Liberty and Property. Ellen Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ when commanded to act in an ungodly way, his radical followers transformed that principle into militant collective rebellion against ‘ungodly’ rulers, in a way Luther never intended. His doctrine of a universal priesthood or the equality of all baptized Christians before God had to be translated, in distinctly un-Lutheran ways, into principles of social equality and challenges to any kind of earthly lordship.

      If some peasant rebels were driven by Lutheran ideas and expected support from the master, they were soon disillusioned. In Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, Luther left no ambiguity at all about the obligation to obey the secular authorities, however ungodly their behaviour. Whatever legitimate grievances the peasants may have had, they were in the very act of rebellion guilty of terrible sins against God and man; and for that they must be brutally suppressed. ‘Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.’5

      This invitation to princely brutality may seem a far cry from Luther’s earlier admonitions to misbehaving princes, and there can be no doubt that the peasant revolt aroused his anger as never before; but his strictures against rebellion follow seamlessly from the insistence on obedience to secular authority that lies at the heart of his theology. When the rebellion was finally defeated by German princes and their troops, there remained a sharp rupture between radical sects that challenged the temporal sword, and Luther’s Reformation, which supported secular powers and enjoyed their protection. In the end, he would even compromise his basic principles about the sharp dividing line between temporal and spiritual authority, allowing secular governments to invade the spiritual domain in order to defend true religion, even, when needed, by force.

      The doctrine of obedience that lay at the heart of Protestantism was certainly a boon to German princes, and this advantage was certainly not lost on other European kings. Where territorial monarchs were already far advanced in their centralizing projects and (unlike, say, the Spanish monarch, who was also Holy Roman Emperor) not dependent on attachment to the Catholic Church, Protestant doctrine could easily be deployed in support of monarchical power. This was particularly true in England. Henry VIII in his earlier, orthodox years wrote an attack on Luther that earned him a papal endorsement as ‘defender of the faith’. But, while his attitude towards Lutheranism remained at best ambivalent, Protestant doctrine was soon enlisted in the cause of royal supremacy, which granted the monarch command of state and Church at once. The same ideas would be no less serviceable to James I when he claimed the divine right of kings.

      The irony is that, while (mis)interpretations of Lutheranism were used to justify the peasant revolt, the most systematic and influential Protestant doctrines of resistance emerged not from radical rebellion but from assertions of power by secular authorities. It should be no surprise that this transformation first took place in the Holy Roman Empire, with its intricate web of competing jurisdictions. Rivalries among various claimants to secular authority spawned new ideas of resistance to power quite different from those that drove radical sects or the peasant revolt. It was one thing for peasants to rebel against their superiors. It was quite another for princes to rebel against Holy Roman Emperors, or civic magistrates against both emperors and princes. When princes challenged the emperor, or civic magistrates resisted princes, they were certainly pursuing their own economic interests by defending or augmenting their hold on political power, just as burghers and guildsmen fought urban patriciates to gain the material advantages deriving from a greater share in civic governance, or peasants rebelled against princes to free themselves of tithes and taxes. The difference was that, in their resistance to higher authorities, princes or civic magistrates could claim to be acting not in their private interests but in defence of their own public powers.

      Luther’s theology proved well adapted to these conflicts; and its success must be at least in part explained by its capacity to serve the interests of secular powers in various ways, depending on the balance of forces in any given principality or city at any given time. The complex of ideas that combined separation from the Catholic Church with a doctrine of obedience to secular authority served princes and civic authorities particularly well. The adoption of Lutheranism, however genuine the spiritual motivations, had distinct political and economic advantages. It freed principalities and cities from papal jurisdiction and taxation, while also challenging imperial authority and the diversion of German resources to other imperial territories.

      So, while Luther himself was quick to denounce the peasant revolt against princes and other secular powers, his doctrine of obedience did not prevent princes themselves from mobilizing Lutheran theology – nor did it prevent Luther from supporting them – against the Holy Roman Empire. Their resistance could remain consistent with the doctrine of obedience because they launched their opposition not as private citizens resisting authority but rather as one competing temporal jurisdiction against another. Much the same would be true of Protestant urban elites, who challenged higher authorities not to defend the liberties of citizens so much as to assert the rights and jurisdictions of ‘lesser’ authorities against emperors and princes. At the same time, princes and civic elites could invoke the doctrine of obedience to secular authority in countering threats of rebellion from below.

      In 1531, when Emperor Charles V threatened to suppress Lutheranism by military means, a group of principalities and cities, led by two powerful German princes, the Landgrave of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, formed the Schmalkaldic League to defend the Protestant faith. A theory of resistance was devised, which invested in ‘lesser magistrates’ – the lower levels of imperial government, such as local civic officials – a right to resist by military force. It was made very clear that no such right belonged to private citizens: never again should there be such a thing as a peasant revolt. Indeed, the right to resist was less a right than an official duty.

      Luther himself – belatedly and reluctantly – had come around to this point of view, having been repeatedly called upon by the Elector of Saxony and others to write in support of the princes’ political moves against the Empire or the Catholic Church. At first, he supported the princes on narrowly constitutional grounds, saying that if the lawyers were right in their interpretation of the imperial constitution and the rights of lesser officials, then the princes were entitled to resist the emperor. Even then he narrowly defined the right of those public authorities and explained his change of mind on the grounds that imperial law itself, that is, law imposed by the emperor himself, called for resistance to a notorious injustice wrought by government. For German princes and their supporters, resistance remained a prerogative of office, and the right of other authorities to repel force with force rested on the emperor’s having himself become a rebel – whose punishment was clearly a duty of office. Even when the argument expanded from purely constitutional principles to arguments from natural law, the issue was still the rights of princes, or at least the right to disobey the orders of the emperor to take up arms against Protestants.6 For Luther, if the private citizen had any rights, they almost certainly did not go beyond the citizen’s right to join his prince’s army against the emperor.

      Later, under the influence of Calvin, who was himself – as we shall see – a strong advocate of secular obedience, this defence of Protestant religion against imperial threats would be transformed into a doctrine of secular resistance against any overweening royal power; but even then it remained – as in the Huguenot resistance tracts in France – not a declaration of individual freedom but, above all, an assertion of autonomous powers belonging to provincial nobles and civic officials.

      John Calvin

      The city of Geneva, where John Calvin would find his spiritual home, had, like other cities in the Holy Roman Empire, long been a battleground for power struggles among bishops, counts and dukes. In the Middle Ages, the bishop of Geneva had been a prince of the Empire; but there were constant battles between the bishops and other princely claimants, eager to gain access to the fruits of the city’s commercial success. When the House of Savoy sought to turn Geneva into a duchy, the city countered the threat by joining the Swiss federation in 1526; СКАЧАТЬ