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Head on over to Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com,
forward slash Support and do it there. Thank you. I
want to welcome everyone back to the Pequanana Show. Paul
fahrenheits back and we're going to continue the Spain series.
How are you doing, Paul, I'm doing very well.
Speaker 2: Pete. The Spain series where we rarely and occasionally talk about.
Speaker 1: Spain, well, yeah, you know, it's uh when you're when
when you have a world empire, it's uh, you know,
there's other places you may want to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. But yeah, so today, as I made
the joke about, we're going to be talking about the
extremely unifying and uh, non controversial topic of the Protestant Reformation.
That is, that is what we are going to be
talking about today. And I am not so much interested in.
Speaker 1: What is it.
Speaker 2: I'm not so much interested in Number one, I'm not
interested in giving you guys a play by play. This
is not this is this. This is not really a
historical series in the sense that we're going over the history.
There are people who do that better. Rather, we are
using world systems theory to try to analyze the decline
and collapse of a world system, using the Christendom world
system and particularly the Spanish higher as a vector of analysis.
And the Protestant Reformation was broadly right, and we're going
to get into it was it was. It was by
no means a monolithic movement, but the Protestant Reformation broadly, right,
is the terminal crisis, or it began the terminal crisis,
or it was the reason of the terminal crisis that
ended the Christendom world system. Because so one of the
things that we've kind of realized as we've gone through
this series and we've you know, discussed these certain things,
mister Pete, is that the Christendom world system could only
exist insofar as the Roman Church was the universal church
in name or in fact, and the empire was the
strongest entity and it was at the center of Europe. Right,
Christendom was built on those two things. And those two
things did not fail simultaneously. As a matter of fact,
one the power of one outlived the power of the other,
which is the empire. The empire lasted, or a politically
relevant empire lasted longer than a I don't want to
say a politically relevant papacy, but politically powerful papacy in
the sense that the pope had the political authority that
he previously did. But we've already talked about that and
this this, you know, the Italian Wars really was kind
of the the the last gasp of a of a
politically strong papacy in the sense of it having a
a a realm that it had influence over and using
that as a vector of influencing wider European politics. We've
already talked about that, and we've also already talked about
the various crises in church history that began, you know,
something as early as as as Gregory the Great, you know,
and then and then going into the later Gregorian reforms,
and then going all the way to the eve of
the Reformation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, one of the things before we even get started
on this, one of the things that I want to
emphasize one of the themes I want to emphasize of
today's episodes, and I hope that the listener has been
taking with them throughout the series. World systems do not
break apart on a whim. They do not break apart
on a whim. They are what are called complex adaptive systems.
What's a complex adaptive system? A complex adaptive system? It
is like a human body, right where it is an entity.
It is an organic hole. It is an entity in
and of itself. However, that entity has a very very
large number of constituent parts, and those constituent parts all
perform a certain task or certain tasks, and there are
a variety of redundancies within that complex adaptive system. You know.
For example, mister Pete, you know your body can take
a certain amount of any kind of poison, any kind
of a disease, any kind of virus, right, because there's redundancies.
You won't instantly die, you know. Now, obviously too much
of anything will kill you. But there is a sort
of a realm of tolerance a certain amount, you know,
as the seem to lead always says, damage is nonlinear,
all right, So that's the thing. So a complex adaptive system,
in a civilizational sense or in a world system sense,
is a system that can deal with not only singular crises,
but multiple crises at once across a large area. You
know that. I think one of the first examples we
have of a complex adaptive world system was that of
the Bronze Age, the pre Bronze Age collapse, Bronze Age,
you know, the Bronze Age Mediterranean, which was centered around Egypt,
which played a similar role as the United States does
now as the primary food exporter. You know, the world
is centered around the primary food exporder. That wasn't so
much the case, I haven't deep dived into the economics.
We're going to have. We're going to do a whole
episode on the economics of this era too. Particularly, we're
not there yet. But a complex adaptive system, and like
the one, you know, ancient Egypt. I'm not going to
go too much into detail, but ancient Egypt was able
to deal with a variety of crises at once. The
problem was and why the Bronze Age collapse occurred was
because too many crises hit Egypt at once. The way
you owe overwhelm a complex adaptive system is to throw
everything in the kitchen sink at it fast, too fast,
too fast for it to react to everything at once.
Speaker 1: Similar to what sort of are we sort of seeing
that right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, similar to what our
current executive is doing right you know, because in many ways,
the quote unquote deep state or the you know, government bureaucracy,
whatever name you want to give it is a complex
adaptive system. And in a lot of instances it isn't
even conscious. That's the thing. Like like a body, an organism,
some parts of it can be more conscious of the
whole than others, you know. But I remember back to
the to the Yaki series. We did Pete, which really
is an inspiration for this series. Yaki talks a lot
about what I'm talking about with Spain and Ultramontanism and
things like that in Imperium, and you know, Yaki understands this.
The culture bearing stratum of any high culture is the
is more conscious of the whole than say, you know,
a dry wall and paint installer. You know, and you
know there in any normally functioning society there would be
more dry wall and drywall installers and painters than members
of the culture bearing stratum. Unfortunately, because we're we live
in the age of total politics, everyone is kind of
sort of partially at least involved in culture. And that's
good in some ways and it's bad in other ways.
That's why culture is so you know, cancerous right now,
is because everyone's involved in it. Culture in a in
a coherent functioning society. Culture is the output of a
of a very small group. But you know, you know
all of this, we all know all of this. So
to kind of bring this back world systems do not
collapse on a dime, do not collapse on a whim.
We've already talked about, We've already done an episode, mister
Pete talking about the various crises of authority within the Church.
I think we've talked about the various crisis of authority
within the empire. And as Yaki says, Christendom, medieval Christendom
or this Christendom world system, and I'm not quite using
the Yaki Spanglarian model here, but it's helpful, was based
around the two poles of the pope and the emperor.
That is, medieval Christianity pretty much is summed up in
the pope as the spiritual center and the emperor as
the political center that enforces his will. And as we've
already demonstrated, as those two entities come into conflict and
one tries to absorb the other, and talked about the
gels and the Gibilians and all that, this starts causing
cracks in the legitimacy of the system. You know, legitimacy.
Legitimacy is one of those concepts that academics like to
talk about a lot today. It's one of those things
where like just about everyone kind of knows it when
they see it, you know. Legitimacy has a variety of sources,
but the legitimacy of a system is the buy in
that any given component of that system has in the
raisondetra of that system, you know, and as we all know,
the purpose of a system is what it does. So
that said, all right, the Protestant Reformation did not come
out of nowhere. We talked about earlier heresies, We've talked
about earlier movements, earlier attempts to reform that not all
of them came from outside of the church. A great
many throughout history, a great many theologians, priests, cardinals, bishops
of all sorts have critique to the Catholic Church, the
Roman Church from within it, from a desire to reform it,
from a desire to bring it closer to the image
of Jesus Christ, that is, and that's you know, undeniable.
And this continued even during the Protestant Reformation. So that's
something I want everyone to keep in mind as we're
going into this, and we're not I'm not going to
talk about theology. This is not a theology episode. I'm
not here to let you know. You all know I'm
a Protestant, Pizza Catholic. This is how this goes. I'm
not here to relitigate the Protestant Reformation. I'm not here
to say who's right and who's wrong. I'm not here
to debate soteriology or Christology or or whatever other stuff.
You can go to Stone Choir if you want to
hear stuff like that, all right, or equivalent Catholic podcast
pines with as I guess, I'm not going to insult Catholics,
but but that's something I want everyone to keep in mind.
So now that we're on that, I just want to,
you know, remind the listeners there were prior to the
Protestant Reformation, right which, the Protestant Reformation, I think just
about everyone agrees it started in about fifteen seventeen when
Luther nailed his ninety five Theiss to the door of
the church in Wittenberg. Okay, that's kind of what began it.
You know, the Protestant Reformation cannot be separated from the
figure of Martin Luther. Right now, Martin Luther was far
from the only Reformer, far from the only theologian of
his time talking about these ideas, but he was the
one who took the step. So before him, before Luther,
there were other attempts at at at you know, either
separatism from And here's the other thing too, Like I
think when you say the Reformation, that kinda that doesn't
that it's too simple of a word. Because the Lutherans
were separated from the fact that they were sort of
separatists from the Roman Church. They wanted to split off,
they wanted to create a new church. And then later
movements like Calvin and Geneva and the Calvinists wanted to
do something similar, and the Radical Reformation, the Mennonites, Diana, Baptists,
et cetera, wanted to go even further right. But they
all all of the Protestants. What what what makes a Protestant?
Right broadly, let's define that first. What makes a Protestant,
as we define the term a Protestant, is someone who
desired to separate from the Church of Rome for any
for whatever reason, for theological reasons, for person, no reasons
for you know. That is that is what makes a Protestant. Now,
I mean, if you go with that definition, then you're like, oh,
well the Eastern Orthodox are Protestant. Okay, Well that's different,
different story, all right, So proto Protestant movements. Earlier Protestant
movements include h. John Wickliffe and the Baldensians. Those did
not go very far because you know, Vicas Wickliffe translation was,
you know, easily stamped out because of one big old
gorilla in the room thing I haven't talked about yet,
which I'm going to get to. Wickliffe inspired Jan huss
who was able to inspire a much larger local reformation
with the Hussites in Bohemia that would continue until the
Battle of White Mountain, where the Bohemians were more or
less brought back into the fold of the Catholic Church there,
you know, and you know, you can go even further
back to the Cafars, into the Lallards and other various
pissant reform movements that didn't really go anywhere. Wickliffe and
huss are important though, because they're the ones who are
too early, And as a mutual friend of ours says Pete,
being too early is the same as being wrong. So
why was Luther different? Why was Luther different? You know,
I'm not going to go everyone knows, you know, Oh, Luther,
he was the you know, Dominican friar Ut was trained
to be a lawyer. He he flipped over to the
Church out of genuine religious faith. By all appearance of
genuine religious faith. Didn't want to be a lawyer, wanted
to enter the church, enter the church. I think he
was like the Vicar of Saxony or something like that.
He was. He was rather relatively high up, or at
least he was getting relatively high up. He had a
pretty good church career, and he was going places. And
you know then, you know, everyone knows his famous trip
to Rome and you know, the one moment and I'm
more than willing to admit I'm not sure if this
was this was a real thing. A lot of these
in history, you find a lot of these stories are
very apocryphal, kind of made up after the fact. It's like,
you know, the one quote you associate with that historical figure,
well he never actually said that quote. But you know,
Luther goes to Rome and you know, sees the Italian
priests kind of making a mockery of the Lord's supper,
you know, from bread you were into bread, you will
return or something like that. And that may have been apocryphal,
but you know, almost certainly Luther was moved to do
what he did by some reason. And I can't discount
genuine belief, rightly or wrongly.
Speaker 1: On his part.
Speaker 2: Now, there were a variety of things that were happening
in Europe, so kind of stepping away from Luther, not
so much the man.
Speaker 1: Why was his.
Speaker 2: Movement different? Well, as they say, it takes a perfect storm,
Europe at the time was changing. If there's one word
you can use to describe it, it was changing. One
of the big gorillas in the room that we haven't
so much gone into was the Black Death's effect on
Europe was revolutionary because what the Black Death did was
it functionally reduced the population density by orders of magnitude
that hasn't been seen since. And because it reduced the
population density right much like we're we have now, there
was a sort of competency crisis in Europe. There weren't
enough bodies to do the work that needed to be done,
and so systems started getting implemented. People started, you know,
this is something people talk about a history class. People
started being afforded a little bit more liberty because work needed,
more work needed to be done. And some of this
is practical. You can't exactly tie peasants down to the
land when you know there's only three peasants in on
your land and there's more farming that needs to be done.
This is obviously a freaking weird example, blown out of
proportion example, but there's more farming that needs to be
done than peasants to do the farming in some places.
So this also started, you know, the collapse of Scholasticism
as an intellectual movement. You know, William of Oakham's skepticism,
the beginnings of you could even say proto rationalist thought
goes all the way back to this period. But besides
all that that's happening in Europe, you have the aforementioned
crises of within the papacy we've talked about. You have
the Western Schism, the Babylonian captivity in France of the
Avignon papacy. You have, you know, going jumping forward a
little bit, the Italian Wars, jumping back a little bit,
you have the rise of the Ottoman Turks and the
seeming inability for that's a big thing. We haven't talked
about the Turks a lot, but the Turks are kind
of the you know, one of the looming swords of
damicles over Europe at this time, particularly over the emperor
at this time, because the emperor is the gateway between
the Balkans and the rest of Europe, and the Turks
are were making their way through the Balkans relatively quickly,
but the Western Christian military forces proved unable to keep
the Turks out of Europe for a extended period of time. Yes,
you had moments, you know, Scanderbag, Matias Corvinas in Hungary.
You had other you know, the most famous Vlad Tepes
in Transylvania. You had little moments where the Turks were checked,
but overall their advance was contiguous. And this caused a
lot of you know, many people to think, Oh, well,
God isn't with us. Why isn't God giving us victory
over the Heathens. Why isn't God giving us victory over
the Muslims. You know, he gave us victory over the
Muslims five hundred years ago during the Crusades. Why not. Now,
In addition, you had contact with foreigners. The Portuguese and
the Spanish were in the Italians before them were making
all of these expeditions throughout the world. They were coming
into contact with lots of you know, a lot of
pissant primitive tribes. But you know, for the Portuguese, the Chinese,
and the Indians, which started bringing knowledge of Eastern traditions
faith traditions into the West, Hinduism and Buddhism or whatever.
You know, Hinduism was invented by the British in the
nineteenth century, whatever Indian glop that they found in the subcontinent, Taoism,
various Chinese schools, knowledge of those started entering into Europe
and the you know, contact with the Muslims, the aforementioned Turks.
There were also economic concerns. The Turks had shut off
spices from the rest of Europe. Europe was undergoing a
gold shortage. Europe was you know, finding that its mass
peasant based agrarian economy wasn't meeting the challenges of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and all of you know, all
of that. But there's you know, I'm kind of been
dancing around it. There's there's one big thing I haven't mentioned,
and I haven't talked about that. You know, you can't
really talk about the Protestant Reformation without talking about this thing.
You probably know what that one big thing is. What
What have I not mentioned? It's a technological ad helment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh, the printing press.
Speaker 2: There you go, you know, if if if I had
a one hundred dollars debt took place and I couldn't
place it on a man, And I firmly believe that,
you know, humans are the center of all history. Machines
just kind of follow from it. But machines make possible
things that are not possible prior to their invention. That's
why they're so important. So why technology is so important.
It makes possible things that are not possible or were
not possible before. So why did Luther and his movement succeed? Well,
if I had to place one hundred dollars on any
one thing, I probably placed it on the printing press,
because printing press, for anyone who knows what it was,
and we're going to do a whole episode on that,
you know, talking about that and dissonance. In this era, generally,
the printing press made it possible for the mass proliferation
of whatever you can think of. The people of that
time largely used it for the one thing that they
saw is more important than anything else, which was the
faith of Christ and how the faith of Christ was
manifested on earth ecclesiastically. This was a very religious age,
you know, because people took this technology, and they immediately
used it to have these various theological disputes. But there
were also pamphlets would cut memes, you know, pamphlet substacks.
There were there there was a sort of proto republic
of letters that was happening amongst the clergy, amongst relatively
intellectual aristocrats, amongst burghers. You know, the rising, the rising
of the merchant class, the middle class in this time
also coincides with this. You know, all of this, everything
that I've just outlined, you know, the weak in legitimacy,
the military defeat against the Turks, contact with foreigners, and
you know, changing economic colonization is bringing in all kinds
of commodities to Europe too. There's a shake up in
political systems. There's there's and then you you, all of
these people are having all these ideas and then all
of a sudden you drop this bomb on them that
now allows them to spread these ideas faster than historically
authorities have been able to keep up with it.
Speaker 1: All right, So.
Speaker 2: That is the that's the big thing. That's the one
hundred dollars bet, the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room.
It's the printing press. Now that said I was doing
some reading before this episode, and I read something that
a recent theory has been positive given how Protestantism was
spread the fastest and remains the strongest in Germany in
the places that Luther had social contacts, and visited that
it was the social network Luther had that spread Protestantism
faster than the printing press did, which I think is
an interesting theory. But that's all. I'm gonna leave it
at I'm going to put it out there because you know,
mister Pete, we talk a lot about the importance of
social networks and of network theory and how groups of
organized minorities shape history, and I think the same could
be said to be true of the Protestant Reformation, because numerically,
Catholics always I think they still they've always outnumbered Protestants.
There have always been more Catholics on Earth than Protestants
since the Protestant Reformation, especially in the beginning. And yet,
you know, remembering our elite theory, this group of organized
elites was able to not only have and create ecclesiastical
change and theological change, but to later affect political change
for good.
Speaker 1: Or for ill.
Speaker 2: So in a large part that's why Luther's Reformation succeeded
where everyone before him did not catch on to the
same level. Yeah, you know, huss it caught onto the
borders of Bohemia, but you know, it was kind of
a weird quirk of the Bohemians, and not every Bohemian
was a Hussite. Many of them remained Catholic, and the
Hussites also later largely converted to Lutheranism and some of
them to Calvinism. So all that said, all that said,
complex adaptive systems, the Christendom world system I don't want.
It didn't it didn't have more than it could take
because it didn't immediately fail. Here's the thing, right, you
know how we talk a lot about in public school education,
people are giving lots of gaps in their historical education,
you know, and part of that is just you know,
in any time constraints standard standardized education, you can't teach
people in continuity. You know, there's certain high level moments
and moments that you don't really have to cover because
they're not as important. Now all those moments, what moments
are picks serve an ideological agenda. But regardless, you know,
like you know, mister Pete in American history. You have
you know, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, and
then all of a sudden World War One, right, and
then oh but that's not important, and great depression of
World War two, and very little like reconstruction is mentioned,
but how it's ended is not mentioned. And then the
period between reconstruction and World War One is not really
talked about all that much. And then the night the
Inner War years prior to FDR really talked about all
that much. And you know, it's the same thing with
the Protestant Reformation, right, and most people's minds it's like, oh,
you know, Martin Luther has his ninety five pieces and
then five minutes later, the Thirty Years War happens. It's
not this is not quite it. There was. There was
about one hundred and you know there was about one
hundred years. Yeah, because the Thirty Years War began in
sixteen eighteen. There was about one hundred years between Luther
nailing his thesis and the Thirty Years War starting. To
give you an idea one hundred years ago today, the
president was I think Calvin Coolidge. Yeah, I think it
was Calvin Coolidge who was president. Either that A Warren
Harding and you know, we had just gotten over World
War One. A lot has happened since then, right, So
the Protestant Reformation was a let's just say, war between
Protestants and Catholics was not inevitable. It was certainly chosen,
but it was not inevitable. And various things happened in between.
And I'm not going to give everyone a whole retrospective,
and we're not even going to talk about the Thirty
Years War on this episode. That's going to be its
own episode. This is more so an episode on the
one hundred years between Luther nailing his thesis and I
guess the beginning of the third But we're not probably
not even gonna get that far, So so let me
get into the next thing. And what was the next thing? Shoot,
I'm looking at my notes here. I'm trying to I'm
trying to. I'm trying to be organized.
Speaker 1: You gotta have notes for an episode like this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That that that's the thing, right is. It's like, you know,
I hope the listeners are aware as I am that
this is a absolute minefield.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what is it? Uh?
Speaker 2: Where am I trying to pick? I guess, I'll I guess,
I'll go into the second phase of the Reformation, right,
and talk about the sort of splits that occurred within
the Reformation, because I'll I understand, mister Pete, a lot
of your listeners are Catholics, and a lot of a
lot of ignorance exists, and rightfully so about Protestants and
Protestant movements, mostly because you know, the mean, oh there's
ten thousand little micro denominations of Protestants. Why do I
even care? And you know, to certain respect, it is
true Protestants do have a tendency to schism more than
more than more than other let's just say, niceen christian sex.
But there's reasons for it. So there were two broad
strains of Protestant Christianity. You started with the Lutherans. You
initially had the Lutherans, right, but they didn't even call
themselves Lutherans at first. They called themselves Evangelicals. They were
largely they were largely followers of Luther, but they weren't
only followers of Luther, and Luther wasn't even the only
reformer among them. A lot of people know of Malanthan
who was his kind of secondhand man, and there were
other largely you know, there are other fingers with him.
And then later on and this was like almost a
generation of difference because Calvin was was almost a whole
I think like thirty years after Luther maybe a little
bit more that began the Calvinist or the Reform tradition,
and they were and then obviously, you know, you have
the Radical Reformation, the end of Baptists. The Baptists kind
of come out of this area. And then you have
the Anglican Reformation in England, which you know, people, you know,
Henry the Eighth is one of the most misunderstood historical
figures of all time. But that's kind of beyond the scope.
But the Anglican Reformation was not, you know, not a
lot of people say it's like, oh, it's the church.
Henry the eight started when he wanted a divorce. No,
there was, there was, there was theological thinking behind it
amongst the English, and the English were unique in Catholic
Europe in that the Bible had existed in some you know,
what they call the Vulgate in some form of English
since really since Augustine of Canterbury was sent there in
the fifth century. So the English are special, as they
always are. They're they're different, but the Protestants were not
a monolith. Even in the beginning. You had luther and
one of the forgotten major Reformers, Holdrich Zvingli, who was
in Zurich, Zurich, which is also in Switzerland, alongside Geneva.
It's funny how these these things kind of break down
on ethnic lines, because the you know, calvin in Geneva
was in the you know, the French part of Switzerland
and they were mostly Reformed. And Zvingli was in Zurich,
which is in the mostly German part of Switzerland, and
they were mostly Lutheran. And it doesn't entirely break down
on ethnic lines. A lot of Germans later on convert
to uh Calvinism, the Platinate most notably and also interestingly Prussia.
But but but but but but basically it's it, I
don't want to say it entirely breaks down on ethnic lines,
but in a lot of respects it does. Even in
even in Italy and in Spain. You know, there were
you know, there weren't a lot of Protestants in Italy
and Spain, and the Inquisition was well enough established and
experienced enough at what it did that it was able
to pretty effectively stamp out any because there were attempts
in Spain. You know, there were Spanish translations of the
Bible made and that mostly became popular in the Basque country, largely,
you know, through the Huguenot influence in France. And the
Huguenots were all Calvinists. They were not Lutherans. And that's
another thing, you know, France. France had its whole own
internal struggle over this. You know, a very large minority
of the population converted to you know, the Calvinism is
they don't really they don't like that word anymore. They
prefer the word reformed now. But the Huguenots were largely Calvinistic,
and they were in the south of France and in
other places, and that mostly entered into Spain through the
Basque country, but it was mostly minor. And you know,
most of the Spanish Protestants were intellectuals who were either
either killed or deported. Same thing in Italy. Italy even
fewer people caught on. But and that's not I mean,
the Protestants killed all kinds of Catholics. I'm not saying,
you know, the Catholics were unique and killing outstance. Now,
they were they were both executing each other. And this
is the thing, this is the seriousness of it, right,
you know, these these people legitimately believed that if you
were in a state of mortal sin, and it was
better to kill you because it would have kept you
from sinning even further, it would have kept you from
getting from even worsening your situation. And both sides believe
this about the others, at least initially. But that's the
that's the most I'll get into. That point is this
was a multi generational thing, and this was a certainly
not a monolithic thing. And I'll tell you why this
Can kind of Vingly was sort of a proto reformer.
He was he was or proto Calvinist. Rather, he was closer.
He agreed with Luther on you know that they had
this this, you know, all these articles of faith that
they established, and Zvingly agreed with Luther on everything except
for the place of the Lord's supper. Luther retained the
belief of the Catholic Church that transubstantiation occurred when the
Lord's Supper was done. Zvingly did not. Zingly was, you know,
That's what made him closer to a Can. And as
Vingly believed that the Lord's Supper wasn't I don't even
necessarily that it wasn't a sacrament, but that that transubstantiation
didn't occur. And this leads into this very famous discussion
conference and falling out between the two where Luther carves
on a table with a knife in the middle of
the debate is means is uh, you know, referring to
when Christ says, this is my body which is given
to you in defense of transubstantiation. And every time Zinglyi
or someone else would make a point would just point
to what he carved on the table, and this of
course caused this huge breakdown between the vingly In Reformers
and Luther and what would later start to be called
the Lutheran Reformers. So in addition, Zingi was a sort
of proto Swiss nationalist. This is something that we we've
talked about a little bit, but I've and I've kind
of purported this line before, at least I've played with
it how nations were fictions of the nineteenth century. But
I don't I'm not so sure about that anymore. I'm
not so sure that's the case, because you see precedent
earlier in this period particularly, and you actually, I think
you start to see the sort of the birth, the
beginnings of a national self conception that goes beyond just
a you know of you know, your county, your town
that's around you. I believe, you know, I believe in
in I don't so much believe in cyclical history anymore.
I believe in you know, I guess the best shape
is like a sort of spiral history. You know, there
is a beginning and an end of history. There is
a line, but it's it goes and increase, it grows
an incomplexity with each turn of the wheel, as it were.
And I believe that a nation is a you know,
a nineteenth century nation state is a more sophisticated in
some ways simpler, but in some ways a more sophisticated
entity than a confederation of feudal fiefdoms associated by you know,
all different kinds of law. But Vingli was a proto
Swiss nationalist, and he believed in the concept of a
Switzerland separate from the Empire. But the problem is is
that within Switzerland, Switzerland was also a sort of microcosm
of the Reformation, because you had three big parts of Switzerland.
You know, as a matter of fact, all three major
parties of the of the era were represented in Switzerland.
Threans were largely out of Zurich, or the Lutheran aligned
or the Lutheran friendly Zingli, the Reformed were in Geneva,
and the Catholics were largely in the in the south
of Switzerland. You know, the Swiss Guard, the very famous
Swiss Guard, which to this day are drawn from Swiss
Catholic men. The Swiss had a long Catholic tradition alongside
these other things. And so there were wars between the cantons.
The cantons went to war with each other, and Zingli
himself would die in battle against the canton or in
the war against the cantons. You know, he was a
chaplain with his you know, he believe with his uh
I forget what with the forces from Zurich. He was
a chaplain, and he died in battle. And after he
died and Luther heard of it, Luther hated Zvingli. After
this that falling out, Luther very snidely wrote, you know,
he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
So there was very little love lost between some of
these parties. Reformers. And this is exacerbated by Pete question
for you, in question for the audience, what created peace
in the empire and acceptance within the empire of a
non Catholic faith?
Speaker 1: What did it? What created peace in a non non
Catholic what?
Speaker 2: What? What? What treaty? What agreement allowed for members of
the empire to not be Catholic, to be to something else.
Speaker 1: Remember, I'm sorry, a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Think it's the Treaty of It was a kind of
a trick question. A lot of people think it's the
Treaty of vest Failure that created it. Not true, Not true,
the Treaty of vest failure. At the end of the
this is and this is the thing. You know, people
like oh, Luther, Luther starts his uh. I'm not trying
to catch you on the spot. It's just it's just
I'm trying to challenge people's thinking. Luther hammers his thesis
on the door, and then five minutes later the Thirty
Years War starts. That's not how it works, right. The
Piece of Augsburg in fifteen fifty five and the Augsburg
Confession in fifteen fifty five established the principle of I'm
not going to say the Latin, but his realm, his
religion right. And this was in large part, and it
was Charles the Fifth who negotiated this. Charles the fifth
was emperor at the time also king of Spain. Charles
the fifth negotiated this with the like schmaly caught League,
I think is what it was called, some stupid German name.
It was this military alliance of all of the Lutheran principalities.
Because one of the one of the reasons why luther
succeeded is he got a lot of rogue counter elites,
particularly in the realms of Saxony and in Hesse in
northern Germany, to convert to become Lutheran. A lot of
free cities did as well. And these people, you know this,
and they formed a military alliance with each other, and
they were powerful enough that they were willing. They were
able to hold leverage over to Charles the Fifth because
at the time, in the fifteen thirties, the Turks were
marching against the Austrians. The Turks were marching north from
the Balkans, and so temporary peace over and over and
over again was granted with the Lutherans because the Empire
couldn't afford to be in a state of civil war
while the while the Turks were marching northward. But the
Piece of Alusburg was the sort of the legal conclusion
of this long series of you know, luther being on
the run, being protected by the Duke of Saxony, who
was one of the first to convert, writing his his
pamphlets things like that. And the Piece of Augsburg in
fifteen fifty five is what allowed for this principle, you know,
his realm, his religion, his realm piece, et cetera, for
Lutherans only, for Lutherans' only. A lot of people today
will tell you that there is animosity between the Lutherans.
And you know, the only the largest remaining Calvinist denomination
is the Presbyterians, which are the Scottish Calvinists who are
an offshoot outside the scope of this, the Calvinists were
not accepted in the Empire the Reformed they were. They
were still considered heretics and will be put to death
whether you were in a Lutheran realm or a Catholic realm.
And this was in fifteen fifty five in part the
exclusion of the Reform because the Reformed were seen at
the time as you know, the Calvinists inhabited this weird niche.
The Lutherans were the moderate reformers, They were the most
close to Rome. They were even overtures, you know, Malengthon
even talked about, you know, going back into Rome if
certain concessions were given. Now it didn't happen, of course,
but it was the fact that the conversations were happening
kind of tells you something, right. And the Lutherans were
a lot, let's just say, more skittish about this split
from Rome than the Reformed or the radical the radical Reformers,
who are a lot more sanguine about the prospect. The
Calvinists inhabited this weird niche and that they were either
the most moderate radicals or they were the most radical moderates.
And that's not a good place to be because they
were not immediately included with the Piece of Augsburg. Now,
the Piece of Augsburg did not create religious tolerance in
the lay people. The lay people, if they were not,
they were forcibly converted to whoever their sovereigns faith were.
But they were given permission to leave. They were given
a grace period to leave and go to another province
if they didn't want to convert to their lieges faith,
to their sovereigns faith. But the piece of Aluxburg was
a very, very very brittle thing. It was a very
delicate thing, right because, especially when the Council of Trent
was established and the counter Reformation begins, you know, the
counter Reformation, the Catholic Church takes a good hard look
at itself. Right, the Catholic Church sees that a not
insignificant portion of its constituents have split off and are
no longer in communion with the Church of Rome and
the Council of Trent, and the counter Reformation generally began
with kind of this ethos that Luther has gone too far,
Luther has taken a step too far in separating from
the Church. However, a great many things that he points
out about the Church are valid, you know. And these
are things like, you know, the selling of indulgences and
other low hanging fruit. And the Catholic Church starts addressing this,
starts reforming itself. The now the Jesuit Order is established
around this time, and the primary purpose of the Jesuit
Order is in reaction to this, uh to you know,
partially also to spread the spread the word to the natives,
but also in in in reaction to the Protestants, and
you have, you know, a great many Jesuit scholars engaging
in debate with protests, most notably about most notably you know,
I think we talked about preterism earlier. That was a
really good example of when a Dutch Protestant in a
Jesuit Catholic I believe from Spain, engaged in a in
a theological intellectual debate over the concept of preterism. And
this happened all throughout Europe. Like I said, this printing
press created this republic of letters, but the Piece of
Aluxburg created it was it was very much a sort
of compromise piece. It didn't make anyone happy, especially the
Catholic Church after the counter Reformation occurred. The Pope hated it.
The Pope hated the Piece of Augsburg. I think it
was condemned. It was not, you know, by the papacy.
But once again crises in the world system. The emperor's
doing one thing and he claims to be the the
you know, first servant of the pope, the greatest servant
of the pope. But he's going off and completely ignoring
anything that the Pope says about political affairs, and so
whatever your opinion of it is, this, this world system
is breaking. And I mean we talked about national conceptions
right that, you know, the nation states that would come
out of this or the proto nation states that would
come out of this, although they were being formed now.
Charles the fifth was the first one to style himself
King of Spain. That didn't exist prior to him. You know,
the Kings of France, especially through the Wars of religion,
with the centralization occurring under the Valua kings, France was
becoming much more of a solidified, centralized concept. And the
nature of that and particularly the nature of that concept
in relation to its confessional heritage. You know, French Catholicism
and Spanish Catholicism, as we've outlined before, are two very
different things, particularly in specifically in their relation to the Pope,
and in their relation to the Pope is how they
treat their own Catholicism. You know, the more I read this,
or rather the more I research this period, mister Pete,
the more I find myself hating the French more than
anyone else. The French are like the most cynical and
like self interested and just blatantly. I've already said cynical,
but that's the best word for them. You know, they
made an alliance with the Turks against the Emperor and
it lasted until like seventeen ninety eight. You know, the French,
you know, and we've talked about about Gallicanism and the
French self conception of how they believe that the Catholic Church,
at least the Catholic Church in France. But then you know,
you look at the Avignon Papa, see the Catholic Church
broadly should serve the interests of France above everything else.
And you know, during the French Wars of Religion, you know,
which I briefly mentioned earlier, where the French were persecuting
the Huguenots in their own country, the French were supporting
that same Protestant league against the Empire. So the hypocrisy,
and then later on in the thirty Years where the
French joined on the side of the Protestants. This is
look like this is the thing like that? That? Now
that was just a personal aside, mister Pete. You know,
the French are treacherous and.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's sort of behavior that we attribute to
another group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know what I have to say on that
the Front are treacherous and are not to be trusted.
But besides that, you know, so this is this is
the truth. The Piece of Augsburg pleases no one, please,
doesn't please the Pope, doesn't please the radical reform. And
the Lutherans who kind of benefit from this, like kind
of really start hating the radical reform because the radical
reformed or not the not the radical Reform, they get
genocided the Calvinists rather the calvil They really start hating
the Calvinists because the Calvinists start making theological and political
claims that go against the precepts of the Piece of Augsburg,
which you know, also includes the Augsburg the Augsburg Confines
Ession which each realm is to hold by. And so
this begins this animosity which it continues to this day
within reform traditions.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I went, you know, I went, I
went to a reform seminary. The all it is is
it it's just arguing. Yeah, it's just if any if
there was a non product Presbyterian there, it was just arguments,
God forbid of Baptists come in or yeah, anyone even
even high church, some kind of high church Protestant. It's
that's all it was. It was just a debate society.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's and that's kind of how how it's
always been. But you know, but these animosities have historical origin,
and they didn't come out of nowhere. They didn't come
out of nowhere. And and I mean, like to bring
this back, this complex adaptive system, it was dealing with
a lot of things at once. This world's the Christendom
world system was dealing with a lot of things at once.
It was dealing with its emperor basically having completely rolled
over the pope. Its pope, you know, it's popes. Let's
just say, I don't think i'm gonna say anything controversial here.
Alexander the sixth wasn't exactly the highest example of moral character,
all right, I'm not gonna pick on that low hanging
fruit to much. But it had it had a string
of not very good popes that did not reflect very
well on the Church. They were a part of. It had,
you know, the Italian Wars, It had the intercom, the
conflict of the French Gallikins with the Spanish and imperial
you could say, papal loyalists, or at least ide loyal
to the idea of the paper. You know, you had
the printing press, You had the Turks encroaching and military
defeat against the Turks. You had these economic issues and
this contact with foreign groups of people. You had what else,
resentful counter elites in the north of Germany who didn't
like how the emperor was treating them. And you know,
impartially partially out of belief, genuine religious belief, and partially
out of political expediency, took advantage of a movement, of
a religious movement that was catching fire. You know, there
were all of these things that went into this. It
wasn't a single thing, you know, if Luther's reforerement, even
if with he had, even if he had the printing press, right,
even if you had the printing press, if it had
happened at any other peers, it's possible the Lutherans would
have gone and found, you know, founded another monastic order,
like what happened with the Dominicans and the Benedictines earlier
in the in church history, or like would have happened
with the concilier movement, even even one hundred years before
you know. But unfortunately, the anomalies of history happen when
you have a perfect storm of circumstances, all uniquely conspiring
to result in one single moment where a massive break
is made. And once the break is made, it is
almost impossible to put that genie back into the bottle.
The rat the reformation, the printing press, and it was
like opening Pandora's box. All of the sudden, everyone across
you're up. Much like today. Much like today, everyone had
an ant on account. Anyone could say anything and have
people read it right, you know, or at least if
you were literate, because that actually wasn't as guaranteed of
a thing. At this time. Literacy was growing, especially amongst
the merchant classes, but you still had mass of literacy
amongst the peasants. That made it even worse. You know,
the peasants wars Luther famously, like you know, tells the nobles,
kill them all, kill them all, you know, and they
deserve it. But like the peasants started getting these retardo
ideas and the radical reformers and were a a I
think a great example of the excesses of the Reformation.
You know, I have almost anyone will agree with that.
Things like free love cults, things like radical apocalyptism, things
like proto communism, you know, peasants taking out resentment. You know,
all of this followed once you opened up that box.
And actually, you know, the Protestant movements that survived what
we think of, you know, the Magisterial Reformation. You know,
they very much cracked down on that sort of thing.
They were state churches, they were state enforced you know,
similar to how the Catholic Church is, just on a
smaller scale. They would burn people at the stake, they
would kill people for having radical, radical ideas. But regardless,
this whole mess with the Protestant Reformation, it did not
come out of a healthy system. That's the main point.
It did not come out of a healthy system. It
came out of a system that was very much in crisis,
a system that was very much not capable of meeting
the threats of its day, both internal and external. And
because it was incapable, the Reformation happened, and what came
after it was a result of the of the choices
that those people who were incapable of meeting those circumstances made.
So that's kind of how I'm going to leave it,
more or less. I think, I think that's a that's
a good little summary of the whole thing. It's a minefield.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you could go you know, people taught
about the World War two series I did with Thomas
twenty three twenty four episodes. You could go forever with us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, once you start getting into the Reformation and
everything that all the implications of it, all the players,
you know, the different countries that I mean, it's it's insane.
But you know, one thing it did do was it
began to bring down that centralizing power that so many
countries in the in Europe basically relied upon. It is true.
Speaker 2: It is true, and I mean and it it It
wasn't apocalyptic in the sense that it brought about the
end of days, but it certainly did bring the ending
of a world. You know, modernity began, not necessarily with
the Protestant Reformation, but you could say with the I
think you know, a good point to say it began
was with it had predecessors, but modernity began with the
shattering of the previous world paradigm, which was Christendom. You
could argue that, you know, modernity began with Europe no
longer be what when the idea of Europe replaced the
idea of Christendom. That's I think, that's I think what
began it.
Speaker 1: Eventually you're going to get to the Enlightenment, and that's what.
Speaker 2: And uh, that's a whole other cannel rooms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to not to be yeah, overally hyperbolic, Catholic,
but you know, you basically every man, every man of Pope. Yeah,
then you know, with the Enlightenment, every man of God.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean there are certainly connections you can draw,
but I think that's a good time to end it.
Speaker 1: Yep. And well, I will say that that's one good
thing about the about the Old Glory Club is we
understand what the stakes are and we put those put
those differences aside.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it is a certainly an acumenical moment, that's for sure.
There are much bigger you know, much like there are
turks outside the gates of Vienna, there are much bigger threats.
Speaker 1: Yep. So I plugged the Old Glory Club. Anything else,
No Old Glory Club, all right, Paul, thank you until
the next time. And yeah, I can't wait to see
what what what is next?
Speaker 2: Oh shoot, I don't know. I could pull it up.
I think I think it's either it's either economics or
it's the the Gutenberg printing Press. It's one of the two.
Speaker 1: Okay, Economics is going to be interesting. I've already started
doing a bunch of background on that. So all right,
thank you, Paul, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Take care, mister Peter