On the Nature of Things | Forum

Ibrahim wrote:This is totally false. Princes determined what the official religion in their area of control would be. The sincere efforts of Reformers only bore fruit insofar as they were able to convince the people in power. The teeming masses were not consulted. They weren't even invited to the Grossmunster to hear Zwingli preach, nor able to read Luther's theses posted on the cathedral door.

There was no grassroots movement here.

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:The bourgeoisie were well represented and not commoner was not well off. How many bishops, priests and monks from common stock (which there were quite a few) supported the Reformation?

Obviously the clergy knoew what was going on (or most of them anyway) but they represent a small minority of the population. Senior clergy were almost always linked to the nobility, so that cancels out. The bourgeoisie were clearly more influential than the peasants, but the simple reality is that the ruling class held all the cards at this time, and the division of e.g. German states between Reformed and Catholic depended on how their princes chose to align themselves. The situation is slightly different among the Swiss cantons, owing to their unique political structure, but even then the nobles had disproportionate influence.

How many suppressed mendicant orders, especially among the secular were floating around a good century beforehand? A quarter of England were Lollards, the Waldensians already existed in the Alps and there was the Bohemian Church...plus those tracts everyone was putting out were read aloud everywhere, in every pub and tavern in a matter of days. It wasn't like these people didn't know what was going on.

What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

Ibrahim wrote: What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

What does informed mean to you?

You don't need a theology degree to be involved in this, it's just that without one, we have no real record of opinion. As pointed out by McCullough in his book on the Reformation, it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. And it took about a century for the Princes to defeat the knights (at least on the Continent, ) and things get very murky in that time period....though, how would you describe the role of the bourgeoisie?

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

. . it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. . .

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=773

"[Tyndale] desired that even the plowboy would know and love the Word of God; that the plowboy would not be in spiritual bondage to church officials who had no concern for his soul and could not teach him the way of salvation. He gave the plowboy the Scriptures in a language he could read and understand for himself."

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote: What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

What does informed mean to you?

You don't need a theology degree to be involved in this, it's just that without one, we have no real record of opinion. As pointed out by McCullough in his book on the Reformation, it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. And it took about a century for the Princes to defeat the knights (at least on the Continent, ) and things get very murky in that time period....though, how would you describe the role of the bourgeoisie?

I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation. But even this is secondary to the fact that they had no mechanism by which to express their opinions politically.

The aftermath of the wars of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War saw increased power for centralized absolutist monarchies, Catholic and Protestant. There is no period in European history in which the average person had less political influence (excluding 20th century totalitarianism naturally, though Prussia came close).

So, even if we assume that some significant proportion of the citizenry had very informed and passionate opinions, who in power cared what they thought?

The mob only found it's voice in the Enlightenment concepts of universal human equality and liberty. To prove that these ideals were not Protestant in their derivation we have only to observe how many of the originators of these ideas were not Protestant, and how readily Catholic and Orthodox Europeans adopted the same ideals for revolutions in the same brief historical period.

Marcus wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

. . it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. . .

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=773

"[Tyndale] desired that even the plowboy would know and love the Word of God; that the plowboy would not be in spiritual bondage to church officials who had no concern for his soul and could not teach him the way of salvation. He gave the plowboy the Scriptures in a language he could read and understand for himself."

Quite the conceit, considering how few plowboys could read at all prior to the industrial revolution, and in any case nobody asked the plowboys what they thought before adopting Protestantism or Catholicism as the state religion. Sentimentalism is no substitute for historical reality.

Ibrahim wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote: What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

What does informed mean to you?

You don't need a theology degree to be involved in this, it's just that without one, we have no real record of opinion. As pointed out by McCullough in his book on the Reformation, it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. And it took about a century for the Princes to defeat the knights (at least on the Continent, ) and things get very murky in that time period....though, how would you describe the role of the bourgeoisie?

I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation. But even this is secondary to the fact that they had no mechanism by which to express their opinions politically.

The aftermath of the wars of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War saw increased power for centralized absolutist monarchies, Catholic and Protestant. There is no period in European history in which the average person had less political influence (excluding 20th century totalitarianism naturally, though Prussia came close).

So, even if we assume that some significant proportion of the citizenry had very informed and passionate opinions, who in power cared what they thought?

The mob only found it's voice in the Enlightenment concepts of universal human equality and liberty. To prove that these ideals were not Protestant in their derivation we have only to observe how many of the originators of these ideas were not Protestant, and how readily Catholic and Orthodox Europeans adopted the same ideals for revolutions in the same brief historical period.

Well, a lot of these ideals were Roman from antiquity. But the Zwingli reformers, the anabaptists and the free imperial cities also display a lot of what Marcus is talking about.

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote: What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

What does informed mean to you?

You don't need a theology degree to be involved in this, it's just that without one, we have no real record of opinion. As pointed out by McCullough in his book on the Reformation, it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. And it took about a century for the Princes to defeat the knights (at least on the Continent, ) and things get very murky in that time period....though, how would you describe the role of the bourgeoisie?

I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation. But even this is secondary to the fact that they had no mechanism by which to express their opinions politically.

The aftermath of the wars of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War saw increased power for centralized absolutist monarchies, Catholic and Protestant. There is no period in European history in which the average person had less political influence (excluding 20th century totalitarianism naturally, though Prussia came close).

So, even if we assume that some significant proportion of the citizenry had very informed and passionate opinions, who in power cared what they thought?

The mob only found it's voice in the Enlightenment concepts of universal human equality and liberty. To prove that these ideals were not Protestant in their derivation we have only to observe how many of the originators of these ideas were not Protestant, and how readily Catholic and Orthodox Europeans adopted the same ideals for revolutions in the same brief historical period.

Well, a lot of these ideals were Roman from antiquity. But Zwingli and the free imperial cities also display a lot of what Marcus is talking about.

Marcus is only calling people dumb and posting emoticons. I've already said that the populations of Swiss Cantons had more influence than regular citizens elsewhere, consequently the Swiss wars of religion were much more brief and resulted in an accommodation within their confederation rather than antagonistic blocs as in Germany.

The Enlightenment was indisputably influenced by Classicism, as the many institutions of American government attest. They were reshaped by Enlightenment thinkers* into something different, as the absence of anything quite like the American or French republics in Classical history demonstrates, but the oldest roots are in Greece and Republican Rome to be sure.

*Not to say that I'm entirely uncritical of the Enlightenment, I'm only stating it's influence on revolutionary Europe.

Ibrahim wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote: What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

What does informed mean to you?

You don't need a theology degree to be involved in this, it's just that without one, we have no real record of opinion. As pointed out by McCullough in his book on the Reformation, it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. And it took about a century for the Princes to defeat the knights (at least on the Continent, ) and things get very murky in that time period....though, how would you describe the role of the bourgeoisie?

I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation. But even this is secondary to the fact that they had no mechanism by which to express their opinions politically.

The aftermath of the wars of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War saw increased power for centralized absolutist monarchies, Catholic and Protestant. There is no period in European history in which the average person had less political influence (excluding 20th century totalitarianism naturally, though Prussia came close).

So, even if we assume that some significant proportion of the citizenry had very informed and passionate opinions, who in power cared what they thought?

The mob only found it's voice in the Enlightenment concepts of universal human equality and liberty. To prove that these ideals were not Protestant in their derivation we have only to observe how many of the originators of these ideas were not Protestant, and how readily Catholic and Orthodox Europeans adopted the same ideals for revolutions in the same brief historical period.

Well, a lot of these ideals were Roman from antiquity. But Zwingli and the free imperial cities also display a lot of what Marcus is talking about.

Marcus is only calling people dumb and posting emoticons. I've already said that the populations of Swiss Cantons had more influence than regular citizens elsewhere, consequently the Swiss wars of religion were much more brief and resulted in an accommodation within their confederation rather than antagonistic blocs as in Germany.

The Enlightenment was indisputably influenced by Classicism, as the many institutions of American government attest. They were reshaped by Enlightenment thinkers* into something different, as the absence of anything quite like the American or French republics in Classical history demonstrates, but the oldest roots are in Greece and Republican Rome to be sure.

*Not to say that I'm entirely uncritical of the Enlightenment, I'm only stating it's influence on revolutionary Europe.

I suppose all I'm saying is that I'm unsure what of what the "average" person would be, and that sort of category wouldn't necessarily apply. Everyone had a specific role for their place in society, and how can we compare the learning of a scholar against the learning of a guy living in a city and say that one was more engaged or theological than the other. You have a lot of lay groups in Germany, and a lot of free cities (yes again with the Swiss) who practically ran their churches independently already. And parish life was much more engaging: I think McCullough in his book "The Reformation" makes a good point that in a lot of ways, the Reformation destroyed commoner participation in ways that never quite recovered.

Yes, the crowns , as always will be the case, had the ultimate say. But any prince worth his salt will not stray too far from what the people want. We see such consequences are most apparent in England, which may not have had the bloodiest problems, but it was a rather fraught relation. There is always a tension between the peasants, who were most often anti-clerical and the Church. The promise of elimination to the old Imperial system probably was the extent of a lot of commoner's participation. And that would be a theological issue, if not expressed with the acuity of a Parisian professor. Is defining who was engaged and to what extent is conceding too much to a Protestant way of looking at it.

Marcus, I'm not sure if I agree that the Protestant narrative of triumphant reforming quite holds. Wycliffe is a whole bag. And in the first few centuries after the Gregorian Reformation, we know of several schisms and heresies holding popular support. Without the blessing of the state, the whole party dissipates after a while, like all the others did.

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Marcus, I'm not sure if I agree that the Protestant narrative of triumphant reforming quite holds. Wycliffe is a whole bag. And in the first few centuries after the Gregorian Reformation, we know of several schisms and heresies holding popular support. Without the blessing of the state, the whole party dissipates after a while, like all the others did.

Obviously you're free to agree or not, Nap . . we'll just agree to disagree: "no big deal" or "one of the greatest watershed events in human history." Take your pick.

But, no, Wycliffe was not a "whole bag," Wycliffe was the Morning Star of the Reformation:

John Wycliffe was a great man of God. In the all-wise providence of God the Reformation of the 16th century would have been impossible without his work. He is the morning star indeed.

So hated was he by Rome that, although Rome was restrained in his lifetime from harming him, the church could not let his bones rest in peace. On October 8, 1427, on order of the Council of Constance (the same Council that burned John Hus at the stake), Wycliffe's body was exhumed, his bones burned, and the ashes strewn on the River Swift.

A later chronicler described this event in eloquent words.

"They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook conveyed his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas and they into the main ocean. And so the ashes of Wyclif are symbolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world."

I don't know what "several schisms and heresies holding popular support" you refer to—Albigensians? Waldensians? Catharists?—that "dissipated" without the blessing of whatever state, but such have nothing to do with the Reformation. Protestantism is alive and well, indeed flourishing in every land and nation on the face of the earth. Nor has the Christian Church in any of its denominational expressions been the same since.

Sola Fide
Sola Gratia
Sola Scriptura

For my purposes at least, this thread has been essentially a waste of time . . . . . non-Protestants can either hate the Reformation and the Reformers (see the OP in this thread) or one can poo-poo the Reformation's significance, because to whatever degree the Reformation was and is valid or significant was and is an indication of error elsewhere.

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

Ibrahim wrote: What is debatable is what proportion of the population had informed theological opinions, and to what extent their opinions mattered.

What does informed mean to you?

You don't need a theology degree to be involved in this, it's just that without one, we have no real record of opinion. As pointed out by McCullough in his book on the Reformation, it can be argued that the people were more engaged and had more access to their religious practices before than after. And it took about a century for the Princes to defeat the knights (at least on the Continent, ) and things get very murky in that time period....though, how would you describe the role of the bourgeoisie?

I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation. But even this is secondary to the fact that they had no mechanism by which to express their opinions politically.

The aftermath of the wars of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War saw increased power for centralized absolutist monarchies, Catholic and Protestant. There is no period in European history in which the average person had less political influence (excluding 20th century totalitarianism naturally, though Prussia came close).

So, even if we assume that some significant proportion of the citizenry had very informed and passionate opinions, who in power cared what they thought?

The mob only found it's voice in the Enlightenment concepts of universal human equality and liberty. To prove that these ideals were not Protestant in their derivation we have only to observe how many of the originators of these ideas were not Protestant, and how readily Catholic and Orthodox Europeans adopted the same ideals for revolutions in the same brief historical period.

Well, a lot of these ideals were Roman from antiquity. But Zwingli and the free imperial cities also display a lot of what Marcus is talking about.

Marcus is only calling people dumb and posting emoticons. I've already said that the populations of Swiss Cantons had more influence than regular citizens elsewhere, consequently the Swiss wars of religion were much more brief and resulted in an accommodation within their confederation rather than antagonistic blocs as in Germany.

The Enlightenment was indisputably influenced by Classicism, as the many institutions of American government attest. They were reshaped by Enlightenment thinkers* into something different, as the absence of anything quite like the American or French republics in Classical history demonstrates, but the oldest roots are in Greece and Republican Rome to be sure.

*Not to say that I'm entirely uncritical of the Enlightenment, I'm only stating it's influence on revolutionary Europe.

I suppose all I'm saying is that I'm unsure what of what the "average" person would be, and that sort of category wouldn't necessarily apply. Everyone had a specific role for their place in society, and how can we compare the learning of a scholar against the learning of a guy living in a city and say that one was more engaged or theological than the other.

I'm talking about people working as agricultural laborers, who would be the largest group in any pre-industrial society, as well as semi-skilled or unskilled urban laborers and minor tradesmen. The rough equivalent to our contemporary working class, though far less literate, with fewer political rights, and with limited means of communication. I only focus on this grouping because it is the majority of the population at that time, and it had so little influence due to the political structures of the day.

The point is only that the Reformation was diffused primarily through the elite. As was Christianity during the Imperial Roman era. It was trickle down not bottom up.

You have a lot of lay groups in Germany, and a lot of free cities (yes again with the Swiss) who practically ran their churches independently already.

As I said, influential churches like Zwingli's would have been dominated by a socio-political elite as well. Senior guildsmen, nobles, middling to senior clergy, and so on.

And parish life was much more engaging: I think McCullough in his book "The Reformation" makes a good point that in a lot of ways, the Reformation destroyed commoner participation in ways that never quite recovered.

Like any event in history, we look back and rather boringly assert that it was a mixed bag.

Yes, the crowns , as always will be the case, had the ultimate say. But any prince worth his salt will not stray too far from what the people want. We see such consequences are most apparent in England, which may not have had the bloodiest problems, but it was a rather fraught relation. There is always a tension between the peasants, who were most often anti-clerical and the Church. The promise of elimination to the old Imperial system probably was the extent of a lot of commoner's participation. And that would be a theological issue, if not expressed with the acuity of a Parisian professor. Is defining who was engaged and to what extent is conceding too much to a Protestant way of looking at it.

I don't think understanding an historical society to the best of our ability is necessarily a Protestant thing. Ultimately what we are talking about are the political limitations of the late medieval and early modern period in Europe. The religious distinctions all existed within that framework. As you've observed, medieval life consisted of layer upon layer of interconnected relationships and obligations, only a small number of which even concern the Reformation. It's part of a larger picture that isn't radically changed until the late 18th century.

Ibrahim wrote:I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation.

Hysterical.

I suppose you have some "scholarship" to back this up.

Ibrahim wrote:Marcus is only calling people dumb and posting emoticons.

When all you post are baseless opinions you aren't giving him much to work with.

Ibrahim wrote: Though as I was saying about the Reformation, the schism itself was based as much or more on politics and tribalism than it was based on important theological differences. It's all wrapped up in the imperial history of Europe and the Near East.

Amazing. Just amazing.

Mr. Perfect wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:I'm saying that the average European citizen understood few if any of the major theological issues involved in the Reformation.

Hysterical.

I suppose you have some "scholarship" to back this up.

Well, the average European citizen at the time was a peasant.

Communal Reformation and Peasant Piety: The Peasant Reformation and Its Late Medieval Origins



Peter Blickle
Central European History
Vol. 20, No. 3/4 (Sep. - Dec., 1987), pp. 216-228
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4546104

Are peasants unable to speak or listen to people talk?

ive been reading alot of recent articles on how the modern peasants are too stupid to understand global warming.

Mr. Perfect wrote:Are peasants unable to speak or listen to people talk?

noddy wrote:ive been reading alot of recent articles on how the modern peasants are too stupid to understand global warming.

Both have one thing in common, that they were not consulted.

What does that have to do with understanding that the Catholic Church was charging money to forgive sins?

Typhoon wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:Are peasants unable to speak or listen to people talk?

noddy wrote:ive been reading alot of recent articles on how the modern peasants are too stupid to understand global warming.

Both have one thing in common, that they were not consulted.

more like they were not trusted to make the "elite approved" decisions and might make contrary ones that suit themselves.

you cant consult millions of people with seperate and personal agendas, it all turns into whitenoise and reduced too "stupid squabbling peasants"

protestantism in my nutshell is me reading my own bible and making my own decisions, this context translates well to statistics on climate variations imho.

Typhoon wrote:Well, the average European citizen at the time was a peasant.
Communal Reformation and Peasant Piety: The Peasant Reformation and Its Late Medieval Origins

—from a review of the book noted above:

The most widespread and influential event in European history up until the French Revolution, the Revolution of the Common Man, as it is now called due to the scholarship of this book, has been traditionally characterized, by the ruling classes since 1531, as a Peasants' War. This applied term served to undermine the unified vision of a classless society shared by town and country radicals of the time who were far from a fringe group: it was a popular revolution; and were far from just peasants: there were miners, artisans, merchants, and even some nobles who joined thinking the cause just. The revolution secured new freedoms despite having lost the war (proof against the conservative assertion that "all revolutions end in dictatorships"), informed the nobility and lordships that serfdom could not withstand the Reformation, and augured in a new era of secularization in the realms of politics, (direct democracy), economics (abolition of classes), and religion ("equality before God"). This is an essential study for all who cherish the concept of equality in its practical (proletarian) form.

Thanks . . that's a helluva book . . . . and thanks for helping confirm my points!

Mr. Perfect wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:Though as I was saying about the Reformation, the schism itself was based as much or more on politics and tribalism than it was based on important theological differences. It's all wrapped up in the imperial history of Europe and the Near East.

Amazing. Just amazing.

Some folks are just, ummm . . "challenged" that way, Mr. P. . . .

As European peasants had been saying since the late 1300s,
"Da Adam ackert und Eva spann, wer war damals ein Edelman?" (1525 Germany)
When Adam delved and Evan spun, who was then the Gentleman?" (1381 England)

Marcus wrote:

Enki wrote:While you are right to a point Marcus, if you think it WASN'T about politics and tribalism, that's a pretty naive point of view as well. It wasn't ONLY that, but it certainly involved that.

Certainly politics was involved . . peripherally.

The Reformation was about the reformation of the medieval Western Church. Nothing more. All else was incidental and secondary.

A church is a political entity.

Politics (from Greek politikos "of, for, or relating to citizens") as a term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the corporate, academic, and religious segments of society. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.

As the Roman church was essentially the 'Government', it was entirely political.

noddy wrote:

Typhoon wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:Are peasants unable to speak or listen to people talk?

noddy wrote:ive been reading alot of recent articles on how the modern peasants are too stupid to understand global warming.

Both have one thing in common, that they were not consulted.

more like they were not trusted to make the "elite approved" decisions and might make contrary ones that suit themselves.

you cant consult millions of people with seperate and personal agendas, it all turns into whitenoise and reduced too "stupid squabbling peasants"

protestantism in my nutshell is me reading my own bible and making my own decisions, this context translates well to statistics on climate variations imho.

In the other thread we've established that some systems are better at predicting or representing reality, i.e. math or science. So is it not possible that some people are better at doing math and science?

Or is it all just elitism, everyone is equally good as a scientist, it's just that some people are oppressed?