The religious policies of Ferdinand and Isabella, were inconsistent and undid years on convivencia, leaving the people instead with religious and social intolerance, and an unpopular inquisition. During their reign, they started to remove two whole peoples, peoples who, by their own admission, had much to offer the country. The Moors of Aragon were superb landsmen and had for years played and important part in the Spain's economy, and had even remained loyal throughout the Granada war. The religious developments, did indeed, cause much division and conflict.
Towards the end of Ferdinand’s reign, there was maturing in Germany one of the most famous religious figures of the 16th Century; Martin Luther. This was a man who would start the first religious movement to successfully defeat and break away from the Catholic Church. There would, however, be a lot of conflict and controversy along the way. By 1520, Luther had clarified many of his early ideas, such as sola scriptura, sola fide, two sacraments, consubstantiation, utraquism, combined church, priest of all believers and spoke out against indulgences. All of these ideas were considered very controversual and made Luther very unpopular with the Catholic church he was trying to reform. They prompted heated debate amongst the biblical humanists, such as Eck and Erasmus. These ideas offended the church so, due to their radical nature and also because of the threat they presented on the hold Rome had over the German people and their means of income. If Indulgences were to be ceased then it would remove a lucrative income for the church. If the princes did take up Lutheranism, as he was pleading with them to, then they would cease to receive taxes from that princedom. These ideas also seemed to the church to encourage sin. If, as Luther was preaching, one could get to heaven by simply believing, without confessing, or buying an indulgence, then it would allow people behave as they wished with no fear of punishment (it was precisely this argument which prompted some people to convert to Lutheranism). The Pope was even prompted to call him a heretic and issued a Bull Exsurge Domine in July 1520 that gave him 60 days to recant on 41 points or face excommunication. Luther did not recant and was eventually excommunicated in 1521.
His excommunication did not stop Lutheranism from spreading around the north of Germany. While his ideas repelled some good Catholics due to their heretical nature, they also appealed to other sectors of society for other reasons. The four main classes Luther appealed to were; Peasants, Towns, Knights and Princes. In each of these areas of society there were people who took up Lutheranism, either because they genuinely believed in the theology, or because they believed there was something in it for them to gain. All four of them manifested their belief in Luther with violence.
The Knights were an old class which was in decline, lesser noblemen living in castles on small estates. They were suffering from a deteriorating standard of living and resented the Princes' power and influence. There were amongst them, a number of educated people, biblical humanists who understood and supported Luther's ideas. However, they also saw his theology as a way of increasing their power and as a way of attacking the Princes. The Knights had two particularly outspoken men who were prepared to lead a movement against the church. They were Von Hutten and Sickingen. They led an attack by the Knights on the Bishops and Archbishops in Germany in 1522, as they believed them to epitomise corruption in the church. It was a bloody revolt in which several Bishops died, including the Bishop of Trier. It was put down by the forcibly princes and in response Luther produced a pamphlet on "Secular authority and to what extent it should be obeyed". This went some way in restoring the Princes' view of Luther, but also caused the Knights to decline even faster and to lose their faith in Luther as a religious leader.
The Peasants were also responsible for a revolt, this time in 1524-25. They, however, did not even understand Luther's ideas correctly. They had got hold of his ideas by the means of woodcuts, specifically made "for the sake of the simple folk". However, due to the imprecise and ambiguous nature of these woodcuts, the ideas were not clearly enough conveyed, and instead of seeing Luther as a positive teacher of new religious ideas, they saw him as a kind of "holy man" and the Catholic Church as the bringer of evils; the force which had kept them suppressed for so long. This situation was not helped by the "peasant messiah" myth that was present in Medieval Germany. The peasants saw Luther as the great peasant leader who would lead them out of hardship and into greatness. One man in particular did a lot to spread this peasant movement. His name was Muntzer. He, or some of his associates published the Twelve Articles of Memmingham, a document which listed twelve peasant grievances, and which clearly held references to Lutheran ideas. In an attempt to calm things down, Luther published his "Friendly Criticism of the Twelve Articles" in 1525, but he could not control the disturbances which had been set in motion by mounting peasant grievances. All this disturbing activity finally erupted into a bloody revolt in 1524, with peasants all over Germany involved in killing and pillaging priests and churches. In response, Luther published his paper "Against the Thieving, murdering Hordes of Peasants" in 1525, in which he encouraged the Princes to destroy the peasants and to show no mercy until they had submitted. The Princes obliged. They came down very hard on the marauding peasants, killing hundreds. In publishing this paper, Luther was showing himself to be not all the peasants thought him to be; thus he lost the support and trust of a whole generation of working Germans.
Lutheranism also had a role to play in the lives of the townsfolk. Indeed, it was possibly the towns people who were the most responsive to his ideas. This was due to the fact that the towns held the most concentrated amounts of learned people, people who could go to the universities and exchange views and ideas with others of the same mental calibre. In the towns too, it was easiest to make the public aware of Luther's ideas, by the use of pamphlets and woodcuts which could be sold or given out in the public areas of the towns, and by evangelism too. The network of traders that made their way from town to town also aided the spread of Luther. In this way, the people of the towns in Northern Germany began to take up Lutheran ideas. However, there were certain ways in which they could personally benefit from converting. They believed (wrongly) that Luther encouraged the practice of usury, the Protestant work ethic allowed them to earn money more days of the week, in cutting themselves off from Rome, they were removing the need to pay so many taxes. Indeed, the fact that the support in towns was popular (in Ulm, 1530, when citizens were asked to vote on whether to maintain the reformation or return to Catholicism, 87% of the voters were in favour of reform) shows that religious consciences were not the only factor in town's conversion. In fact, such was the eagerness for some towns to convert, that acts were committed which caused division and conflict. One example of such activity occurred when Luther was still incarcerated at Wartburg in 1522. A group of people in Wittenburg, led by Karlstadt, Muntzer and the Zwichau Prophets committed iconoclasm, smashing statues and icons in the churches, and generally being very disruptive and violent. So worried and disturbed was Luther this, that he came out of hiding and made his way there in disguise in order to deliver a series of eight sermons intended to calm things down.
One of the central requirements for the success of Lutheranism was the co-operation of the Princes. Luther wanted a combined state and church and in order for this to be done, the support of the Princes was needed. To begin with, there were not many princes who were willing to completely break from tradition and risk conflict, either because they did not believe in Luther’s ideas and thought him a heretic, or because they feared retribution from Rome and the Holy Roman Emperor. There were, however three man exceptions to this, Philip of Hesse, Frederick’s successor, John of Saxony and Duke Albrecht of Prussia. Eventually, over half of Germany was to be ruled by Lutheran princes, but it was nearly 30 years before that came about. There are many reasons why a Prince may have wanted to convert, but one can never be always sure which of them it was that prompted them to reject tradition and the Catholic faith. If a prince converted then he would stand to gain a lot financially. He would get all the taxes meant for the church and also the numerous church lands in his princedom. Thus he would expand his sovereign powers and gain almost absolute authority, not having to share power with bishops and the Pope.
However, numerous princes converted, but still more remained Catholic. There was fear that these new breed of Princes would cause trouble, and so the League of Dessau was set up in 1525. This made the Lutheran princes anxious, and so when false details of an attack on them were leaked in 1528, Philip of Hesse and John of Saxony instigated a pre-emptive strike. Catholics were outraged. Their fears that Lutheranism could only lead to conflict seemed to have been confirmed. So the anti Lutheran movement was stepped up. In response, the Lutheran princes, against Luther’s wishes, set up the Schmalkaldic League in 1531. For the next twenty or so years, there were conflicts, leading up to the “Schmalkaldic Wars” and eventually the Peace at Augsberg in 1555. We can see, therefor, that Lutheranism, as a religious development caused a lot of conflict and division.
Luther, however, was by no means the sole reformatory force in the early half of the 16th Century. Just over the border from Germany, in Switzerland there was a man hard at work developing his own views on the state of the church and how he believed it should be run. His name was Zwingli. A few months after Luther had made his stand against indulgences in 1518, Zwingli became a preacher at the Great Minister in Zurich. It was there that he made public his increasingly radical ideas, finally making his official break with Rome in 1523. This marked the beginning of a highly turbulent period in Swiss history. Zwingli claimed that he had developed his ideas independently of Luther. They were, however, remarkably similar, with Zwingli promoting sola scriptura , abolition of Mass and so on. They did, however, differ on one very important area: consubstantiation. Whereas Luther believed that the bread and wine took on the essence of Christ's flesh and blood, Zwingli believed that it was a mere representation of the Last Supper. This was sacrementarianism. It was this point which caused the meeting at Marburg in 1529 to be a failure. Thus, we can see that even the Protestants themselves were divided.
Zwingli also differed from Luther in that he believed in the use of force to spread the faith. Unlike his German counterpart, he actively preached to his followers that violence was a viable means of converting the public. In fact, he established a Schmalkaldic League style council of seven reformed Swiss cities as early as 1527, called the Christian Civic Union. This league would defend the faith, by force if necessary. In answer to the formation of such a league, and the demands Zwingli later made on Zurich to push reform in the rest of the cantons, the remaining five Catholic cantons left in central Switzerland formed their own league, the Christian Aliance, in 1529. With two opposing factions now equipped with a defensive force, a clash seemed unavoidable. The arrival of war seemed imminent in 1529, after the controversy over the right of Unterwalden, one of the Catholic cantons, to appoint the new Governor of the Freie Aemter. This was a position which was of strategic importance to both of the increasingly hostile disciplines. Zwingli was determined not to allow the Catholics control of the area, and so he threatened to leave Zurich, unless they declared war on the Catholic cantons. However, war was averted by Berne's doubt that faith could be brought "by means of spears and halberds" and wish not to disrupt the Swiss Confederation with civil war. Thus a compromise was brought. It did, however, frustrate Zwingli's wish to unite Switzerland in Protestantism by war. The forced peace could not last long. Zwingli continued to work towards the political downfall of the Catholic cantons, and was gratified by the economic blockade that the Protestants set up on 1530. It did, however, prompt the five Catholic cantons to declare war on Zurich. The first battle of this new Protestant war, at Kappel in October 1531, was a disaster, resulting in the massacre of Zurich's forces, and the death of Zwingli.
It was not only Zwingli himself that caused problems, but those inspired by his beliefs as well. One principal group comes to the fore; the Anabaptists. These were people who were originally Zwinglians, but took his belief, that the Bible was the sole authority, to what they saw to be its logical conclusion. This meant that, on failing to find any clear reference to infant baptism, they insisted that the practice should be abandoned and replaced with baptism in adulthood. This was seen as extremely heretical, as it meant that every individual could choose for himself whether or not to join the church. This might lead to competing religious sects, which would then lead to a divided community. The Anabaptists also wanted to separate themselves from the Roman church by ceasing to pay tithes and electing their own ministers. This meant that, as well as being a threat to the established church, the Anabaptists were a political threat as well. This was more than the church was prepared to stand for. Zwingli's followers saved the Catholics the trouble of suppressing this new group, as they saw the Anabaptists to be as much of a threat to their status quo as their traditional counterparts did. Thus in 1526, the Council of Zurich decreed that anyone discovered to be an Anabaptist would be met with the death penalty. The following year, the leading dissident, Felix Mantz, was drowned by a mob. This prompted the Anabaptists to flee to the Alps, along the Rhine and to other parts of Europe. They lost any coherence they had before, and also due to their dispersal lost the base of support they had in the rural communities of Switzerland.
This was, however, not the end of the Anabaptists. Due to the movement's now fragmentary setup, its characteristics varied enormously. A man by the name of Melchior Hoffman was an example of one of the more militant sides to the discipline. He travelled around the Rhineland, predicting a violent apocalypse, set to take place in 1533. He believed that he was the second Elijah sent to prepare the world for the day of judgement. He built up some considerable support, before he was imprisoned in 1533. His followers, however, remained active without their spiritual leader, preparing for the day of reckoning. They poured into Munster, whose mayor, Bernt Knipperdolig had earlier met Hoffman and approved of the radicals. They were led this time by Jan Buekels and Jan Mattys, who forceably re-baptised the whole poulation and abolished private property. It was not long before the city was under siege by the Bishop of Munster. Under siege, the hysteria reached epic proportions. Mattys believed believed God had empowered him with invulnerability to go and face the Bishop in battle. He was killed by the Bishop's troops. That left Beukels as the dictator of Munster. He declared himself King Jan, legalised polygamy, married sixteen wives, beheaded one for impertinence and made sins punishable by death. The Bishop, however, now aided by Philip of Hesse, found weak spots in the walls, and took the city by force in 1535. Jan and Knipperdollig were both killed and their corpses hung up on display. The Anabaptists would now forever be associated with division, bloodshed and conflict. The persecution was now stepped up, and 2000-3000 lost their lives in the Netherlands alone in the next fourteen years. We can again see that this religious development caused an incredible amount of conflict, trouble and division.
Yet there was still another major figure in the Protestant reformist movement to come. He would head one of the most successful religious movements of the 16th Century and breathe new life into the subsiding initial impetus of protestantism provided by Luther. Like Luther, Calvin was learned man in theology, having studied to enter the clergy at a university in his homeland of France. He also suffered a period of doubt and decided to solve the problem of spiritual uncertainty by forming his own theological ideas. He would eventually set up his own kind of "theocrasy" in Geneva, but only after several years of refining his views and trying to convince the public to convert to his view of religion. Indeed, on his first foray into Geneva, he was spurned, and the town decided to follow Zwingli's ideas instead. They found Calvin too obstinate and his ideas too demanding on their lives. After excommunicating the whole town, Calvin went to Strasbourg in 1538 to revise his "Institutes of Christian Religion". There he remained, teaching and writing, until 1541, when he was invited back to Geneva by a penitent council. There he remained until his death in 1564. We can see here, yet another example of division and conflict, even amongst fellow Protestants.
Calvinism caused a lot of conflict abroad, indeed it became known as "the religion of revolt". The countries in which it had the most impact (excluding Geneva) were France, Scotland the Netherlands. In each case, there were genuine religious followers, but there were also "politiques", people who converted to Calvinism for mere political reasons. Thus, we cannot entirely blame Calvinism for all the conflict and controversy surrounding it. There were people who saw Calvinism as a way of either distancing themselves from the authority of the Government and the papacy or as a good pretext for forming some kind of resistance to unwanted authority. Having said that, we must acknowledge that Calvinism was an extreme religion and actively encouraged the use of violence to protect the movement (Philippe du Plessis-Mornay's Vindiciae contra Tyrannos) and thus cannot be exempt from blame for its consequences. Without Calvinism, there would have been no pretext for the events in the Netherlands, France and Scotland, though one could argue that they would have happened anyway, due to the political and social climate of the time.
With all the concentration on Protestant religious reformers, it is important not to forget that the Catholic Church itself instigated a period of reform, commonly referred to as the "Counter Reformation". This is a misleading term, however, as it implies that the catholic reformist movement was a direct reaction to Protestant reformers like Luther. This was not the case, as reform was put into effect before Luther emerged, albeit not in such great scale as later on in the 16th Century. An example of this would be the religious changes made by Ferdinand and Isabella, as discussed above. However, despite this, there are often seen to be three main champions of the Catholic Reformation; Philip II, the Papacy and the Council of Trent. The reforms put into effect by these groups also caused a lot of conflict and division. For example, the reforms put into action by Paul III and his successors led to the establishment of the Inquisition of Rome in 1542, the formation of the Jesuit order in 1540 and the opening of the council of Trent, the sentencing to the galleys over a hundred friars if ill repute and the opening of the first Roman Index of 1559. All of these things caused the Roman Church to be placed under a lot of strain, as it caused some amount of division within the papacy, as many of the religious men of the time would fall foul of such measures. The city of Rome too could not escape the vigour for cleansing. The city was purged of many of its sorcerors, homosexuals and prostitutes too. This was accompanied with the extensive re-education of the local priests in an attempt to stamp out superstition amongst the common man.
However, there was only so much that the Papacy could accomplish from Rome, and a lot of the reform depended on local rulers and monarchs to instigate their own changes. A good example of this is the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria. Duke Albrecht started religious visitations as early as 1558, five years before the conclusion of the Council of Trent and in 1570, established the College of Ecclesiastical Councillors to enforce the decrees. The best example, however, of a monarch putting into action his own reforms, is Philip II. He was renown for his extreme piety and Catholic Sentiments and also for his desire not to be "the ruler of heretics". In fact, heresy was not that serious a problem in Spain during Philip's reign, and he instead devoted his attention to mystics, humanists, Protestants, deviant Catholics and lapsed Moriscos and Conversos. The Inquisition was put hard at work, investigating 40,000 cases and burning 250 of them. They victimised people guilty of blasphemy, sacrilage and sex outside marriage. All of this obviously caused conflict, on a social scale, but none of it caused any real political trouble. It was only the Moriscos revolt of 1568-70 that caused dramatic conflict and division. It was very bloody, with thousands killed and was an embarrassment to Philip as it took him too long to put it down (all of his money and troops were in the Netherlands). It resulted in the inevitable completion of the work that the Catholic Kings had started seventy or so years before, when Philip completely expelled the Moriscos from Granada. Thus we can see the legacy of the movement started at the beginning of the century concluded towards the end of the century. So we can see here that even the Catholic reformist movement came with its share of tension, conflict and division.
In conclusion, it must be said that I agree, to a certain extent, with the idea that religious developments in the 15th Century caused division and conflict. It has been proven here that religious developments did cause a lot of violence, trouble, division and mistrust amongst the people of the 16th Century. Many died, or were expelled from their homes for their chosen movement and this had severe political and social consequences, the removal of the Moriscos for example. However, this is not to say that these religious developments didn't establish unity and harmony, because many of them did. Religious movements such as Lutheranism, Zwingliism and Calvinism, despite some false converts, brought together many like minded people who could feel at ease with one another and were united in their common belief. Calvinism is an extreme example, with its solid structure and religious base at Geneva adding to the stability and harmony of the Calvinists. Without Luther, the Lutheran Princes of Germany would never have come together to work for a common goal. The people of Germany were united by Luther, in a German Nationalist feeling against the Catholic Church. Nothing else in that century brought together the people as Luther did.
Also all the division and conflict cited above, could not have been solely brought on by religious developments. It was an age of change anyway, and change cannot be brought about without destroying the old. It was time for change and so time for the necessary conflict. Change was happening too fast, socially and politically, due to the age of Enlightenment, for conflict not to occur. There are hundreds of examples of conflict and division which was not caused by religion, for example the Netherlands revolt, the wars in Italy and Henry VIII's numerous attacks on France; he simply enjoyed war. However, despite all this, I am inclined to conclude that religious developments caused more division and conflict than unity and harmony.
