The Reformation

In April 1521, the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V held his first Diet with his new subjects in Worms. One of the items on the agenda was the case of an Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, who had challenged the authority of the Church.

The emperor was and remained a staunch Catholic but was willing to listen to Luther’s arguments. At the meeting, Luther recognized his authorship of the books that had been brought to the council and was then asked if he would recant. He asked for one day’s grace to make an answer. On the next day, he gave his answer in a speech. Acknowledging his authorship of the books, he admitted that some of them were polemics against the papacy which ‘reflected the experience and the complaint of all men’. He continued:

If then, I revoke these books, all I shall achieve is to add strength to tyranny; and open not the windows but the doors for this monstrous godlessness for a wider and freer range than it has ever dared before.

Finally, he stated that without a conviction from ‘scripture or plain reason (for I believe neither in Pope nor councils alone)’, he could recant nothing. This state­ment was later summarized by one of Luther’s editors in the most famous of his alleged utterances: ‘Here I stand and can do no other.’⁹

In this way, Luther replaced a tradition many centuries old, supported by learned theologians and high-ranking prelates, by his own conviction, based on his reading of the Bible.¹⁰ Luther’s proclamation was revolutionary, but it also had its back­ground in earlier intellectual and religious developments. The Reformation can to some extent be regarded as a further development of the lay piety of the previous period, often referred to as Devotio moderna, which emphasized personal piety and the inner life rather than institutions and ceremonies.¹¹ In the case of Luther, his religious development has usually been depicted as the result of a deep personal crisis, the experience of himself as a sinner who was unable to atone for his sins, whatever he did to obtain God’s grace. The solution was to trust in Christ’s redemption. No human being can satisfy God, but Christ has died for the sins of humankind and the only way to salvation is to accept the grace God bestows on completely undeserving sinners. This picture of an existential crisis is based on Luther’s own account later in life and may possibly be exaggerated, but the doc­trine and the personal experience of it were nevertheless central to Luther and his followers as well as to other reformers, although its intensely personal aspect may have been less prominent in them. The reformers rejected good works as a means to deserve God’s grace, in particular, the many ceremonies and devotional practices of the Catholic Church. The logical consequence of this rejection of human ability to contribute to salvation was the doctrine of predestination: the whole humankind is condemned to perdition, but God has from eternity selected a few to be saved.

In contrast to the Catholics, the Protestants regarded the Bible as the only source of God’s revelation and Christian doctrine, an opinion that shows the close con­nection between the Reformation and Renaissance Humanism. In accordance with the latter, the study of the Bible in the original languages began in the fif­teenth century. In 1516, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466—1536), one of the leading humanists at the time, published an edition of the New Testament in Greek with comments. Luther was professor at the University of Wittenberg, which became one of the first centres of the new movement. The new emphasis on the Bible corresponded to a new attitude to tradition. There is a close parallel between the Protestant view of the Bible as a text that should be read independently of its long history of interpretation and the Renaissance humanists’ perception of Classical Antiquity as a lost golden age which had to be recovered by pushing aside the intervening period, ‘the Middle Ages’. Thus, Luther and the reformers did with the Bible what Machiavelli did with Livy and the Roman republic and Vasari with classical art. On the other hand, the reformers rejected the humanists’ optimistic view of human nature and their attempts, which go back to the Middle Ages, to find a synthesis between Christianity and ancient philosophy. The difference on this point explains the increasing distance between Luther and Erasmus. Erasmus sympathized with Luther in the beginning but reacted against his radical attack on Catholicism and his pessimistic view of human nature. In 1524, he published a book on free will, to which Luther responded with one on the unfree will, pro­claiming the doctrine of predestination (1525).

The Reformation thus had a solid basis in the intellectual innovations of the period.

Although we should not neglect the importance of individual conviction, reli­gion was a matter of eternal salvation or damnation about which individuals might make different choices whatever their background, the different outcome of the religious competition in various parts of Europe and between various social layers is great enough to demand an explanation. The usual observation is that Protestant­ism appealed to the urban population and to the intellectuals and educated classes, a fact reflected in the importance of books and pamphlets, although these might also be read aloud or form the basis for preaching or other oral appeals. The fast spread of the movement to the towns of Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and to some extent France, is an example of this. By contrast, the peasants usually remained Catholic, although the Reformation did influence the German peasant rebellion of 1524—25. An important part of the explanation of this is the integra­tion of Catholicism into peasant life, with feasts and rituals, related to community life and fertility of the soil and the animals as well as humans themselves.

According to these criteria, we might expect the Reformation to have had a great impact in Italy, which was the most urbanized country in Europe and the centre of Renaissance humanism. Actually, the movement was known in the country from early on and had considerable influence in intellectual circles. More influential, however, was a movement within clerical circles in favour of reform of the Church from the inside, accepting parts of the Protestant doctrines.¹³ For a long time, there was little persecution of religious deviation; popes like Clement VII (1523—34) and Paul III (1534—49) were more interested in extending their territorial power and the influence of their families than in religious orthodoxy. Paul III, in addition, sympathized with the moderate reformers. This attitude changed with Paul IV (1555—59), who was violently anti-Protestant and initiated systematic persecution of heretics.

In the following period, Protestantism seems to have been suppressed in Italy. In contrast to Germany, Italy in the sixteenth century was no longer dominated by independent cities and principalities. Most of it was under the control of the pope, the Emperor or Spain, and particularly the Spanish influence led to religious con­formity.

Concerning the other country in the south, Spain, the king and the nobility were staunchly Catholic, while the Church was largely under royal control. Moreover, contemporary, united Spain could be regarded as the result of a con­tinuous struggle for Catholic Christianity against the Muslims, a struggle that had ended in victory with the conquest of Granada in 1492. In the foliowing period, the king, the nobility and most of the people were united in the suppression of the Jews and the Moors and the Inquisition was under royal control. Although Pro­testantism did have some adherents in Spain, it is difficult to imagine that it would have any chance to influence significant parts of the establishment.

In the northern part of the Continent, Scandinavia, the relatively easy acceptance of Protestantism is striking.¹⁴ The key country is Denmark, which was culturally closely linked to Germany. Since 1448, the dynasty had been German and the king ruled several German principalities. Already Frederick I (1523—33) sympathized with the Reformation and broke the ties with the papacy. His son, Christian III (1534—59) was a convinced Lutheran, who had heard Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521. The Lutheran movement gained ground during the 1520s, particularly in the two leading towns, Copenhagen and Malmo, although there was also resistance from the Catholics. While all the bishops were Catholics, many priests converted and Lutheran sermons and religious services were held in many places in the country. When the Catholic clergy complained, the king answered, like many of the German princes, that he would not forbid anyone to practise his religion. A civil war over the suc­cession broke out in 1534, but both candidates were Protestant. After his vic­tory in 1536, Christian III arrested the bishops and made the country officially Lutheran. The new church was organized in close contact with Luther. As the king of Denmark was also king of Norway, the Reformation was introduced in this country during the following year. Here the population was little influ­enced by the new movement and probably remained Catholic for a long time, although there was little open resistance.

In Sweden, the Reformation was introduced by King Gustaf Vasa at a Diet in 1527, mainly for pragmatic reasons. The king wanted to tax the Church and confiscate some of its estates to pay for the costly war he had fought to chase the Danes out of the country and become king (1521—23). Here no alternative Church organization was introduced at the time and the Catholic bishops remained in their offices but were replaced by Protestants when they died. A series of later Diets took further steps in the direction of Protestantism, but the Reformation was less radical here than in Denmark. An attempt to reintroduce Catholicism or at least in the direction of a more positive attitude to the Catholic Church took place under John III (1568—92), who had married a Polish princess and wanted his son Sigismund to succeed to the Polish throne. How­ever, the attempt failed. As a Catholic, Sigismund was deposed and replaced by his uncle, the staunchly Protestant Charles IX (1598—1611), whose son, Gustaf II Adolf (1611—32) became the saviour of the German Protestants during the Thirty Years War.

Concerning Scandinavia, there is some evidence of the factors that are usually regarded as decisive for the introduction of the Reformation. Both Denmark and Sweden had universities, although both were small and relatively new; Uppsala University in Sweden was founded in 1477 and Copenhagen University in Den­mark in 1479. There was relatively little urbanization, although more in Denmark than in the two other countries, and this country also had a Reformation move­ment of the kind to be found in Germany and the Low Countries. It would nevertheless seem that the decisive factor was the king in all three countries. In addition to the Reformation movement in Denmark, he could exploit reactions against the financial burdens imposed by the Church and the greed of the secular aristocracy, which profited from the confiscation of Church lands.

Turning to the crucial middle zone, we find strong tension in all countries and widely different outcomes: Protestant victory in England and Scotland but with small Catholic minorities, Catholic victory in Ireland, despite the English conquest; Catholic victory in France after a long struggle, but with the survival of a Protes­tant minority; division between the two confessions in Germany, Catholic victories in Poland and Hungary but with Protestant minorities, and, finally, Catholic vic­tory in Bohemia with Protestantism largely wiped out.

England resembles Scandinavia in becoming Protestant, although the process took longer and was more complicated in this country. There is little to indicate widespread support for the Reformation at the time when Henry VIII broke with the pope in 1533. This was not a direct consequence of Lutheran influence; Henry was a Catholic, who had even composed a treatise against Luther which earned him the title Defensor fidei (Defender of the Faith), bestowed by the pope, a title still used by British rulers. The reason was his unsuccessful attempts since 1527 to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, so that he could marry again and secure the succession to the throne. Despite a number of pregnancies, Cathe­rine had only borne him one daughter, Mary (born 1516), who later succeeded him. Finally, Thomas Cranmer, a Cambridge scholar of Protestant persuasion, convinced the king that he had no need of a papal dispensation; as king, he was also the superior of the Church and thus entitled to decide on his marriage.

Henry’s original idea in 1533 was probably to remain head of a church that was Catholic in all respects except obedience to the pope. However, since most sincere Catholics disapproved of his divorce, he came to rely more on people with Pro­testant sympathies, in particular Thomas Cromwell, who became Chancellor and leading minister in 1534. During the rest of Henry’s reign, various steps were taken in a Protestant direction, including the suppression of the monasteries (1535—39), the reform of the ecclesiastical calendar, abolishing a number of saints’ days, and the destruction of various relics. There was also a reform of doctrine, although no consistent move in the direction of Protestantism, but rather in both directions, depending on the influence of people of different persuasion in the king’s sur­roundings. Religious persecution also worked in both directions. Thus, on the same day in August 1540, three Catholic priests were hanged, drawn and quartered and three Protestants burnt as heretics — a demonstration that, regardless of con­fession, the most important was obedience to the king.¹⁵

The country became officially Protestant under the regency for Henry’s son, Edward VI (1547—53), when a new, Protestant Church of England was founded and local churches were systematically purged of relics, vestments, statues and pic­tures. Then Catholicism returned under Henry’s daughter, Mary (1553—58), when 273 Protestants, including four bishops, are known to have been burned at the stake. Most of them were ordinary people; Protestant members of the elite had mostly left the country. The final solution came under Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth (1558-1603).

Personally, Elizabeth was clearly a Protestant, although her precise religious opinions are not easy to discern or to distinguish from political considerations; politically, she was bound to be a Protestant, because the Catholics did not recognize her as born in legitimate marriage and thus denied her right to the throne.¹⁶ She was cautious in the beginning, partly because of England’s alliance with Spain until the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559. In 1559, Parliament passed the Supremacy Bill, which made the Queen Head of the Church. More precise rules for the English Church were passed in the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563, which outlined the dogmas, organization and rituals of the new church, partly building on and partly revising earlier Protestant rules. Dogmatically, the Church of England received stronger influence from Calvinism, largely at the initiative of Marian exiles returning from Geneva or the Netherlands. This inclu­ded the doctrine of predestination. On the other hand, a vague compromise was sought regarding the hotly contested issue of the Eucharist. Much of the Catholic liturgy and organization were retained, including the episcopal office and liturgical vestments, which provoked hard-core Protestants. The new church was in this way designed to include as many varieties of Protestants as possible. Participation in Anglican services every Sunday was made compulsory and failure to attend in principle and, to some extent, in practice punished by fines. In this way, Angli­canism became the only lawful religion, although there was no persecution of people with different religious opinions, as long as they showed external obedience to the Anglican Church.

Nevertheless, there was opposition. A large part of the population remained Catholic, although their numbers diminished during Elizabeth’s long reign. How­ever, since the pope had excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570, releasing her subjects from their obedience to her, Catholic priests were forbidden entry to the country and punished as traitors. Particularly during the conflict with Spain after 1587, Catholics were suspected of disloyalty, a suspicion that was in most cases unfoun­ded; English Catholics were loyal to their country and did not wish a Spanish conquest. From the opposite side, the radical Protestants, eventually called Puritans, wanted to get rid of the remaining elements of Catholic liturgy, doctrine and organization.¹⁷ They did not establish a separate religious community at this time, but formed an opposition within the established Church. Elizabeth reacted parti­cularly strongly against their rejection of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which she considered a danger to the organized hierarchy of society. This conflict did not end by Elizabeth’s death but continued in the following period and, as we shall see, exploded during the Civil War in the 1640s.

During three decades in the middle of the sixteenth century, England had undergone four major religious changes without an open civil war. There had been some popular rebellion, but nothing like what happened in Germany or in France at around the same time. The reforms were carried through Parliament, which apparently calmly accepted to have Protestants burnt at the stake as well as Catholic priests hanged, drawn and quartered. It would immediately seem that the expla­nation of this must be that people in England were less religious than in other parts of Europe, or at least that the Catholic Church had little support in the country in the period before the Reformation. This has also been the view of a number of scholars.¹⁸ More recently, however, this view has been challenged, particularly by Eamon Duffy who, having examined in detail popular religion in England, con­cludes that there was a great attachment to the Catholic cult both before and after the introduction of the Reformation and that there was widespread popular sup­port for Mary’s restoration of Catholicism. The decisive shift did not take place until Elizabeth’s long reign.¹⁹

Protestantism probably had a stronger position among the elite than among the general population, similar to the situation in other countries. And the elite cer­tainly had great material interests in the Reformation; in particular, lay landowners profited immensely from the suppression of the monasteries. Even Mary did not dare to try to reverse this process. Whatever our opinion of the religious fervour in Reformation England, however, there can be little doubt that the explanation for the series of religious transformations without open civil war must be the strength of the royal government. Even in the sixteenth century, however, neither Henry VIII, Mary, nor Elizabeth were able to introduce whatever reforms they wanted but had to juggle between various interests and religious opinions. The explanation for the religious development in England is therefore not that the king had full control of religion but rather a high degree of centralization which meant that the religious controversies played out on the central level in the form of factions and intrigues at court rather than in struggles between various parts of the country. No English king has executed more nobles than Henry VIII. This is not only the result of Henry’s cruelty and ruthlessness but also, and probably mainly, because of the factional rivalries at court.

The situation was somewhat different in Scotland. Here the Catholic Queen Mary Stuart was deposed by the Protestant nobility and the Reformation was introduced. The deposition may partly have been the consequence of Mary’s behaviour; she was suspected of having murdered her husband, but it probably also reflects the weaker position of Scottish kings. A series of prolonged regencies during the later Middle Ages had strengthened the power of the aristocracy. Two previous kings had also been murdered, James I in 1437 and James III in 1488. Ireland was conquered by England and an Anglican Irish Church introduced. However, the majority of the population continued to be Catholic, which in the following period actually served to strengthen the English control of the country, by banning Catholics from holding public office, receiving education, etc.

In Germany, the Reformation became a strong movement from the 1520s onwards. Its introduction, particularly in towns, was also largely the result of pop­ular initiative;²⁰ the great wave of conversions among the German princes came as late as the 1550s and 1560s. Only two major territories, Electoral Saxony and Hessen, adopted the new doctrine during the 1520s, both in 1526. However, few princes tried to suppress the movement. Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, 1486—1525, protected Luther and tolerated his adherents but did not himself leave the Catholic Church. It was his brother and successor John who introduced the Reformation in Electoral Saxony.

Bavaria, later a Catholic bastion, had a large Protestant population, although its duke remained Catholic. The same applies to Austria, which was mainly Lutheran in the sixteenth century; thus two-thirds of the population of Vienna were Pro­testants. In Hungary, the Catholic population was reduced to around 10—15 per cent, while the majority were Reformed Protestants.²¹ Further east, Transylvania, a country with a considerable German population, which from 1570 was a largely independent principality under Ottoman overlordship, became a centre of Reformed Protestantism.²² Finally, Protestantism had a strong position in Bohemia, a country with a long history of religious dissent; only around 5 per cent of the population of Prague was Catholic in the sixteenth century.²³ When Ferdinand I was elected king of Bohemia in 1526, he had to guarantee religious tolerance. For the next century, this country was characterized by an extraordinary religious diversity: Utraquist Hussites,²⁴ radical Hussite Bohemian Brethren, Lutherans and Reformed Protestants.

The Reformation also spread from Germany to Poland and the Baltic region, particularly to the German-speaking merchants in the towns.²⁵ A great number of nobles converted to Protestantism, in addition to the fact that part of the popula­tion in the east belonged to the Orthodox Church. Already in 1544, a Lutheran university had been founded in Konigsberg in Prussia, an area largely surrounded by Polish territory, which attracted Polish students. The country also had an anti­Trinitarian or Arian community, as well as a Russian-Orthodox Church in

Ukraine, which had existed before the Reformation. In contrast to further west, the Poles favoured religious tolerance. This may have had something to do with the strength of the nobility, which was also religiously divided, although the Polish monarchy was considerably stronger in the sixteenth century than it became later. Later, in the seventeenth century, there was a movement in the direction of Catholicism, particularly among the nobility, largely thanks to the Jesuit schools and universities, but Protestants were not persecuted. A union with parts of the Orthodox Church was achieved in 1596 through a compromise. The Orthodox were allowed to keep their Slavonic liturgy and married priests in return for recognizing the primacy of the pope.

During most of his reign, Charles V was too preoccupied with other enemies to launch a frontal attack on the Lutherans. Moreover, Germany was not his main field of interest; he actually delegated most of his power in this area to his younger brother Ferdinand as king of the Romans in 1530. Like Charles, Ferdinand was clearly a Catholic, but he was both more moderate and a cleverer politician than Charles, and tried to come terms with the Lutherans without war. The war that broke out in 1547 was the direct result of Charles’ intervention.²⁶ He was suc­cessful at first, winning the famous victory at Mühlberg, immortalized by Titian, but his victory led the princes to unite against him and the war ended with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, a compromise that was largely the result of Ferdinand’s initiative. Here the religious question was settled according to the principle ‘cuius regio eius religio’, i.e. that the prince of the country should decide its religion. Those of his subjects who had a different religion than the prince should be allowed to emigrate. The episcopal principalities formed an exception to this. They were to remain Catholic; if the bishop converted to Protestantism — which hap­pened in some cases — he had to resign. This settled the issue for a long time; despite much tension, there was no open war over religion until the Thirty Years War broke out in 1618.²⁷

In the meantime, however, a general revival of Catholicism had taken place. This led to the reform of the Catholic clergy and the foundation of new religious orders, notably the Jesuits, founded by the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola in 1540. The Council of Trent (1545—63) was a victory for hard-core Catholicism, rejecting any theological compromise with the Protestants but also introducing a number of reforms: a standardized liturgy, compulsory for the whole Church, although with some exceptions, improvement of the education of the clergy as well as the laity, stricter enforcement of the rule of celibacy and the duty of the bishops and other clergy to reside in their districts. From the 1560s onwards, Catholicism managed to reconquer large parts of southern Germany and the Habsburg Empire, largely through preaching and education — the schools and universities run by the Jesuits were important in this — to some extent also through persecution by staunchly Catholic princes, the Dukes of Bavaria and the Habsburg princes in southern Germany and Austria. By contrast, the emperors were mostly tolerant.

This changed with the accession of the staunchly Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II in 1619 which led to the Thirty Years War (1618—48).²⁸ Religion was not the only factor but nevertheless an important one. The war began in Bohemia, where the estates refused to elect Ferdinand, replacing him with the Reformed Protestant, Frederick, Count Palatine of Rhineland, who arrived in Prague in autumn 1619 (‘the Winter King’). However, the forces of the emperor and the Duke of Bavaria defeated the Bohemians at the Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague and conquered the city (1620). Twenty-seven Protestant nobles, considered responsible for the rebellion, were executed in the great square in Prague in 1621 and in the following period, Protestantism was brutally suppressed. Next, the emperor moved against the Count Palatine’s territories in Rhineland and replaced him as an elector with the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, who, like his predecessor, was a Wittelsbach. Eventually, a number of other powers were involved in the war, Spain, the Dutch Republic, Denmark, Sweden and finally France. The end result was that the emperor kept his control of Bohemia and the south, but failed in his attempt to reintroduce Catholicism in the north. Religiously, this resulted in a clearer difference between the Protestant north and the Catholic south in Ger­many, although with exceptions, such as the Catholic ecclesiastical principalities of Cologne and Münster in the north and the Protestant Württemberg in the south. Politically, the Peace of Westphalia formalized the division of the country into more than 400 units, around half of them principalities and the rest towns.

The importance of the Reformation for this result is open to question. It seems unlikely that the war would have broken out if it had not occurred. The reign of Maximilian I immediately before (1493—1519) shows some development in the direction of increased imperial power, but above all more cooperation between the emperor and the princes. However, it was hardly the emperor’s main aim to sup­press the princes, but rather to receive their aid in various imperial projects, notably in Italy and against the Turks. Without the Thirty Years War, the power rela­tionship between the Empire and France would have been a different one — as Richelieu understood very well when he supported the Protestants, subsidized the Swedes and insisted on continuing the war in 1635 — but the character of the Empire would hardly have been very different. The Reformation was not the cause of the political division of Germany; on the contrary, the political division resulted in a religious division because the princes rather than the emperor decided the religious adherence of the inhabitants. Once a prince had converted and established a Protestant Church in his lands, it was difficult for the emperor to interfere; as shown in the war of the 1550s, this might easily lead even Catholic princes to resist the emperor.

In the sixteenth century, the religious conflict was more dramatic in France than in Germany. Here the Reformation, in its Calvinist version (Huguenots), was introduced at about the same time, but more gradually. Individual preachers were to some extent tolerated in the beginning, but later in his reign, Francis I took a stricter attitude, which was followed by his successors. The movement spread to large parts of the country, particularly in the south. In 1562, open civil war broke out, which lasted intermittently until 1598, when the former Huguenot leader, King Henry IV, who had converted to Catholicism in 1594, had become king and issued the Edict of Nantes, which allowed the Huguenots to practise their religion and gave them a number of fortified places as a guarantee.

Protestantism was weaker in France than in Germany; the number of Huguenots at the beginning of Henry IV's reign has been calculated at around 1/20 of the population.²⁹ Nevertheless, it was strong enough among the nobility as well as in the towns to create considerable problems for the central power and divide the country for 30 years or even longer, if we include the war in the 1620s to suppress the Huguenot strongholds. The religious division affected the very top of the French aristocracy; two of the five leading families, the Conde and the Coligny, were Huguenots, whereas the very influential Guise were staunchly Catholic. From this point of view, the conflict was not exclusively religious. It is significant that it broke out during a regency; tradi­tionally a period likely to lead to internal divisions. At his death in 1559, Henry II was succeeded by Francis II (1559—60), aged 15, who in turn was succeeded by Charles IX (1560—74), aged 10. The minorities resulted in the dominance of the strictly Catholic Guises, which in turn provoked the reaction of the Calvinist nobles and eventually the civil wars.

Catherine of Medici, Henry II's widow, who ruled the country during her sons' minorities in the 1560s and played a central part in the government even later, tried to achieve compromises between the two factions to limit the influence of the Guise. Eventually, she found it necessary to get rid of Coligny, which in turn led to the St Bartholomew's Massacre of the Huguenots in 1572.³⁰ When finally a Huguenot ascended to the throne, it proved impossible to convert the country as a whole. Whatever the personal attitudes of the French kings before Henry IV, they all supported the Catholic cause. In contrast to the situation in Germany, the King of France had extensive control of the Church. In the recent Concordat of 1516, he had received the right to appoint bishops and abbots as well as some right to tax the Church. Consequently, he had little to gain by embracing the Reformation. In addition, during the wars over Italy until 1559, the pope was a valuable ally — mostly an enemy of the Habsburgs — which it would be dangerous to alienate. In the later phase of the struggle, from around 1570 onwards, the Counter-Refor­mation played an important part, mobilizing the people against the Protestants.

France in the sixteenth century was not the unified, bureaucratically organized state it became after the Revolution and Napoleon, and was also significantly less unified than under Louis XIV. Although the number of independent principalities had been greatly reduced since the late fifteenth century and the royal administra­tion had expanded, the king still depended on a small number of great nobles with extensive estates as provincial governors, but in contrast to Germany, these nobles were not territorial princes with independent power bases; they were not able to divide the country according to the principle of ‘cuius regio eius religio'. The religious issue had to be decided centrally. The solution became particularly com­plicated on the death of Henry III in 1589, when the Catholics had emerged as the stronger party, while the nearest heir was a Huguenot. The Catholics tried to find an alternative candidate, but with little success; hereditary monarchy was too well established in France. Henry IV’s conversion solved the problem, in addition to the fact that he was a clever politician and an efficient and popular ruler.

Historians and historical sociologists have generally emphasized the importance of the Reformation for European state formation, which is correct enough. Particularly in Protestant countries but also to some extent in Catholic ones as well, the Reformation increased the power of the state: confiscation of Church lands, education of the population, the doctrine of obedience and the victory of the central power in the internal struggles over religion contributed to this. However, we should also consider how previous state formation can explain the spread of the Reformation and the different outcome of this in various parts of Europe. The easy introduction of the Reformation in Scandinavia is difficult to explain without a relatively strong monarchy, perhaps stronger at the time than most Scandinavian historians have assumed. Germany comes into the same cate­gory, although here the strength lies with the princes who had sufficient control over their territories to introduce religious reform, to some extent also to resist the central power. Concerning this country, we nevertheless have to take into account that the pressure from the people may have been stronger than in England and Scandinavia. Moreover, the division into principalities was also a weakness which almost enabled the emperor and Spain to suppress Protestantism during the Thirty Years War. Finally, the frequent shifts in religious belief without leading to open civil war form impressive evidence of the development of the state in England in the previous period.

We may also note that there is only one example of the introduction of the Reformation in a monarchy against the will of the ruler, namely, Scotland. Here the monarchy was relatively weak, not least because of the many previous periods of regency, when the aristocracy had ruled the country. Mary Stuart also had a weak position; she had spent 13 years in France, 1548—61, from the age of 5 to the age of 18, and had been married to King Francis II of France. She returned to Scotland at his death in 1561, at a time when the Reformation was well under way. She also committed some blunders which made her easy to outmanoeuvre.

The difference between England and France confirms the impression from the comparison between the two countries in the Middle Ages. France had reached a level of consolidation where it was impossible to divide the country into territories with different religion as in Germany but where the king could not to the same extent determine the religion of his subjects. France forms the only example of the failure of a king to introduce the Reformation, which may immediately seem to indicate a relatively weak monarchy in this country. However, Henry IV was the only Protestant king in the country, whereas all his predecessors had defended the Catholic cause. Moreover, at the time of his accession in 1589, Catholicism in France, as in most other places, had been strengthened by the Counter-Reforma­tion, and there was a broad popular movement in favour of the traditional religion, led by the Jesuits and other reformed orders. Two regicides by Catholic fanatics, of Henry III in 1589 and Henry IV in 1610, the only ones in France in the post­Carolingian period, in addition to a number of attempts, may be regarded as the expression of this. On the other hand, the idea of dynastic succession was suffi­ciently strong in France to make it difficult to get acceptance for an alternative candidate to Henry IV. In the end, Henry’s pragmatism solved the problem.

The Peace of Westphalia settled the religious division of Europe in its main outlines. The following wars mostly had less to do with religion,³¹ although there was still a division between Catholic and Protestant Europe and most countries had an official religion to which their inhabitants had to adapt or risk persecution. Catholic and Protestant countries had in common that religion was largely gov­erned by the state. The king was the head of the Church in Protestant countries or there was a republican constitution which subordinated religious and secular mat­ters to the same authority in most Reformed countries. Catholic countries still recognized the doctrinal leadership of the pope, but the king usually governed the Church in his country and appointed the bishops.

With some exceptions, the Reformation would seem to have strengthened the power of the kings and eased the transition to absolutism. On the other hand, the movement also led to new debates about the right to resistance and opposition against unjust rulers.³² Initially, the reformers had rejected the right of resistance, insisting on St Paul’s command of obedience to secular powers, who, although pagan, were insti­tuted by God. Luther was the first to change his opinion, under the influence of attempts to suppress the Reformation in the 1530s. One argument for resistance became particularly important in a German context, namely, the distinction between ordinary subjects and princes subordinated to the emperor. The argument was first put forward by the legal experts of Philip of Hessen, one of the leading Lutheran princes, who claimed that the German princes were not ordinary subjects but rulers in the Pauline sense, although subordinated to the emperor.³³ Thus, St Paul’s words about respect for lawful rulers must also include the princes, who then could not be bound to the same loyalty to the emperor as ordinary subjects to them. In this way, the pro­blem was largely solved for the German Lutherans, as the country in practice came to be divided according to confession so that the prince decided the faith of his subjects. By contrast, this argument was less relevant to the Calvinists, who rarely had the sup­port of princes. Whereas Calvin himself continued to reject resistance, although with some modifications towards the end of his life, Calvinists in more exposed conditions, John Knox in Scotland and the Dutch during the war of independence against Spain, embraced active resistance, which they supported largely with secular arguments, going back to Classical Antiquity and the Scholastic reception of Aristotle.³⁴ In the seventeenth century, these arguments played an important part among the English Puritans during the Civil War. Similar arguments were still used in Catholic circles, although there was an increasing tendency here to embrace absolutism.