of a justified man are gifts of God to such an extent that they are not also the good merits of the justified man himself … let him be anathema.”

In general terms, Catholics and Protestants used the term “justification” to mean different things.

Both Trent and Protestants affirm legal justification and moral sanctification

the sinner is saved by grace through faith in Christ (justification), and sinners must live godly lives (sanctification) through the internal power of the Holy Spirit.

Trent understands this term to include both legal justification and moral sanctification

To Protestants, the Tridentine understanding seemed to suggest that justification, because it includes sanctification, is based on human effort, thus demeaning God’s grace.

Protestants restrict the term to legal justification only

To Catholics, the Protestant doctrine of justification seemed to be a legal fiction, undermining human responsibility.

E. Sacraments#

It was during the second phase that Trent fully addressed the crucial matter of the sacraments.

It had earlier affirmed the traditional seven sacraments rather than two (baptism and Eucharist) as Protestants claimed with regard to canon 1 of the seventh session, stating, “If anyone says that … there are more or less than seven [sacraments] … let them be anathema.”

It was not until the thirteenth session (1551) that Trent turned its full attention to the heart of sacraments, namely, the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Trent would brook no modification on this point and firmly reasserted that when the bread and wine are consecrated, “a change is brought about of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood of Christ. This change the Holy Catholic Church properly … calls transubstantiation.” Trent defiantly reaffirmed a central doctrine that had been the practice of the church for a millennium.

In a last-ditch effort, the emperor insisted that Protestants be invited to Trent. The council fathers actually received a Protestant delegation during this second phase in January 1552, but it turned out to be futile. The Protestants demanded that discussions on decrees already approved be revisited, but the Tridentine fathers were not about to concede to the Protestant petition.

With the resumption of hostilities in 1552 between the emperor and France, the council disbanded and did not meet again for ten years.

F. Ecclesial Reform#

The third and final phase of Trent was attended by some two hundred bishops from nearly every corner of Christendom. But all was not well.

Its last sessions (1562–63) were marred by bitter clashes between the Italian faction of the pope and the Spanish, who were suspicious of papal power. Tensions were so high that riots engulfed the city and blood was shed. The council itself ground to a halt for ten months (September 1562 to June 1563).

In spite of the fracas, the council managed to get back on track and issued decrees affirming traditional doctrines of purgatory, intercession of saints, and indulgences. Up to this point, no reform decrees of real substance had yet been passed, but the council well understood that they could not conclude their work without addressing the vital matter of ecclesial reform.

In the final sessions, the Tridentine theologians forbade nonresident bishops, the holding of multiple benefices, simony, the granting of abbeys in commendam as favors to wealthy laymen, and clerical sexual immorality, while at the same time stressing the need for more education for clergy and renewing devotional practices.

The council ended by submitting its decrees to the pope for approval — an act that recognized his supremacy in the church and marked the defeat of any lingering conciliarism. When the Council of Trent had finished its work on December 4, 1563, all hope of reconciliation with the Protestants was gone and Christendom was now divided yet again.

VII. THE SPIRIT OF THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORMATION#

Not all the decrees of Trent were adopted enthusiastically or unanimously by European rulers. They were approved in the Italian states, Portugal, Poland, Savoy, the Holy Roman Empire, and Spain. The French, however, never officially accepted them.

The old abuses did not immediately vanish. Resistance could be found among local clergy, who had vested interests in perpetuating old habits, and at times the papacy itself would prove reticent to reform. Nevertheless, Trent did eventually succeed in infusing a new spirit into the church.

A. The Persistence of Pius V#

Much of the new reforming energy derived its impetus from Pius V (1566–72). Pius V lost no time in carrying out the disciplinary decrees of the Council of Trent, particularly in Rome.

The Curia was reorganized, and serious measures were taken to eradicate simony and nepotism.
The streets of Rome were cleared of prostitutes.
Pius V elevated Thomas Aquinas to a Doctor of the Church in 1567, republished his Summa Theologiae, and required Catholic universities to teach Thomism exclusively.

Pius was relentless in resisting Catholic reticence and Protestant opposition.

When Emperor Maximilian II contemplated concessions to Protestants in Germany, Pius threatened excommunication.
When the Queen of Sweden partook of Communion in both kinds, she was excommunicated.
When Queen Elizabeth I did not return England to the Roman fold, she too was excommunicated.
When Huguenots were gaining ground in France, Pius sent troops to aid the king.

Perhaps more than any other pope, Pius V embodied the vigor and the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Subsequent Popes Gregory XIII (1572–85) and Sixtus V (1585–90) followed in his footsteps.

B. Tridentine Piety#

In the wake of Trent, there was a genuine revival of Catholic piety led by a number of men and women of outstanding devotion and sanctity.

Charles Borromeo, nephew of Pius IV, epitomized the reforming ideal.

As archbishop of Milan (1565–84) he vigorously carried out the Tridentine reforms and raised the standards of the clergy. Seminaries were founded, and discipline was enforced in religious orders. Borromeo also established schools and hospitals for the poor. His personal piety was demonstrated during a plague in Milan when he endeavored to visit the sick despite the danger to himself.

In Spain, two outstanding Carmelites did much to instill the spirit of revival: St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

St. Teresa, a daughter of the Spanish nobility, had joined the Carmelite order as a young girl.

After undergoing a severe religious crisis and experiencing mystical visions in 1562, she went on to establish a convent in Avila, Spain, where she modeled piety and strict obedience. Her mystical writings did much to further her reputation.

St. John of the Cross, as he had come to be known, was also a member of the Carmelites and an ascetic who longed to see a renewed spiritual awakening.

Like Teresa, he was a mystic. He collaborated with Teresa in bringing reform to Carmelite men. His reform efforts resulted in suffering and indignity, which gave rise to his famous phrase “dark night of the soul.”

After their deaths, the reformed Carmelites received permanent papal recognition, and their mystical piety continues today among modern Carmelites.

By the dawn of the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church had restored in large measure its moral authority and spiritual prestige. It had weathered the storm of sixteenth-century Protestantism, but the challenge of the modern world would prove even more formidable.

VIII. PONDERING THE REFORMATION AFTERMATH#

When Luther threw down his theological gauntlet in 1521, little did he know that his anguished study of the Bible with his theological insights would lead to a century of bloodshed.

The fact that church and state were so intimately intermingled meant that theological convictions inevitably fell prey to political maneuverings. This state of affairs proved highly combustive, and Europe fell into a century of brutal and nasty repression and warfare.

The religious wars finally staggered to a resolution with the Peace of Westphalia (1648). All parties agreed to a formula that was supposed to ensure religious peace: Cuius regio, eius religio (“Whose Reign, His Religion”).

No sooner was the formula adopted than rulers found it unenforceable. Although not its original purpose, the Westphalian peace formula inadvertently hastened the European trajectory toward secularization.

Tensions between Catholics and its “unholy” offspring of Protestants and Anabaptists continued for centuries. Hostilities began to thaw between magisterial Protestants and Anabaptists by the eighteenth century.

As for the discord between Catholics and Protestants, it was not until the second half of the twentieth century with the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) that relations became more cordial and tolerant.

The bloody aftermath of the Reformation led to a kind of religious exhaustion, which is another way of saying that few were willing to die for an abstract theological idea anymore. In a strange turn of historical events — one Luther could never have imagined — theological debates prepared the way for the rationalism of the Enlightenment and its accompanying secularism.