The Reformation and state formation

The social aspect of the religious division of Europe has been discussed in a famous book by Max Weber on the connection between Protestantism and capitalism.³⁵ According to Weber, Protestantism introduced a strong work ethic.

Weber’s thesis is still being discussed and attempts are made to present statistical evidence for or against it. Concerning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there is no doubt that the most successful trading and colonial countries were Protestant but it is an open question whether they were capitalist because they were Protestant or vice versa.

It may also be objected that Weber focuses too exclusively on the doctrinal aspect of religion compared to the institutional one. From an economic point of view, Catholicism was a more expensive religion than Protestantism. Most obviously, as we have seen, the Catholic Church was the greatest landowner in most countries and in addition received a tax from the inhabitants, the tithe, as well as incomes from its jurisdiction. At the Reformation, this wealth was largely taken over by kings or other secular powers. Thus, more capital became available for kings, nobles and burghers, which may have had political as well as economic consequences. In addition, Protestant, and particularly Calvinist, businessmen had less incentive than Catholic ones to spend money on altars, masses, pilgrimages, church buildings, and so forth.

The organization of the new churches had similar consequences. Lutheranism replaced the bishops by superintendents who were royal officials with far lower salaries than their Catholic predecessors, to the extent that the offices were no longer attractive to members of the higher nobility.

By contrast, the changes were less radical in the Church of England. Ickworth House in Suffolk is a large, rotund building in the classical style, inspired by Pal­ladian and ancient Roman architecture and decoration. It was built in the period 1795—1829 for the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Frederick Hervey, Fourth Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry (1730—1803). As the building indicates, Bishop Hervey was fascinated by classical architecture and the ancient world, far more than by his clerical duties. He had a large art collection, which was one of his reasons for building Ickworth.

Frederick Hervey is of course not the typical English bishop but he illustrates some features of the Church of England in the early modern period. One is the close connection to the nobility. Most bishops belonged to aristocratic families, although they were more often younger sons than titled lords³⁸ — Hervey inherited the title from his elder brother after he had become bishop. It was also his wealth as a lord that enabled him to build Ickworth. Although the revenues of the Church of England had been reduced after the Reformation, the bishops still retained much of the wealth and status of their Catholic predecessors, including their membership of the House of Lords. Concerning his life-style and religious opinions, Hervey was not directly representative, but the higher clergy, not only in England but also in other countries were often strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and critical of many of the dogmas.

By contrast, ordinary ministers were often poor; some found it necessary to have more than one parish to gain a decent living. Moreover, the medieval system of patronage was upheld, only that the patrons were no longer monasteries. Only one-fourth of the parishes were controlled by the Church. Around half of them were held by private individuals and could be bought or sold. Around a tenth belonged to the Crown, while the rest was controlled by bodies like the Oxford and Cambridge colleges.³⁹ The practice with absent officeholders who let vicars take care of their duties continued, as expressed in the fact that ‘vicar’ is the usual term for the head of a parish.

From this point of view, the Reformation was less radical in England than in most other Protestant countries. On the other hand, the Church of England was far from the religious monopoly of the Lutheran Churches in the German princi­palities and Scandinavia. In 1662, a number of Puritan clerics broke out of the Church of England and founded their own religious community, ‘chapel’ versus ‘Church’. In the following century, the Methodist movement started within the Church of England but became a separate religious organization in 1791, after the death of its founder, John Wesley.

Concerning Calvinism, the doctrine of predestination is not the only factor of political importance. Confiscations of ecclesiastical lands may have had the same importance in Calvinist countries as in England. In addition, as also noted by Weber, Calvinism created tight communities with strict supervision of the beha­viour of their members, as did also the parallel movements in England. It may be added, however, that Jansenism, which was influential in some Catholic countries, notably France and the Southern Netherlands, represented similar moral principles and may have had similar effects.⁴⁰ Families and neighbours controlled behaviour more efficiently than did bureaucratic authorities. Based on these observations, there seems to be a connection between Calvinism and republicanism or constitu­tional government and between Catholicism and Lutheranism and absolutism, with the distinction between the two latter that the Lutheran version of absolutism is likely to have been more effective. However, there are also a number of individual differences between the various countries, which do not always conform to this pattern and which will be discussed later.