I. PROTESTANT INTOLERANCE: AN INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
1. Views of Catholic and Protestant
Historians
A. Johann von Dollinger
"Historically nothing is more incorrect than the
assertion that the Reformation was a movement in favour of intellectual freedom. The exact
contary is the truth. For themselves, it is true, Lutherans and Calvinists claimed liberty
of conscience . . . but to grant it to others never occurred to them so long as they were
the stronger side. The complete extirpation of the Catholic Church, and in fact of
everything that stood in their way, was regarded by the reformers as something entirely
natural." (51;v.6:268-9/1)
B. Preserved Smith (Secularist)
"If any one still harbors the traditional prejudice that
the early Protestants were more liberal, he must be undeceived. Save for a few splendid
sayings of Luther, confined to the early years when he was powerless, there is hardly
anything to be found among the leading reformers in favor of freedom of conscience. As
soon as they had the power to persecute they did." (115:177)
C. Hartmann Grisar
"At Zurich, Zwingli's State-Church grew up much as
Luther's did . . . Oecolampadius at Basle and Zwingli's successor, Bullinger, were strong
compulsionists. Calvin's name is even more closely bound up with the idea of religious
absolutism, while the task of handing down to posterity his harsh doctrine of religious
compulsion was undertaken by Beza in his notorious work, On the Duty of Civil
Magistrates to Punish Heretics. The annals of the Established Church of England were
likewise at the outset written in blood." (51;v.6:278)
D. Henry Hallam (P)
"The Reform was brought about by intemperate and
calumnious abuse, by outrages of an excited populace or by the tyranny of princes . . . it
instantly withdrew . . . liberty of judgment and devoted all who presumed to swerve from
the line drawn by law to virulent obloquy, and sometimes to bonds and death. These
reproaches, it may be a shame to us to own, can be uttered and cannot be refuted."
(50:295-6/2)
E. Francois Guizot (P)
"The Reformation of the 16th century was not aware of the
true principles of intellectual liberty . . . At the very moment it was demanding these
rights for itself it was violating them towards others." (50:297/3)
F. William Lecky (P)
"What shall we say of a church . . . that had as yet no
services to show, no claims upon the gratitude of mankind . . . which nevertheless
suppressed by force a worship that multitudes deemed necessary to salvation? . . . So
strong and so general was its intolerance that for some time it may, I believe, be truly
said that there were more instances of partial toleration being advocated by Roman
Catholics than by orthodox Protestants. " (50:298/4)
G. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (P)
"The Reformers themselves . . . e.g., Luther, Beza, and
especially Calvin, were as intolerant to dissentients as the Roman Catholic Church."
(78:1383)
2. The Double Standard of Protestant
Anti-Catholic "Inquisition Polemics" (John Stoddard)
"Religious persecution usually continues till one of two
causes rises to repress it. One is the sceptical notion that all religions are equally
good or equally worthless; the other is an enlightened spirit of tolerance, exercised
towards all varieties of sincere opinion . . . inspired by the conviction that it is
useless to endeavor to compel belief in any form of religion whatsoever. Unhappily this
enlightened, tolerant spirit is of slow growth, and never has been conspicuous in history,
but if it be asserted that very few Catholics in the past have been inspired by it, the
same thing can be said of Protestants.
"This fact is forgotten by Protestants. They read
blood-curdling stories of the Inquisition and of atrocities committed by Catholics, but
what does the average Protestant know of Protestant atrocities in the centuries succeeding
the Reformation? Nothing, unless he makes a special study of the subject . . . Yet they
are perfectly well known to every scholar . . . If I do not enumerate here the
persecutions carried on by Catholics in the past, it is because it is not necessary in
this book to do so. This volume is addressed especially to Protestants, and Catholic
persecutions are to them sufficiently well known . . .
"Now granting for the sake of argument, that all that is
usually said of Catholic persecutions is true, the fact remains that Protestants, as such,
have no right to denounce them, as if such deeds were characteristic of Catholics only.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones . . .
"It is unquestionable . . . that the champions of
Protestantism - Luther, Calvin, Beza, Knox, Cranmer and Ridley - advocated the right of
the civil authorities to punish the `crime' of heresy . . . Rousseau says truly:
"`The Reformation was intolerant from its cradle, and its
authors were universal persecutors' . . .
Auguste Comte also writes:
"`The intolerance of Protestantism was certainly not less
tyrannical than that with which Catholicism is so much reproached.' (Philosophie
Positive, vol.4, p.51).
"What makes, however, Protestant persecutions specially
revolting is the fact that they were absolutely inconsistent with the primary doctrine of
Protestantism - the right of private judgment in matters of religious belief! Nothing can
be more illogical than at one moment to assert that one may interpret the Bible to suit
himself, and at the next to torture and kill him for having done so!
"Nor should we ever forget that . . . the Protestants
were the aggressors, the Catholics were the defenders. The Protestants were attempting to
destroy the old, established Christian Church, which had existed 1500 years, and to
replace it by something new, untried and revolutionary. The Catholics were upholding a
Faith, hallowed by centuries of pious associations and sublime achievements; the
Protestants, on the contrary, were fighting for a creed . . . which already was beginning
to disintegrate into hostile sects, each of which, if it gained the upper hand, commenced
to persecute the rest! . . . All religious persecution is bad; but in this case, of the
two parties guilty of it, the Catholics certainly had the more defensible motives for
their conduct.
"At all events, the argument that the persecutions for
heresy, perpetrated by the Catholics, constitute a reason why one should not enter the
Catholic Church, has not a particle more force than a similar argument would have against
one's entering the Protestant Church. In both there have been those deserving of blame in
this respect, and what applies to one applies also to the other." (92:204-5,209-l0)
3. Martin Luther
A. Hartmann Grisar
"Luther's intolerance is very much at variance with the
Protestant view still current to some extent in erudite circles, but more particularly in
popular literature. Luther, for all the harshness of his disposition, is yet regarded as
having in principle advocated leniency, as having been a champion of personal religious
freedom . . . Below we shall, however, quote a series of statements from Protestant
writers who have risen superior to such party prejudice:
B. Walther Kohler (P)
C. Karl Wappler (P)
"Even contempt of the outward Word, carelessness about
going to church and contempt of Scripture - in this in-stance . . . the Bible as
interpreted by Luther - was now regarded as `rank blasphemy,' which it was the duty of the
authorities to punish as such. To such lengths had the vaunted freedom of the Gospel now
gone." (6)
D. Johann Neander (P)
"[Luther's views] would justify all sorts of oppression
on the part of the State, and all kinds of intellectual tyranny, and were in fact the same
as those on which the Roman Emperors acted when they persecuted Christianity."
(51;v.6: 266-8)
E. Adolf von Harnack (P)
"It is an altogether one-sided view, one, indeed, which
willfully disregards the facts, to hail in Luther the man of the new age, the hero of
enlightenment and the creator of the modern spirit. If we wish to contemplate such heroes
we must turn to Erasmus [a Catholic] and his associates . . . In the periphery of his
existence Luther was an Old Catholic, a medieval phenomenon." (85:193/7)
F. Dean William Inge (P)
"The Anglican Dean Inge, of St. Paul's Cathedral, London,
did not hesitate to say . .
'If we wish to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay
the miseries which Germany has brought on the world, I am more and more convinced that the
worst evil genius of that country, is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but
Martin Luther.'
And he gave as his reason that in Lutheranism:
'the Law of Nature, which ought to be the court of appeal
against unjust authority, is identified with the existing order of society, to which
absolute obedience is due.'" (84:382)
4. John Calvin
A. Will Durant (Secularist)
"Calvin was as thorough as any pope in rejecting
individualism of belief; this greatest legislator of Protestantism completely repudiated
that principle of private judgment with which the new religion had begun. He had seen the
fragmentation of the Reformation into a hundred sects, and foresaw more; in Geneva he
would have none of them." (122:473)
B. Georgia Harkness (P)
"There was little political liberty in Geneva under
Calvin's regime, and still less of religious liberty. His practical influence was on the
side of an autocratic state and complete conformity of the individual to the established
powers." (123:222)
5. Heinrich Bullinger: Most Tolerant
of the Intolerant (Will Durant)
Bullinger was undoubtedly the most tolerant Protestant
Founder:
"[He] avoided politics . . . sheltered fugitive
Protestants, and dispensed charity to the needy of any creed . . . he approached a theory
of general religious freedom." (122:413)
But even Bullinger favored Calvin's execution of Servetus and
the burning of witches, as we shall see later.
6. The 17th Century: Rutherford,
Milton, Locke
The tradition of intolerance among Protestants did not soon
die out. According to Protestant historian Owen Chadwick:
"The ablest defence of persecution during the 17th
century came from the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford (A Free Disputation
Against Pretended Liberty Of Conscience, 1649)." (120:403)
John Milton and John Locke, otherwise relatively
"enlightened" Protestants, argued for tolerance, but excluded Catholics - the
former in his Areopagitica (1644), and the latter in his first Letter Concerning
Toleration (1689). (78:1384)
7. The Persecuted Become the
Persecutors!
One of the many tragi-comic ironies of the Protestant
Revolution is the fact that even persecuted Protestants failed to see the light:
"Often the resistance to tyranny and the demand for
religious freedom are combined, as in the Puritan revolution in England; and the victors,
having achieved supremacy, then set up a new tyranny and a fresh intolerance."
(123:222)
"Multitudes of Non-Conformists fled from Ireland and
England to America; . . . What is amazing is the fact that, after such experiences, those
fugitives did not learn the lesson of toleration, and did not grant to those who differed
. . . freedom . . . When they found themselves in a position to persecute, they tried to
outdo what they had endured . . . Among those whom they attacked was . . . the Society of
Friends, otherwise known as Quakers." (92:207)
In Massachusetts, for successive convictions, a Quaker would
suffer the loss of one ear and then the other, the boring of the tongue with a hot iron,
and sometimes eventually death. In Boston three Quaker men and one woman were hanged.
Baptist Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts in 1635 and founded tolerant Rhode
Island (92:208). To his credit, he remained tolerant, an exception to the rule, as was
William Penn, who was persecuted by Protestants in England and founded the tolerant colony
of Pennsylvania. Quakerism (Penn's faith) has an honorable record of tolerance since, like
its predecessor Anabaptism, it is one of the most subjective and individualistic of
Protestant sects, and eschews association with the "world" (governments, the
military, etc.), whence lies the power necessary to persecute. Thus, Quakers were in the
forefront of the abolition movement in America in the first half of the 19th century.
8. Catholic Maryland: The First
Tolerant American Colony
A. Patrick O'Hare
"Catholics . . . were the first in America to proclaim
and to practice civil and religious liberty . . . The colony established by Lord Baltimore
in Maryland granted civil and religious liberty to all who professed different beliefs . .
. At that very time the Puritans of New England and the Episcopalians of Virginia were
busily engaged in persecuting their brother Protestants for consciences' sakes and the
former were . . . hanging `witches'." (50:300-01)
B. Martin Marty (P)
"Baltimore . . . welcomed, among other English people,
even the Catholic-hating Puritans (8) . . . In January of 1691 . . . the new regime
brought hard times for Catholics as the Protestants closed their church, forbade them to
teach in public . . . but . . . the little outpost of practical Catholic tolerance had
left its mark of promise on the land." (9)
C. John Tracy Ellis
"For the first time in history . . . all churches would
be tolerated, and . . . none would be the agent of the government . . . Catholics and
Protestants side by side on terms of equality and toleration unknown in the mother country
. . . The effort proved vain; for . . . the Puritan element . . . October, 1654, repealed
the Act of Toleration and outlawed the Catholics . . . condemning ten of them to death,
four of whom were executed . . . From . . . 1718 down to the outbreak of the Revolution,
the Catholics of Maryland were cut off from all participation in public life, to say
nothing of the enactments against their religious services and . . . schools for Catholic
instruction . . . During the half-century the Catholics had governed Maryland they had not
been guilty of a single act of religious oppression." (10)
D. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (P)
"In the 17th century the most notable instances of
practical toleration were the colonies of Maryland, founded by Lord Baltimore in 1632 for
persecuted Catholics, which offered asylum also to Protestants, and of Rhode Island,
founded by Roger Williams." (78:1383)
Stories of Protestant intolerance in America prior to 1789
could be multiplied indefinitely. Jefferson and Madison, in pushing for complete religious
freedom, were reacting primarily to these inter-Protestant wars for dominance, not the
squabbles of post-Reformation Europe. Here we are concerned with the immediate era of the
Protestant Revolution - roughly 1517 to 1600, so the above anecdotes will have to suffice
as altogether typical examples.
9. Conclusion (Will Durant)
"The principle which the Reformation had upheld in the
youth of its rebellion - the right of private judgment - was as completely rejected by the
Protestant leaders as by the Catholics . . . Toleration was now definitely less after the
Reformation than before it." (122:456/11)
BACK TO TABLE
OF CONTENTS
II. PROTESTANT DIVISIONS AND
MUTUAL ANIMOSITIES
1. General Observations
Dissensions plagued Protestantism from the start, even though
one would think that a religion stressing individualism and conscience would be free from
such shortcomings and would promote mutual respect. The myth of Protestant magnanimity and
peaceful coexistence (especially in its infancy) dies an unequivocal death as the facts
are brought out:
A. Patrick O'Hare
"A volume might be filled with indubitable facts to prove
the intolerant spirit of Luther and of the various sects which his rebellion originated.
The quarrels, hostilities and jealousies that constantly arose among one and all made them
a prey to the fiercest dissensions. They anathematized and persecuted each other . . . and
indulged in the coarsest and vilest invective . . . The Lutherans . . . denounced and
excluded the reformed Calvinists from salvation. The Calvinists roused up the people
against the Lutherans . . . Zwingli complained of Luther's intolerance when he was the
victim . . . but he and his followers threw the poor Anabaptists into the Lake of Zurich,
enclosed in sacks." (50:293)
B. Calvin's Revealing Letter to Melanchthon
"It is indeed important that posterity should not know of
our differences; for it is indescribably ridiculous that we, who are in opposition to the
whole world, should be, at the very beginning of the Reformation, at issue among
ourselves." (50:293)
Melanchthon replied:
"All the waters of the Elbe would not yield me tears
sufficient to weep for the miseries caused by the Reformation." (92:88/12)
C. Johannes Janssen
Janssen, author of a 16-volume history of Germany during
"Reformation" times, claimed that:
"The Protestant sects derided each other in just as
immoderate and undignified a way as they one and all derided the papacy . . . Cursing and
blaspheming were as frequent as praying was rare." (111;v.16:4-5)
We will now examine some examples of this inter-Protestant
invective:
2. Luther and Lutherans on Zwingli
and His Followers
"I will not read the works of these people, because they
are out of the Church, and are not only damned themselves, but draw many miserable
creatures after them." (113;v.1:466)
"Zwingli was an offspring of hell, an associate of Arius
(13), a man who did not deserve to be prayed for . . ." (113;v.1:466)
"Zwingli was greedy of honour . . . he had learnt nothing
from me . . . Oecolampadius thought himself too learned to listen to me or to learn from
me." (51;v.4:309/14)
"Zwinglians . . . are fighting against God and the
sacraments as the most inveterate enemies of the Divine Word." (111;v.5:220-21/15)
"Heretics who had broken away . . . ministers of Satan,
against whom no exercise of severity, however great, would be excessive." (50:286)
"It would be better to announce eternal damnation than
salvation after the style of Zwingli or Oecolampadius." (46:85)
Luther rejoiced at the news of Zwingli's death on the
battlefield in 1531, and said that he had met "an assassin's end" (46:86). And
when Zwingli's associate Oecolampadius shortly followed him to the grave, Luther concluded
that "the devil's blows have killed him." (46:86)
"It is well that Zwingli . . . lies dead on the
battlefield . . . Oh, what a triumph this is . . . How well God knows his business."
(45:139)
"Zwingli is dead and damned, having desired like a thief
and a rebel, to compel others to follow his error." (113; v.1:466)
The Lutherans proclaimed in full synod:
"The Zwinglians . . . we do not even grant to them a
place in the church, far from recognizing as brethren, a set of people, whom we see
agitated by the spirit of lying, and uttering blasphemies against the Son of Man."
(113;v.1:466)
The Zwinglians believed that the Eucharist was wholly symbolic
(probably the majority position of Protestants today). Hence, whoever believes the same
would have had the foregoing said about them by Dr. Luther, who firmly held to
Consubstantiation, i.e., the actual Body and Blood of Christ is present in the communion
along with the bread and wine.
3. Zwingli and His Cohorts on Luther
Zwingli, not to be outdone, returned the compliment:
"The devil has made himself master of Luther, to such a
degree, as to make one believe he wishes to gain entire possession of him."
(113;v.1:463)
"To see him in the midst of his followers, you would
believe him to be possessed by a phalanx of devils." (113;v.1:464)
"We do you no injustice when we reproach and condemn you
as a worse betrayer and denier of Christ than the ancient heretic Marcion (16)."
(50:288)
Oecolampadius was also not without a retort:
"He is puffed up with pride and arrogance, and seduced by
Satan." (113;v.1:463)
Zwingli's Church of Zurich wrote of Luther:
"He will not and can not associate himself with those who
confess Christ . . . He wrote all his works by the impulse and the dictation of the
devil." (113;v.1:464)
At least the insults exhibit some vehemence, perhaps revealing
the felt importance of their object. Today, on the other hand, many Protestants are
utterly indifferent towards Luther, as if their faith was a product solely of their own
invention and ingenuity; oftentimes, such self-professed generic "Christians"
eschew even the title of "Protestant."
4. Luther on Bucer
"They think much of themselves, which, indeed, is the
cause and wellspring of all heresies . . . Thus Zwingli and Bucer now put forward a new
doctrine . . . So dangerous a thing is pride in the clergy." (51;v.6:283/17)
"A gossip . . . a miscreant through and through . . . I
trust him not at all, for Paul says (18) `A man that is a heretic, after the first and
second admonition, avoid.'" (51;v.6:289/19)
5. Luther on Calvin and Oecolampadius
"Oecolampadius, Calvin . . . and the other heretics have
in-deviled, through-deviled, over-deviled, corrupt hearts and lying mouths."
(122:448/20)
6. Calvin on Luther and Lutherans
"What to think of Luther I know not . . . with his
firmness there is mixed up a good deal of obstinacy . . . Nothing can be safe as long as
that rage for contention shall agitate us . . . Luther . . . will never be able to join
along with us in . . . the pure truth of God. For he has sinned against it not only from
vainglory . . . but also from ignorance and the grossest extravagance. For what
absurdities he pawned upon us . . . when he said the bread is the very body! . . . a very
foul error. What can I say of the partisans of that cause? Do they not romance more wildly
than Marcion respecting the body of Christ? . . . Wherefore if you have an influence or
authority over Martin, use it . . . that he himself submit to the truth which he is now
manifestly attacking . . . Contrive that Luther . . . cease to bear himself so
imperiously." (126:46-8/21)
"Luther had done nothing to any purpose . . . people
ought not to let themselves be duped by following his steps and being half-papist; it is
much better to build a church entirely afresh." (113;v.1:465)
"I am carefully on the watch that Lutheranism gain no
ground, nor be introduced into France. The best means . . . for checking the evil would be
that the confession written by me . . . should be published." (126:76/22)
7. Calvin on Zwingli
8. Calvin on Melanchthon
Calvin had some sort of friendship with Melanchthon (rare
among differing Protestant leaders), but wrote harshly of him in letters to others:
"He openly opposes sound doctrine; or . . . cunningly, or
at least, with but little manliness, disguises his own opinion . . . The inconstancy of
Philip moves both my anger and detestation." (126:52,65/23)
9. Melanchthon on Zwingli
The timid Melanchthon was "manly" enough, however,
to launch at least one salvo against Zwingli:
"Zwingli says almost nothing about Christian sanctity. He
simply follows the Pelagians, the Papists and the philosophers." (46:261)
10. Bucer on Calvin
Despite theological affinities, Bucer had quite a low opinion
of Calvin:
"Calvin is a true mad dog. The man is wicked, and he
judges of people according as he loves or hates them." (113;v.1:467)
11. Luther on Protestant
"Heretics"
"Heresiarchs . . . remain obdurate in their own conceit.
They allow none to find fault with them and brook no opposition. This is the sin against
the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness." (51;v.6:282/24)
"Those are heretics and apostates who follow their own
ideas rather than the common tradition of Christendom, who . . . out of pure wantonness,
invent new ways and methods." (51;v.6:282-3/25)
Grisar adds:
"In his frame of mind it became at last an impossibility
for him to realise that his hostility and intolerance towards `heretics' within his fold
could redound on himself." (51;v.6:283)
"We must needs decry the fanatics as damned . . . They
actually dare to pick holes in our doctrine; ah, the scoundrelly rabble do a great injury
to our Evangel." (51; v.6:289/26)
"I am on the heels of the Sacramentaries (27) and the
Anabaptists; . . . I shall challenge them to fight; and I shall trample them all
underfoot." (46:86)
BACK TO TABLE
OF CONTENTS
III. PLUNDER AS AN AGENT OF
RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION
1. General Observations
A. Hilaire Belloc
"There came - round about 1536-40 - a change . . . The
temptation to loot Church property and the habit of doing so had appeared and was growing;
and this rapidly created a vested interest in promoting the change of religion. Those who
attacked Catholic doctrine, as, for instance, in the matters of celibacy in the monastic
orders . . . opened the door for the seizure of the enormous clerical endowments . . . by
the Princes . . . The property of convents and monasteries passed wholesale to the looters
over great areas of Christendom: Scandinavia, the British Isles, the Northern Netherlands,
much of the Germanies and many of the Swiss Cantons. The endowments of hospitals,
colleges, schools, guilds, were largely though not wholly seized . . . Such an economic
change in so short a time our civilization had never seen . . . The new adventurers and
the older gentry who had so suddenly enriched themselves, saw, in the return of
Catholicism, peril to their immense new fortunes." (107:9-l0)
B. Will Durant
"The cities found Protestantism profitable . . . for a
slight alteration in their theological garb they escaped from episcopal taxes and courts,
and could appropriate pleasant parcels of ecclesiastical property . . . The princes . . .
could be spiritual as well as temporal lords, and all the wealth of the Church could be
theirs . . . The Lutheran princes suppressed all monasteries in their territory except a
few whose inmates had embraced the Protestant faith." (122:438-9)
C. Henri Daniel-Rops
"Right from the beginning, Luther's spiritual revolt had
let loose material greed. The German rulers, the Scandinavian monarchs and Henry VIII of
England had all taken advantage of the break from papal tutelage to appropriate both the
wealth and the control of their respective Churches." (46:309-10)
2. Melanchthon on the Princes
"They do not care in the least about religion; they are
only anxious to get dominion into their hands, to be free from the control of bishops . .
. Under cover of the Gospel, the princes were only intent on the plunder of the
Churches." (122:438,440)
3. A Precedent: The
"Hussites" (Will Durant)
The Protestants had learned from the "Hussites",
Bohemians who claimed to follow the heretic John Hus, whom Luther hailed as one of his
forerunners. After Hus's execution in 1415, zealous ragtag armies:
"Passed up and down Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia . . .
pillaging monasterles, massacring monks, and compelling the population to accept the Four
Articles of Prague . . ." (122:169)
4. Luther's Advice to the Princes
"The abbeys are as much your property as the game that
runs on your lands. The monasteries . . . are dens of iniquity, which you must root out,
if you would have God bless you." (50:295)
5. Sweden: Gustavus Vasa (A.G.
Dickens {P})
"In Sweden Gustavus Vasa deprived the Church of all its
landed properties . . . The proportion of land held by the crown increased during his
reign from 5.5% to 28%: that of the Church from 21% to nil." (121:191)
6. Scotland and England (Hilaire
Belloc)
"The great Scottish nobles . . . supported the religious
revolution because it gave them the power to loot the Church and the monarchy
wholesale." (107:112)
Likewise, the English "Reformation" was perpetrated
primarily by means of plunder at the highest levels of government.
7. Erasmus' Disdain of Protestant
Plunder
The greatest scholar and man of letters in Europe at this
time, Erasmus, who looked with some favor upon the "Reformation" initially, but
came to despise it as he saw its fruits, wrote on May l0, 1521, just a few weeks after the
Diet of Worms, about those who "covet the wealth of the churchmen." He goes on
to say:
"This certainly is a fine turn of affairs, if property is
wickedly taken away from priests so that soldiers may make use of it in worse fashion; and
the latter squander their own wealth, and sometimes that of others, so that no one
benefits." (117:l57)
BACK TO TABLE
OF CONTENTS
IV. SYSTEMATIC SUPPRESSION OF CATHOLICISM
1. General Observations
Protestant leaders sought to exterminate Catholicism wherever
possible, and exhibited very little tolerance and much philistine ignorance and hatred.
Janssen tells us the views of some leading "reformers" on this score:
"Luther was content with the expulsion of the Catholics.
Melanchthon was in favour of proceeding against them with corporal penalties . . . Zwingli
held that, in case of need, the massacre of bishops and priests was a work commanded by
God." (111;v.5:290)
2. Zwingli (Zurich)
Zwingli's Zurich was definitely not a haven of Christian
freedom:
"The presence at sermons . . . was enjoined under pain of
punishment; all teaching and church worship that deviated from the prescribed regulations
was punishable. Even outside the district of Zurich the clergy were not allowed to read
Mass or the laity to attend. And it was actually forbidden, `under pain of severe
punishment, to keep pictures and images even in private houses' . . . The example of
Zurich was followed by other Swiss Cantons." (111;v.5:134-5)
The Mass was abolished in Zurich in 1525 (121:117). How did
Zwingli's ideas spread?:
"Their progress was marked by the destruction of churches
and the burning of monasteries. The bishops of Constance, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva were
forced to abandon their sees." (46:81-2)
3. Farel (Geneva)
William Farel, who preceded Calvin in Geneva, helped to
abolish the Mass in August,1535, seize all the churches, and close its four monasteries
and nunnery. (123:8)
"His sermons in St. Peter's were the occasion of riots;
statues were smashed, pictures destroyed, and the treasures of the church, to the amount
of 10,000 crowns, disappeared." (45:226-7)
4. Bucer (Augsburg / Ulm /
Strassburg)
"Martin Bucer . . . though anxious to be regarded as
considerate and peaceable . . . advocated quite openly `the power of the authorities over
consciences' .He never rested until, in 1537 . . . he brought about the entire suppression
of the Mass at Augsburg. At his instigation, many fine paintings, monuments and ancient
works of art in the churches were wantonly torn, broken and smashed. Whoever refused to
submit and attend public worship was obliged within eight days to quit the city
boundaries. Catholic citizens were forbidden under severe penalties to attend Catholic
worship elsewhere . . . In other . . . cities Bucer acted with no less violence and
intolerance, for instance, at Ulm, where he supported Oecolampadius . . . in 1531, and at
Strasburg . . . Here, in 1529, after the Town-Council had prohibited Catholic worship, the
Councillors were requested by the preachers to help fill the empty churches by issuing
regulations prescribing attendance at the sermons." (51;v.6:277-8)
5. Various Protestant Cities and
Areas
In 1529 the Council of Strassburg also ordered the breaking in
pieces of all remaining altars, images and crosses, and several churches and convents were
destroyed (111;v.5:143-4). Similar events transpired also in Frankfurt-am-Main (122:424).
At a religious convention at Hamburg in April, 1535 the Lutheran towns of Lubeck, Bremen,
Hamburg, Luneburg, Stralsund, Rostock and Wismar all voted to hang Anabaptists and flog
Catholics and Zwinglians before banishing them (111;v.5:481). Luther's home territory of
Saxony had instituted banishment for Catholics in 1527 (51;v.6:241-2).
"In 1522 a rabble forced its way into the church at
Wittenberg, on the doors of which Luther had nailed his theses, destroyed all its altars
and statues, and . . . drove out the clergy. In Rotenburg also, in 1525, the figure of
Christ was decapitated . . . On the 9th of February, 1529, everything previously revered
in the fine old cathedral of Basle, Switzerland, was destroyed . . . Such instances of
brutality and fanaticism could be cited by scores." (92:94)
"[In] Constance, on March 10, 1528, the Catholic faith
was altogether interdicted . . . by the Council . . . 'There are no rights whatever beyond
those laid down in the Gospel as it is now understood' . . . Altars were smashed . . .
organs were removed as being works of idolatry . . . church treasures were to be sent to
the mint." (111;v.5:146)
6. Scotland: John Knox
In Scotland, John Knox and his ilk passed legislation in
which:
"It was . . . forbidden to say Mass or to be present at
Mass, with the punishment for a first offence of loss of all goods and a flogging; for the
second offence, banishment; for the third, death." (45:300)
Knox, like virtually all the Protestant Founders, was
persuaded "that all which our adversaries do is diabolical." He rejoiced in that
"perfect hatred which the Holy Ghost engenders in the hearts of God's elect against
the condemners of His holy statutes" (28). In conflict with these damned opponents
(i.e., Catholics) all means were justified - lies, treachery (29), flexible contradictions
of policy. (122:610/30)
7. Luther
Luther was at the forefront of this remarkable inquisition
against Catholic practice:
"It is the duty of the authorities to resist and punish
such public blasphemy." (51;v.6:240)
"If the preacher does not make men pious, the goods are
no longer his." (51;v.6:244)
"Not only the spiritual but also the secular power must
yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise." (51;v.6:245)
In his self-proclaimed righteous infallibility, Luther had
decided by 1527 that:
"Men despise the Evangel and insist on being compelled by
the law and the sword." (51;v.6:262/31)
"Even though they do not believe, they must nevertheless
. . . be driven to the preaching, so that they may at least learn the outward work of
obedience." (51;v.6:262/32)
"Although we neither can nor should force anyone into the
faith, yet the masses must be held and driven to it in order that they may know what is
right or wrong." (51;v.6:263/33)
"It is our custom to affright those who . . . fail to
attend the preaching; and to threaten them with banishment and the law . . . In the event
of their still proving contumacious, to excommunicate them . . . as if they were
heathen." (51;v.6:263/34)
"Although excommunication in popedom has been shamefully
abused . . . yet we must not suffer it to fall, but make right use of it, as Christ
commanded." (122:424-5)
If I may be excused an irresistible pun at this point:
"The Catholic Masses were forced out, while the Catholic masses were
forced in" (to Protestant services)!
8. Melanchthon
Melanchthon asked the state to compel the people to attend
Protestant services (122:424). Later on, in Saxony (1623), even auricular confession and
the Eucharist were made strictly obligatory by law, punishable by banishment. (51;v.6:264)
9. Calvin
Calvin, in Geneva, took religious compulsion to an absurd
degree which would make the most zealous Pharisee sick with envy. Suffice it to say that
the reality of the Genevan "theocracy" is the farthest thing conceivable from
the prevailing myth of Protestantism as the champion of the individual conscience against
the vicious tyranny of Rome. The irony is all the more profound when we realize that
Calvin was the most influential "reformer" and the "father," one could
say, of all Protestant systematic theology and biblical commentary and exegesis.
10. Conclusion (Owen Chadwick {P})
"The Protestant states did not question that teachers of
disapproved doctrines should be prevented from preaching. Nor did they question that the
state should use laws to encourage churchgoing. In Anglican England and Lutheran Germany,
Reformed Holland . . . the citizens were alike liable to penalties if they failed for no
good reason to attend the worship of their parish churches." (120:398)
BACK TO TABLE
OF CONTENTS
V. VIOLENT RADICALISM AND THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION
1. Luther: Revolutionary Invective /
The Peasants' Revolt
"The Pope and the Cardinals . . . since they are
blasphemers, their tongues ought to be torn out through the back of their necks, and
nailed to the gallows!" (92:94/35)
"It were better that every bishop were murdered . . .
than that one soul should be destroyed . . . If they will not hear God's Word . . . what
do they better deserve than a strong uprising which will sweep them from the earth? And we
would smile did it happen. All who contribute body, goods . . . that the rule of the
bishops may be destroyed are God's dear children and true Christians." (122:377/36)
Will Durant asserts:
"Luther . . . emitted an angry roar that was almost a tocsin of revolution"
(122:377). These roars
were numerous:
"If you understand the Gospel rightly, I beseech you not
to believe that it can be carried on without tumult, scandal, sedition . . . The word of
God is a sword, is war, is ruin, is scandal . . ." (109:41/37)
"If we punish thieves with the gallows . . . why do we
not still more attack with every kind of weapon . . . these Cardinals, these Popes, and
that whole abomination of the Romish Sodom . . . why do we not wash our hands in their
blood?" (109:41/38)
"If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house, I would
set fire to it . . . To the fire with them!" (51;v.6:247/39)
Jesuit Luther scholar Hartmann Grisar, exercising all charity
and any benefit of the doubt possible in interpreting such statements as these, writes:
"No one . . . will be so foolish to believe that it was
really his intention to kill the Catholic clergy and monks. His bloodthirsty demands were
but the violent outbursts of his own deep inward intolerance." (51;v.6:247)
Let's hope Grisar is right, for Luther's sake. On the other
hand, the rhetoric is very explicit and was circulated widely in all of Germany and
elsewhere. At any rate, Luther should have known how people would react to such wild,
reckless statements, and therefore largely bears responsibility for the Peasants' Revolt
that broke out in Germany, not coincidentally, in 1525. This is frankly admitted by
virtually all historians of the period, including fervent Protestants. Grisar agrees:
"But who was it who was responsible for having provoked
the war? Occasional counsels to . . . self-restraint . . . were indeed given by Luther
from time to time . . . but . . . they are drowned in the din of his controversial
invective . . . If his reforms were rejected then it was to be wished that monasteries and
foundations `were all reduced to one great heap of ashes' (40). 'A grand destruction of
all the monasteries, etc., would be the best reformation.'" (51;v.6:248/41)
"It is a duty to suppress the Pope by force."
(51;v.6:245/42)
"Some . . . will not treat our gospel rightly; but have
we not gibbets, wheels, swords, and knives? Those who are obdurate can be brought to
reason." (111;v.3:266/43)
"The spiritual powers . . . also the temporal ones, will
have to succumb to the Gospel, either through love or through force, as is clearly proved
by all Biblical history." (111;v.3:267/44)
Luther's friend, the minor "reformer" Wolfgang
Capito, warned Luther on December 4, 1520 about his bone-chilling invective:
"You are frightening away from you your supporters by
your constant reference to troops and arms. We can easily enough throw everything into
confusion, but it will not be in our power, believe me, to restore things to peace and
order." (111;v.3:136)
Capito was in this instance wise, almost a prophet, but
unsuccessful at persuasion. After the Peasants' Revolt broke out, Luther advised the
princes to kill the peasants in any fashion necessary, en masse, and the usual
estimates are of 100,000 resultant deaths. This episode is widely acknowledged as a blot
on Luther's career. Durant maintains:
"The peasants had a case against him. He had not only
predicted social revolution, he had said he would not be displeased by it . . . even if
men washed their hands in episcopal blood . . . He had made no protest against the secular
appropriation of ecclesiastical property . . . The peasants felt that the new religion had
sanctified their cause, had aroused them to hope and action, and had deserted them in the
hour of decision . . . Many of them, or their children . . . returned to the Catholic
fold." (122:394-5)
2. Zwingli
Zwingli, too, had marked militaristic tendencies:
"Zwingli had gone the length of declaring that the
massacre of the bishops was necessary for the establishment of the pure Gospel . . . He
wrote on May 4, 1528,
Zwingli, the inveterate adulterer (who is he to talk
about "corruption"?), was killed, along with 24 Zwinglian preachers, at the
battle of Kappel, a few miles south of Zurich, on October 11, 1531, at which news Luther
reacted with glee. This event, no doubt, helped to make Zwingli's successor, Bullinger,
the most mild and moderate of all the founders of Protestantism.
3. Luther and Melanchthon Condone
Slavery
Luther, hardened by the bitter pill of the Peasants' Revolt
and his hand in it, sanctioned slavery, quoting the Old Testament:
"Sheep, cattle, men-servants were all possessions to be
sold as it pleased their masters. It were a good thing were it still so. For else no man
may compel nor tame the servile folk." (122:449/46)
Luther's sidekick Melanchthon followed him in upholding
serfdom (122:457/47). Having seen the dreadful and tragic results of their own anarchical
teachings, they became much more ruthless than that which they claimed to be
"reforming." How strange and curious is religious corruption!
BACK TO TABLE
OF CONTENTS
VI. DEATH AND TORTURE FOR
CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANT DISSIDENTS
1. Luther
"There are others who teach in opposition to some
recognised article of faith which is manifestly grounded on Scripture and is believed by
good Christians all over the world, such as are taught to children in the Creed . . .
Heretics of this sort must not be tolerated, but punished as open blasphemers . . . If
anyone wishes to preach or to teach, let him make known the call or the command which
impels him to do so, or else let him keep silence. If he will not keep quiet, then let the
civil authorities command the scoundrel to his rightful master - namely, Master Hans
[i.e., the hangman]." (111;v.10:222/48)
"That seditious articles of doctrine should be punished
by the sword needed no further proof. For the rest, the Anabaptists hold tenets relating
to infant baptism, original sin, and inspiration, which have no connection with the Word
of God, and are indeed opposed to it . . . Secular authorities are also bound to restrain
and punish avowedly false doctrine . . . For think what disaster would ensue if children
were not baptized? . . . Besides this the Anabaptists separate themselves from the
churches . . . and they set up a ministry and congregation of their own, which is also
contrary to the command of God. From all this it becomes clear that the secular
authorities are bound . . . to inflict corporal punishment on the offenders . . . Also
when it is a case of only upholding some spiritual tenet, such as infant baptism, original
sin, and unnecessary separation, then . . . we conclude that . . . the stubborn sectaries
must be put to death." (111;v.10:222-3/49)
Bullinger saw the contradiction in Luther's appeal to
tradition for punishment of heretics, and thought it was "truly laughable" that
he should suddenly appeal to the fact,
"of the Church having so long held this . . . If Luther's
argument, based on longstanding usage, be admitted . . . then the whole of Luther's own
doctrine tumbles over, for his teaching is not that which the Roman Church has held for so
long." (51;v.6:259/50)
Logical consistency was never one of Luther's strong points.
Grisar states:
"That . . . every follower of his Evangel, were bound to
regard all opinions which diverged from his own as godless heresies . . . he had never
doubted from the moment he had discovered his new Evangel." (51;v.6:238)
2. Melanchthon
"Melanchthon accepted the chairmanship of the secular
inquisition that suppressed the Anabaptists in Germany with imprisonment or death. 'Why
should we pity such men more than God does?' he asked, for he was convinced that God had
destined all Anabaptists to hell." (122:423)
"A regular inquisition was set up in Saxony, with
Melanchthon on the bench, and under it many persons were punished, some with death, some
with life imprisonment, and some with exile." (115:177)
"Even though the Anabaptists do not advocate anything
seditious or openly blasphemous" it was, in his opinion, "the duty of the
authorities to put them to death." (51;v.6:250/51)
At the end of 1530, Melanchthon drafted a memorandum in which
he defended a regular system of coercion by the sword (i.e., death for Anabaptists).
Luther signed it with the words, "It pleases me," and added:
"Though it may appear cruel to punish them by the sword,
yet it is even more cruel of them . . . not to teach any certain doctrine - to persecute
the true doctrine . . ." (51;v.6:251)
Protestant theologian Hunzinger concludes that:
"Melanchthon was wont to lose no time in having recourse
to fire and sword. This forms a dark blot on his life. Many a man fell victim to his
memorandum." (51;v.6:270/52)
In 1530 Melanchthon recommended death for rejection of the
Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but changed his mind on this very doctrine later
in his life! (122:424)
3. Zwingli
"Young Bible students he once mentored were now
advocating more radical reform . . . refusing to have their babies baptized, citing his
own earlier ideas . . . In January, 1525, Zwingli agreed that they deserved capital
punishment . . . for tearing the fabric of a seamless Christian society." (53)
Zwingli's Zurich mercilessly persecuted the Anabaptists:
"The persecution of the Anabaptists began in Zurich . . .
The penalties enjoined by the Town Council of Zurich were 'drowning, burning, or
beheading,' according as it seemed advisable . . . 'It is our will,' the Council
proclaimed, 'that wherever they be found, whether singly or in companies, they shall be
drowned to death, and that none of them shall be spared.'" (111;v.5:l53-7)
4. Bucer
In his Dialogues of 1535, Bucer called on governments
to exterminate by fire and sword all professing a false religion, and even their wives,
children and cattle. (111;v.5:367-8,290-1)
5. Knox
"His conviction . . . harked back to the darkest
practices of the Inquisition . . . Every heretic was to be put to death, and cities
predominantly heretical were to be smitten with the sword and utterly destroyed:
6. England
Persecution Laws of Ireland and
England (1558-1760 A.D...)
"Elizabeth . . . is on record for the burning of two
Dutch Anabaptists in 1575 . . . Henry VIII . . . had a score of them burned on one day in
1535." (45:143)
Six Carthusian monks, a Bridgettine monk, and the Bishop of
Rochester, St. John Fisher, were hanged or beheaded (the Bishop), some being disemboweled
and drawn and quartered, in May and June, 1535, all for denying that Henry VIII was the
Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England. (45:181-2)
Hugh Latimer, an English "reformer", had, remarks
Will Durant, "tarnished his eloquent career by approving the burning of Anabaptists
and obstinate Franciscans under Henry VIII." (122:597)
Queen Elizabeth, writes Philip Hughes:
" . . . enacted a definition of heresy that made life
safe for all who believed in the Trinity and the Incarnation. But the statute left intact
that heresy was, by common law, an offense punishable by death. An English Servetus could
have been burned under Elizabeth, and, in fact, in 1589 she burned an Arian."
(45:274)
And as the Reformation in England progressed in age, its ingenious
methods for bringing the knowledge of the true God to the people progressed likewise. Some
of the subjects chosen for inducting progressed likewise. Some of the subjects chosen for
inducting of religion into, "were burned before a slow fire; some were put on the
rack and tortured to death; whilst others, like Ambrose Cahill and James O’Reilly,
were not only slain with the greatest cruelty, but their inanimate bodies were torn into
fragments, and scattered before the wind." The fate of the gentle and saintly
Archbishop Plunkett is only too well known: "His speech ended and the cap drawn over
his eyes, Oliver Plunkett again recommended his happy soul, with raptures of devotion into
the hands of Jesus, his Saviour, for whose sake he died—till the cart was drawn from
under him. Thus then he hung betwixt Heaven and earth, an open sacrifice to God for
innocence and religion; and as soon as he expired the executioner ripped his body open and
pulled out his heart and bowels, and threw them in the fire already kindled near the
gallows for that purpose"
It wasn't until 1679 that capital punishment for heresy was
abolished in England, by an act of Parliament of Charles II. (45:274)
John Stoddard gives an account of Henry VIII, who founded
Anglicanism:
" . . . the murderer of two wives . . . and the
executioner of many of the noblest Englishmen of the time, who had the conscience and the
courage to oppose him. Among these were the venerable Bishop Fisher . . . and Sir Thomas
More, one of the most distinguished men of his century . . .
"When Henry began his persecution, there were about 1,000
Dominican monks in Ireland, only four of whom survived when Elizabeth came to the throne
thirty years later . . .
"Executions speedily began . . . At one time, . . . about
800 a year (55). Hallam [a Protestant] . . . says (56) that the revolting tortures and
executions of Jesuit priests in the reign of Elizabeth were characterised by a 'savageness
and bigotry, which I am very sure no scribe of the Inquisition could have surpassed' . . .
The details of these atrocities . . . would form very unpleasant reading for Protestants,
accustomed as they are to think that all religious persecution has been done by Catholics.
As Newman says:
"'It is pleasanter (for them) to declaim against
persecution, and to call the Inquisition a hell, than to consider their own devices and
the work of their own hands.'" (92:131-2,135)
Stoddard chronicles further persecution in England - of the
Dissenters. Under Elizabeth, Presbyterians, for example, were "branded, . . .
imprisoned, banished, mutilated and even put to death. A few Anabaptists and Unitarians
were burned alive." (92:205)
Anglican Bishops were silent accomplices and witnesses of much
torture. (92:205-6)
"The proximate cause of that great revolution, which cost
James (57) his crown, was the publication by the King of an edict of religious toleration!
. . . The first and only time the Church of England has made war on the Crown, was when
the Crown had declared its intention of tolerating . . . the rival religions of the
country!" (58)
In Ireland, Bishops were executed by the English in 1578
(two), 1585 and 1611. In 1652 "an attempt was made to exterminate the entire Irish
Catholic priesthood . . .
"An Act signed by the Commissioners for the Parliament of
England decreed that every Romish priest . . . should be . . . hanged . . . beheaded . . .
quartered, his bowels drawn out and burned, and his head fixed on a pole in some public
place . . . Finally, scarcely a Catholic prelate was left on the whole island."
(92:206)
"Dissenters in Ireland . . . also endured apalling
miseries . . . Instances are recorded of Dissenters whose fingers were wrenched asunder,
whose bodies were seared with red-hot irons, and whose legs were broken . . . Their wives
were also whipped in public." (92:207)
O’Hagan (afterwards Chief Justice) in his Essay on Irish History cites one
of the edicts of that time:
"If any one shall know where a priest remains concealed, in caves, woods,
or caverns, or if by any chance he should meet a priest on the highway, and not
immediately take him into custody and present him before the next magistrate, such person
is to be considered a traitor and an enemy of the Republic. He is accordingly to be cast
into prison, flogged through the public streets and afterwards have his ears cut off. But
should it appear that he kept up any correspondence or friendship with a priest, he is to
suffer death."(127)
Professor Lecky , a
Protestant Historian of British blood and ardent British sympathy,in
the preface to his History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century says:
"the slaughter of the Catholic Irishmen was looked upon as literally the
slaughter of wild beasts. Not only men, but even women and children who fell into the
hands of the English, were deliberately and systematically butchered. Bands of soldiers
traversed great tracts of country, slaying every living thing they met." (127)
The honest Scottish Protestant Dr. Smiles sums up the Elizabeth work in
Ireland,
"Men, women and children wherever found were put indiscriminately to
death. The soldiery was mad for blood. Priests were murdered at the altar, children at
their mother’s breast. The beauty of woman, the venerableness of age, the innocence
of youth was no protection against these sanguinary demons in human form."(127)
During the Protestant Cromwell's reign or terror,
the entire catholic population ( about three thousand innocent men, woman, children and
babies ) of the Irish city of Drogheda, put to the sword (by the orders of Cromwell) there
crime was being Roman Catholic.In his despatchs to the speaker of the House of Commons
Cromwell wrote
"It has pleased God to bless our endeavor at
Drogheda. . . the enemy were about three thousand strong in the town. I
believe we put to the sword the whole number. . . . This hath been a marvelous great
mercy. . . . I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone,
to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." (127)
"In this very place (St. Peter's
Church), a thousand of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. . . .And
now give me leave to say how this work was wrought. It was set upon some of our
hearts that a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the spirit of
God. And is it not so, clearly?"(127)
On October 2, 1649, the English Parliament appoint
a national Thanksgiving Day in celebration of the dreadful slaughter--- and by unanimous
vote place upon the Parliamentary records---
"That the House does approve of the execution
done a t Drogheda as an act of both justice to them [the butchered ones] and mercy to
others who may be warned by it."(127)
7. Calvin
A. General
"In the preface to the Institutes he admitted the
right of the government to put heretics to death . . . He thought that Christians should
hate the enemies of God . . . Those who defended heretics . . . should be equally
punished." (115:178)
During Calvin's reign in Geneva, between 1542 and 1546,
"58 persons were put to death for heresy." (122:473)
"While he did not directly recommend the use of the death
penalty for blasphemy, he defended its use among the Jews." (123:102)
In defense of stoning false prophets, Calvin observes:
"The father should not spare his son . . . nor the
husband his own wife. If he has some friend who is as dear to him as his own life, let him
put him to death." (123:107/59)
He talks of the execution of Catholics, but, like Luther, did
not readily attempt to act on his rhetoric:
"Persons who persist in the superstitions of the Roman
Antichrist . . . deserve to be repressed by the sword." (123:96/60)
B. James Gruet
In January, 1547 in Calvin's Geneva, one James Gruet, a kind
of free-thinker of dubious morals, was alleged to have posted a note which implied that
Calvin should leave the city:
"He was at once arrested and a house to house search made
for his accomplices. This method failed to reveal anything except that Gruet had written
on one of Calvin's tracts the words 'all rubbish.' The judges put him to the rack twice a
day, morning and evening, for a whole month . . . He was sentenced to death for blasphemy
and beheaded on July 26, 1547 . . . Evangelical freedom had now arrived at the point where
its champions took a man's life . . . merely for writing a lampoon!" (114:176/61)
Durant gives further detail:
"Half dead, he was tied to a stake, his feet were nailed
to it, and his head was cut off." (122:479)
C. Comparet Brothers
In May 1555, a drunken riot occurred, precipitated by a group
which objected to the excess of foreign refugees in Geneva. Dissidents of Calvin were
termed "Libertines."
"The brothers Comparet, two humble boatmen, were executed
and pieces of their dismembered bodies nailed on the city gates." (46:192)
"The Comparet brothers, with Calvin's approval, were
tortured . . . Under the rack they said the riot had . . . been premeditated, but denied
this again before their execution. A number, including Francois Berthelier, were beheaded
. . . Several others were banished, and the wives of the condemned were likewise driven
from the city." (123:48)
"All the other leaders of the party took flight and were
sentenced to death in their absence." (46:192)
D. Michael Servetus
The most infamous execution in Geneva was that of Michael
Servetus, a Spanish physician who denied the Trinity, and was a sort of Gnostic pantheist.
He had met Calvin, and the latter declared on February 13, 1547 in a letter to Farel:
"If he comes, provided my authority prevails I will not
suffer him to return home alive." (46:186)
"With Calvin's knowledge and probably at his instigation,
. . . William Trie, of Geneva, denounced Servetus to the Catholic Inquisition at Vienne
and forwarded the material sent by the heretic to Calvin." (114:177)
Daniel-Rops says of this episode, that "Protestant
historians refer to it with embarrassment." (46:187)
"The fact cannot be dodged that Calvin delivered Servetus
to the Inquisition, and then tried either by a lie or a subterfuge to cover his part in
the matter." (123:42)
"Upon arriving at Geneva on August 13, 1553, he was
detected almost immediately . . . through Calvin's instigation he was arrested and put in
prison. Calvin . . . hoped for his execution." (123:42)
"On August 20 he wrote to Farel:
" 'I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death, but I
should like him to be spared the worst part of the punishment,' meaning the fire."
(46:190)
This is the most that can be said about Calvin's
"mercy" in this case.
"On October 26, the Council ordered that he be burned
alive on the following day . . . That he desired Servetus' death . . . is clear."
(123:44)
"Calvin's observations on this appalling death make
horrifying reading: . . .
"'He showed the dumb stupidity of a beast . . . He went
on bellowing . . . in the Spanish fashion: "Misericordias!" . . .'"
(46:190-91)
Henry Hallam, the Protestant historian, gave the following
opinion:
"Servetus, in fact, was burned not so much for his
heresies, as for personal offense he had several years before given to Calvin . . . which
seems to have exasperated the great reformer's temper, so as to make him resolve on what
he afterwards executed . . . Thus, in the second period of the Reformation, those ominous
symptoms which had appeared in its earliest stage, disunion, virulence, bigotry,
intolerance, . . . grew more inveterate and incurable." (62)
" 'Servetus's death, for which Calvin bears much of the
responsibility,' writes Wendel, 'marked the reformer with a bloody stigma which nothing
has been able to efface.'" (46:191)
This stigma, however, is shared by many other
"reformers", who commended this atrocious vendetta:
"Melanchthon, in a letter to Calvin and Bullinger, gave
'thanks to the Son of God' . . . and called the burning 'a pious and memorable example to
all posterity.' Bucer declared from his pulpit in Strasbourg that Servetus had deserved to
be disemboweled and torn to pieces. Bullinger, generally humane, agreed that civil
magistrates must punish blasphemy with death." (122:484)
In 1554 Calvin wrote the treatise Against the Errors of
Servetus, in which he tried to justify his cruel action:
"Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty
that (they allege) I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I
indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face."
(46:191)
This was Calvin's attitude towards the punishment and
execution of heretics. In what way, I submit, is he morally any better than those who
committed atrocities by means of the Inquisition?
8. Protestant Torture
As to the myth that torture was a tactic solely of Catholics,
Janssen quotes a Protestant eyewitness to the contrary:
"The Protestant theologian Meyfart . . . described the
tortures which he had personally witnessed . . . 'The subtle Spaniard and the wily Italian
have a horror of these bestialities and brutalities, and at Rome it is not customary to
subject a murderer . . . an incestuous person, or an adulterer to torture for the space of
more than an hour'; but in Germany . . . torture is kept up for a whole day, for a day and
a night, for two days . . . even also for four days . . . after which it begins again . .
. 'There are stories extant so horrible and revolting that no true man can hear of them
without a shudder.'" (111;v.16:516-18,521)
He gives also another typical instance of the treatment of
Anabaptists:
"At Augsburg, in the first half of the year 1528, about
170 Anabaptists of both sexes were either imprisoned or expelled by order of the
new-religionist Town Council. Some were . . . burnt through the cheeks with hot irons;
many were beheaded; some had their tongues cut out." (111;v.5:160)
9. Conclusion
Persecution, including death penalties for heresy, is not just
a Catholic failing. It is clearly also a Protestant one, and a general "blind
spot" of the Middle Ages, much like abortion is in our own supposedly
"enlightened" age. Furthermore, it is an outright lie to assert that
Protestantism in its initial appearance, advocated tolerance. The evidence thus far
presented refutes this notion beyond any reasonable doubt.
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VII.
PROTESTANT WITCH HUNTS
1. Overview
A. Preserved Smith
Witch hunts were widespread from the 16th century up to the
18th. Smith, the secularist historian, feels that:
"A . . . patent cause of the mania was the zeal and
bibliolatry of Protestantism . . . Luther . . . seeing an idiotic child, whom he regarded
as a changeling, . . . recommended the authorities to drown it, as a body without a soul.
Repeatedly, both in private talk and in public sermons, he recommended that witches should
be put to death without mercy and without regard for legal niceties . . . Four witches
were burned at Wittenberg on June 29, 1540. The other Protestants hastened to follow the
bad example of their master. In Geneva, under Calvin, 34 women were burned or quartered
for the crime in the year 1545. A sermon of Bishop Jewel in 1562 was perhaps the occasion
of a new English law against witchcraft . . . After the mania reached its height in the
closing years of the century, anything, however trivial, would arouse suspicion . . . The
Spanish Inquisition, on the other hand . . . treated witchcraft as a diabolical
delusion." (115:186-7)
B. John Stoddard
"Protestants in the town of Salem hanged numbers of
persons accused of being witches, and in the neighbouring town of Charlestown a poor old
clergyman was, for the same reason, crushed to death between two slabs of stone! This
cruel deed was even publicly commended by the Protestant ministers of Boston and
Charlestown. John Wesley . . . was one of the bitterest persecutors of 'witchcraft,' and
declared - 'The giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible.' In England
under James I, a law was passed subjecting witches to death on the first conviction, even
though they had done no harm. Twelve Anglican Bishops voted for this law! The last witch
was hanged in Scotland in 1727, but in 1773 the Associated Presbytery reaffirmed its
belief in witchcraft." (92:208)
2. Luther
3. England
"The laws of Henry VIII (1541) punished with death any of
several practices ascribed to witches, but the Spanish Inquisition branded stories of
witchcraft as the delusions of weak minds, and cautioned its agents (1538) to ignore the
popular demand for the burning of witches." (122:851-2)
"In England, under Elizabeth, before the craze had more
than well started on its career, . . . 47 are known to have been executed for the
crime." (115:188)
The brilliant historian Paul Johnson contends that;
"Above all, Puritanism was the dynamic behind the increase in witch-hunting."
(63)
4. Scotland
Philip Hughes informs us that:
"In Scotland, 1560-1600 (then Calvinist), some 8,000
women were burnt as witches - the total population was around 600,000." (45:273)
This is actually, incredibly, 1.3% of the population!
Projecting these rates to the United States, which had a population of 231 million in
1980, 3.07 million witches would have been executed from 1940 to 1980, or roughly the
whole population of Chicago!
5. Bullinger
"Let those men consider what they are doing, who . . .
decide that witches who deal only in dreams and hallucinations should not be burnt or put
to death." (111;v.16:364)
6. Calvin's Geneva
"Like later Puritan governments, that of Geneva displayed
an increased ferocity towards witches, of whom on the average two or three were burned
every year." (121:164)
7. Conclusion (Karl Keating)
"In Britain 30,000 went to the stake for witchcraft; in
Protestant Germany the figure was 100,000 . . . If the Inquisition establishes the falsity
of Catholicism, the witch trials establish the falsity of Protestantism." (4:292,298)
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VIII.
PROTESTANT CENSORSHIP
1. Overview
The early Protestants were not the champions of free speech
and freedom of the press, either, as we are led to believe, any more than they were for
freedom of religion or assembly - not by a long shot. Suppression of the Mass and forced
Church attendance by civil law are examples of this intolerance of freedom of thought and
action, which we previously examined. Neither was Catholic and sectarian literature to be
suffered:
"With isolated exceptions . . . we find everywhere the
opinions which are exactly in harmony wlth those of the territorial prince of the day,
striving their utmost to suppress all differing views. The theory of the absolute Church
authority of the secular powers was in itself enough to make a system of tolerance
impossible on the Protestant side...From the very first religious life among the
Protestants was influenced by the hopeless contradiction that on the one hand Luther
imposed it as a sacred duty on every individual, in all matters of faith, to set aside
every authority, above all that of the Church, and to follow only his own judgment, while
on the other hand the reformed theologians gave the secular princes power over the
religion of their land and subjects . . . 'Luther never attempted to solve this
contradiction. In practice he was content that the princes should have supreme control
over religion, doctrine and Church, and that it was their right and their duty to suppress
every religious creed which differed from their own.' (64)" (111;v.14:230-31)
"The Corpus doctrinae of Melanchthon had passed
muster for a long time in Saxony, but on the occasion of the crypto-Calvinistic
controversies the Elector Augustus forbade the work being printed . . .; the press
control, which Melanchthon had advocated against others, now hit him himself."
(111;v.14:506)
"In the Protestant towns numbers of preachers bestirred
themselves zealously with the help of the municipal authorities to suppress the writings
of all opposing parties. 'When first Luther began to write books, it was said,' so
Frederick Staphylus recalled to mind (1560), 'that it would be contrary to Christian
freedom if the Christian folk and the common people were not allowed to read all sorts of
books. Now, however . . . the Lutherans themselves are . . . forbidding the purchase and
reading of the books of their opponents, and of apostate members and sects.'"
(111;v.14:506-7)
"The Protestant princes . . . loved and encouraged the
censorship because, with its help, they could suppress the well-merited complaint against
their robbery of Church property, or other self-interested deeds, or even criminal
acts." (111;v.14:507)
"Violation of the orders of the censorship was everywhere
to be severely punished." (111;v.14:234)
2. Luther Suppresses Catholic Bibles
(!)
Janssen writes of a hypocritical instance of Luther's
censorship (1529):
"Luther . . . set his pen in motion concerning this
Catholic translation of the Bible. 'The freedom of the Word,' which he claimed for
himself, was not to be accorded to his opponent Emser . . . When . . . he learnt that
Emser's translation . . . was to be printed . . . at Rostock, he not only appealed himself
to his follower, Duke Henry of Mecklenburg, with the request that 'for the glory of the
evangel of Christ and the salvation of all souls' he would put a stop to this printing,
but he also worked on the councillors of the Elector of Saxony to support his action. He
denied the right and the power of the Catholic authorities to inhibit his books; on the
other hand he invoked the arm of the secular authorities against all writings that were
displeasing to him." (111;v.14:503-4)
3. Luther and Melanchthon Suppress
Swiss and Anabaptist Books
"When the controversy on the Lord's Supper was started at
Wittenberg, the utmost precautions were taken to suppress the writings of the Swiss
Reformed theologians and of the German preachers who shared the latter's views. At the
instigation of Luther and Melanchthon there was issued, in 1528, by the Elector John of
Saxony, an edict to the following effect:
" 'Books and pamphlets (of the Anabaptists,
Sacramentarians, etc.) must not be allowed to be bought or sold or read . . . also those
who are aware of such breaches of the orders laid down herein, and do not give
information, shall be punished by loss of life and property.'" (111;v.14:232-3/65)
"Melanchthon demanded in the most severe and
comprehensive manner the censure and suppression of all books that were hindering to
Lutheran teaching (66). The writings of Zwingli and the Zwinglians were placed formally on
the Index at Wittenberg." (111;v.14:504)
4. Protestant Universities
"Moreover, antagonism had also grown up among the
Protestant universities, and one reproached the other with being the fosterer and begetter
of false doctrine . . . Wittenberg itself, but lately regarded as the birthplace of a new
revelation and of the newly awakened Church of Christ, in 1567 was declared to be a
'stinking cesspool of the devil.'" (111;v.14:231-2)
5. Various Protestant Cities and
Areas
"At Strassburg Catholic writings were suppressed as early
as 1524 . . . The Council at Frankfort-on-the-Main exercised . . . strict censorship . . .
At Rostock, in 1532, the printer of the Brethren of the Common Life was sent to
prison, because he had used his printing press to the disadvantage of Protestantism."
(111;v.14:502)
"Wherever the prince, according to old Byzantine fashion,
thought himself a theologian, he managed the censorship in person." (111;v.14:233)
Instances could, of course, be multiplied, but the above
examples suffice to illustrate the general Protestant hostility to a free press.
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IX. AFTERWORD
1. Henry Hallam (P)
"Persecution is the deadly original sin of the Reformed
churches, that which cools every honest man's zeal for their cause in proportion as his
reading becomes extensive." (50:297/67)
2. Thomas Babington Macaulay (P)
"Protestant intolerance, despotism in an upstart sect,
infallibility claimed by guides who acknowledge that they had passed the greater part of
their lives in error . . . these things could not long be borne . . . It required no great
sagacity to perceive the inconsistency and dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost
all Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves, who demanded freedom of
conscience, yet refused to grant it . . . who urged reason against the authority of one
opponent, and authority against the reason of another." (50:297-8/68)
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