God Hovered Over the Waters

The Emergence of the Protestant Reformation

William A. dePrater

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781498204545
  9781498204569
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498204552
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

On March 11, 2011, from deep within the earth's crust, enormous forces drove tectonic plates toward over another. In the collision, one plate riding over the other displaced massive amounts of water. The displaced water began racing toward the Japanese shoreline, each mile exponentially increasing in its fury. Coming ashore in Japan, the tsunami swept aside everything in its path as if they were small toys. In sixteenth century Europe, there also was a collision of changing environmental, technological, educational, and political forces. Like the energy created by colliding tectonic plates in 2011, these surging and chaotic waters emerged from within the depths of human experiences and spiritual yearnings. Through the guiding hands of the Holy Spirit, these waters swept up the Reformation movement, emptying it into theological lakes and streams across Europe. Therefore, to understand the Reformation movement, one needs to comprehend these varied forces that moved it into reality. The book further details the resulting contributions of the Reformation movements within Germany, Switzerland, the British Isles, France, and the Netherlands. In conclusion, the author addresses the lasting legacy of the Reformation for contemporary society, and the means for a new congregational and governing body Reformation today.

1

Prelude to the Reformation

On March 11, 2011, from seventeen miles deep within the earth’s crust, enormous forces drove convergent tectonic plates over another. In the collision, one plate riding over the other displaced massive amounts of water. The energy released in the collision of titans shook Japan with an 8.9-magnitude earthquake. Buildings shook in Japan, causing devastation. However, the worst was yet to come. The displaced water deep within the earth began racing toward the Japanese shoreline, each mile exponentially increasing in its fury. Racing ever faster, quickly it emerged from the deeper waters to the shallower Japanese continental shelf. Coming ashore in Japan as a thirty-foot-high wall of water, the tsunami swept aside everything in its path as if they were toys, thus destroying much of the nation’s infrastructure, threatening the release of nuclear radiation throughout the world, and taking far too many lives. People felt aftershocks for days. In the year following, displaced relics of everyday Japanese life, once swept out to sea, and then pollution, crossed the Pacific Ocean and reached the western coast of the United States.

Similar to the 2011 tsunami, in sixteenth-century Europe there was a collision of changing forces: the political environment, the social unrest and the evolving socioeconomic social structures, the recovery from the effects of the bubonic plague, the development of an educated society, the invention of the printing press, the flowering of arts during the Renaissance, the differing interpretations of Scripture, and the spiritual yearning to know God. Like unto the energy created by colliding tectonic plates in 2011 that in a short time swept across major portions of Japan, the sixteenth-century collision of systemic forces enabled the Protestant Reformation to sweep across the face of Europe. From its meager beginnings with Wycliffe and Huss, Luther’s nailing of his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the church door at Wittenberg, the Protestant Reformation was swept up amidst the deep churning social and economic waters, finally emptying into theological lakes and streams across Europe. This theological tsunami changed the face of theology about the world. For us to understand the Protestant Reformation, we need to understand the dynamics within the Middle Ages in order to discover the systemic forces that were at play. All these factors helped lead to the emergence of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Let us therefore begin with the first tremors of the earthquake that was striking Europe.

Popular Unrest and Emerging Nationalism

The half-century encompassing 1450 to 1500 witnessed an era of unparalleled popular unrest and nationalism. Due to France’s extended struggle with England (1339–1453), the power of the French nobility decreased and that of the French crown grew. Louis XI (1461–1483) broke the back of the feudal nobility and gave the crown unprecedented authority. His son, Charles VIII (1483–1498), led France in foreign conquests in Italy, and opened a new era in European international relationships, which determined the political background leading up to the Reformation era. Louis XII (1498–1515) and Francis I (1515–1547) extended these gains during their reigns, extending its control to the power of the church. By the dawn of the Protestant Reformation, the church in France was essentially a state-controlled church.

Spain, by the end of the fifteenth century, was unparalleled in the interwoven relationship of its national patriotism and Catholic orthodoxy. By the thirteenth century, the Moors were restricted to Granada, with four kingdoms created to provide order: Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre. Strong feudal nobility controlled each of these kingdoms, with limited national identity. The 1469 marriage of Ferdinand, the heir of Aragon, and Isabella, the heir of Castile, increased the power of the royal throne. Under their joint reign (1479–1504), royal authority was strengthened and the political aspirations of unruly feudal nobles were suppressed. The discovery of the New World by Columbus brought unimaginable wealth to the royal treasury. On Ferdinand’s death in 1516, his grandson, the heir of Austria and the Netherlands, reigned as Charles V. Under Charles’ leadership, Spain became a major world power.

In England, the War of the Roses between the House of Lancaster and the House of York (1455–1485) claimed the power of the feudal nobility to the advantage of the royal crown and Parliament. Although Parliament retained certain legal responsibilities, Henry VII, the first king of the Tudor dynasty, assumed almost absolute power. By the close of the fifteenth century, the crown exerted considerable control over the English Catholic Church. The son of Henry VII, Henry VIII, in the sixteenth century, extended the power of the throne to provide state leadership of the church.

Lacking a real sense of unity, Germany was a very different political situation than which was found in the other leading European nations. From 1438-1740, the most powerful political force within Germany was the Austrian house of Habsburg. The reign of Frederick III (1440–1493), witnessed rivalry among the nobles and the cities, with the lower nobility keeping the land in disorder. Under the reign of Maximilian I (1493–1519), he unsuccessfully sought to increase royal power through the regional districts and the Reichstag. However, the imperial cities, accountable only to the emperor, and characterized by the self-seeking interests of their wealthy and industrious inhabitants, were an important political and economic ingredient in German life. Particularly in southwestern Germany, a constant state of popular unrest and rebellion existed. This unrest bubbled over with insurrections in 1476, 1492, 1512, and 1513. The establishment of Roman law, originally created to suppress the Roman slaves, exacerbated the political, economic, and social stress. In general, German national life was disorganized and dissatisfied, with dispersed power residing within the regional princes.

These princes in turn exerted considerable control over the church within their fiefdoms. A major transition occurred in the death of Charles the Bold. His daughter, Mary, inherited the Burgundian territories and the Netherlands. Following her marriage, in the following year, to Maximilian I of Germany, Louis XI of France, in showing his dissatisfaction over the marriage, seized upper Burgundy. Until 1756, his actions forthwith would be the backdrop for the constant quarrels between the House of Habsburg and the French kings. However, in seeking reconciliation, Maximilian and Mary’s son Philip married Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Philip and Juana’s son, Charles V of Spain, possessed Austria, the Netherlands, and the Spanish territories in Europe and the New World. In 1519, he would assume the title of Holy Roman Emperor.

The Disorienting and Transforming Effects of Disease

The Black Death

During the Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe, death was always the unacknowledged elephant in the room. The bubonic plague was the major cause of death, which people also called “the Black Death.” The disease first manifested itself with tumors in the lymph glands of the groin or armpits. Some of these tumors grew as large as an apple or egg. Soon the disease began to spread throughout the body, producing black spots on the arms, thighs, or elsewhere. The skin and flesh soon would turn black and then die. Its victims died a frustrating and painful death within one to three days. There also was another form of the plague, which affected the lungs and eventually choked its victims to death. People therefore referred to it as the “pneumonic plague.” The Black Death first appeared in 1347 at the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea. The bubonic plague last struck in a substantial form in 1721 at the Mediterranean port of Marseille, France. It began its deadly travels near China and journeyed along the Silk Road, carried by Mongol armies, traders, or ships. Its effects were devastating to those it touched. People died by the hundreds. Day and night, workers threw corpses into newly dug trenches and covered them with earth. One at that time woman wrote that she buried her five children with her own hands. Many thought that these deaths were signaling the end of the world. In fact, during its protracted siege of Caffa, the Mongol army suffered greatly from the plague. To weaken the resolve of the defenders of Caffa, the Mongol army catapulted their infected dead over the city walls. Terror quickly seized the defenders. The traders soon fled the city, taking with them the disease by ship into Sicily and south of Europe. From there, the plague spread north into Europe.

The plague did not claim its victims in any uniform manner throughout Europe. Rather, geography influenced the extent of the plague. In 1466, as many as 400,000 people died of the plague in Paris. In the Mediterranean region, particularly in Italy, the south of France, and in Spain, the plague ran rampant for four consecutive years. During that time, it killed close to 75 percent of the population. In Germany and England, it probably killed about 20 percent. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the plague visited its terror upon Paris three times. It ravaged London six times between 1563 and 1665, reducing the population by up to 30 percent. In all, the plague likely killed about one third of the European population.

Many people blamed the foreigners and Jews for the plague, and in their bias they burned alive these innocents. In August 1349, the people exterminated the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne. That same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. The reason that many people blamed the Jews for the bubonic plague was that the Jewish communities experienced a lower manifestation of the plague than among the Christian communities. Perhaps one explanation of the different degrees of plague manifestation was that the Jews kept more cats around their houses than did Christians. Christians had not kept the protective cats, as they associated cats with witchcraft. This is one more case where ignorance and superstition aggravated great suffering and was the seedbed of great injustices in our history. In addition to the plague, diseases such as syphilis, smallpox, typhus, and influenza were widely feared. However, the plague struck terror into every heart.

There were systemic social and economic forces that enabled the plague to spread throughout the populace:

• People did not recognize the importance of hygiene until the nineteenth century. As a result, city streets were filthy, with farm animals being unrestrained and human parasites running rampant. The rat flea that carried the bubonic plague found a host in the rats, which lived amidst this filth. The rat fleabite rapidly spread the disease from infected rats to humans.

• Another factor that contributed to the outbreak of the plague was the significant climate change that was taking place. The warmer climate that had existed during the medieval period suddenly changed toward the end of the thirteenth century, with much colder years. The harsher climate thereupon reduced food harvests. The resulting food shortages brought about inflated prices, especially with oats and hay. The inflated prices of feed in turn reduced the supply of livestock that one could raise. In turn, the food shortage increased human malnutrition, with the resulting increased infection rates due to weakened immune systems.

• Family planning was non-existent. Women gave birth to five or more children during their lifetime, causing an increasing strain on the food supply.

• In addition, people were poor stewards of the land, cutting the forests, draining the swamps, and indiscriminately plowing the fields. This poor care of the environment reduced land for the grazing of farm animals. With the uncontrolled cutting of the forests, there was a reduced renewable source of firewood. With the reduction in livestock, their manure, which farmers used for fertilizer, also became scarce. It was a vicious cycle. The poor use of environmental resources caused unexpected consequences resulting in the outbreak of the plague and its horrors. Nevertheless, over time the environment and its inhabitants began to regain an environmental balance. Following the initial outbreaks of the Black Death and the resulting famines, people began to assert family planning and economic reforms. They developed trade routes so that they would be able to import grain from the thinly populated regions of eastern Europe. Further, the population began to live within their means. As a result, land became more plentiful. Forests began to grow back. This rebalancing of the environment did not happen overnight. It would take several generations before nature could repair the damages that humanity had inflicted upon the environment.

Syphilis and Influenza

Around the year 1510, the changing face of Europe began to coalesce. That year saw the first slave revolt on Hispaniola,...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Why Learn About the Reformation Era?
• Chapter 1: Prelude to the Reformation
• Chapter 2: Forerunners of the Protestant Reformation
• Chapter 3: The Reformation in Germany
• Chapter 4: The Reformation in Switzerland
• Chapter 5: The Reformation in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales
• Chapter 6: The Reformation in the Netherlands and France
• Chapter 7: The Catholic Reformation
• Chapter 9: The Legacy of the Protestant Reformers Today
• Appendix A: The Reformation Confessions
• Appendix B: Brief Timeline of Reformation Era Events
• Bibliography