How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (44 page)

Europe’s Military Revolution

The final blow to Spanish power came as a result of a dramatic shift in military might. Just as Spain’s immense and powerful army melted away for lack of funds, a revolution in military organization and technology transformed other European armies, thus reducing Spain to a second-rate power.
⁵⁴

The fundamental cause of this military revolution was the proliferation of individual firearms. When all the infantry had muskets, a substantial change in tactics allowed armies to maximize firepower: after a front line fired a volley, it shifted to the rear to begin reloading while another line moved to the front. These maneuvers needed to be highly coordinated, with each line moving in perfect unison and each trooper reloading with precision. To achieve all this required a standing, professional army that drilled constantly. Professional troops also were needed because inexperienced soldiers were unreliable in the face of coordinated fire, including that of mobile artillery. In addition, the new style of warfare created the need for a highly trained officer corps—hence the founding of military academies. All these developments made warfare prodigiously expensive.

Nevertheless, the Dutch, French, Swedes, Austrians, and various German principalities all took part in the military revolution (the British were content to spend most of their money on a superior navy). Despite the fact that the Spanish army in the sixteenth century had anticipated many of these innovations, by the seventeenth century it was small, unprofessional, and out of date.

Legacy of a Flawed Empire

Despite everything, it must not be overlooked that it was the Spanish who created the global society. No doubt the Chinese
could
have sent
Zheng He’s fleet east to the Americas, but they did not. And many European rulers
could
have funded Columbus, but it was Isabella and Ferdinand who did. As for the tragic epidemics that resulted from contact, they would have occurred whenever
any
outsiders, including the Chinese, reached the New World—as was bound to happen, if not in 1492 then surely within the next several decades. The fact remains that it was the Spanish who funded the first voyage and the Spanish who rapidly followed up: by the time of Columbus’s third voyage they had already set up an administrative apparatus in the Caribbean and a busy maritime network.

As for the fall of the Spanish Empire, ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they carefully built the Spanish Empire and ruled it for more than eighty years. Nearly every day they rose early and worked diligently at administering this sprawling entity. Had they been wastrels or playboys, they might have done much less damage to the economies in their charge. In contrast, the “Pirate Queen” ran a relaxed regime, treating her Sea Dogs more like business partners than subjects, and they responded with brilliant initiative. In the end, it was this English free-enterprise approach that was the final undoing of the Spanish Empire.

13

The Lutheran Reformation: Myths and Realities

A
year after Charles V became king of Spain, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenberg church door, initiating the Reformation. The careers of the two would be closely intertwined in the brutal religious conflict that soon followed.

A remarkable number of myths have gathered around the Reformation. Many of these reflect the anti-Catholic bias of the historians who long dominated what was written in English and much that was written in German. The conventional myths proclaim that the emergence of Protestantism was caused by enlightened factors such as the spread of literacy and that it had many equally marvelous consequences, including a remarkable revival of popular piety and the spread of religious liberty. Unfortunately, many of the admirable claims about the Reformation aren’t true. The rise of Protestantism was anything but the triumph of tolerance: it was a criminal offense to say Mass in Lutheran Germany; John Calvin tolerated no dissenters; and Henry VIII
burned
dissenters. That hardly anyone went to church in either the Protestant or the Catholic areas of Europe quashes all claims of a popular revival.

Of course,
the
Reformation is itself a misnomer: there were several independent and quite different Reformations, the primary instances being Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. But the first, most analyzed, and most important of these three Reformations—and therefore the one that will be our main focus—was the one Martin Luther led.

Luther and Lutheranism

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was the son of a well-to-do German family.
¹
His father may have been of peasant origins but soon owned copper mines and smelters, and he served for many years on the council of the city of Mansfeld in Saxony. After four years in prep schools, in 1501 the young Luther enrolled in the University of Erfurt, one of the oldest and best universities in Germany. His father hoped he would become a lawyer, but after a few months in law, he transferred to theology. Luther received his bachelor’s degree in 1502 and his master’s in 1505. He then entered an Augustinian monastery and in 1507 was ordained a priest. After being appointed to the faculty at the University of Wittenberg in 1505, he received his doctorate in 1512. Except for several short breaks caused by his conflict with the Church, Luther remained at Wittenberg for the rest of his life.
²

In 1510 a pivotal event in Luther’s life took place when he was selected as one of two German Augustinians to go to Rome to present an appeal concerning their order. Only ten years later, Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuits, would be advised not to go to Rome, for there his faith might be shaken by the city’s “stupendous depravity.”
³
Luther received no such helpful warning, and, although impressed by the history and grandeur of Rome, he was shocked by the open blasphemy and impiety of the clergy, including priests who thought it amusing to recite parodies of the liturgy while celebrating Mass. This was not some anti-Catholic tale Luther later told to justify his break with Rome. Many other devout visitors to Rome reported similar abuses. For example, the celebrated Erasmus (1466–1536) noted from his own visit to Rome only five years prior to Luther’s that “with my own ears I heard the most loathsome blasphemies against Christ and His Apostles. Many acquaintances of mine have heard priests of the curia uttering disgusting words so loudly, even during mass, that all around them could hear.”
⁴
And like Erasmus before him, Luther remained within the Church even after seeing such dreadful excesses. Instead he committed himself to reform. Even so, it was not until about seven years later that Luther did anything other than continue teaching.

It was the local sale of indulgences that finally prodded Luther to act. The basis for indulgences was the doctrine that the temporal penalty for all sins must be remitted by good works or penance before a soul can enter
heaven. Since at death most people have sins whose temporal penalties have not been fully remitted, their souls must linger in purgatory—a kind of semi-hell—until they have endured sufficient punishment, or cleansing, to purge their sins (hence “purgatory”). This doctrine stimulated many good works, and the Church assigned each such work a value as to time remitted from one’s sentence to purgatory. For example, service in a Crusade brought complete remission of time in purgatory. Soon it became accepted that gifts to the Church allowed individuals to gain credits for time off their stay in purgatory. The Church formalized this practice by selling signed and sealed certificates known as
indulgences
, some of them specifying a period of remission, others providing dispensations to commit, or for having committed, various sins. Then, in 1476, Pope Sixtus IV authorized the sale of indulgences to the living to shorten the suffering of their dead loved ones in purgatory. As a popular sales slogan put it, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
⁵
The Church’s yield from indulgences was enormous, especially because it sent out trained officials to lead local sales efforts.

In 1517 Johannes Tetzel, a prominent Dominican indulgence salesman, organized a campaign in areas near Wittenberg, the proceeds to go to rebuilding Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome and to repay the archbishop of Metz the huge price he had paid to buy his office. Drafts of some of Tetzel’s sermons survive. The following excerpt is typical: “Do you not hear the voices of your dead parents and other people, screaming and saying ‘Have pity on me, have pity on me.… We are suffering severe punishments and pain, from which you could rescue me with a few alms, if you would.”
⁶

Luther was disgusted by the sale of indulgences. In fact, his Ninety-Five Theses focused specifically on critiquing this practice rather than offering a general attack on church practices. The document he nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church, which became known as the
Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences
, was a proposal to debate the issue. Contrary to myth, the act of nailing his theses to the church door was not an act of defiance: the Wittenberg faculty routinely used the castle church door as a bulletin board.
⁷
Still, Luther’s proposal prompted a swift reaction.

He posted his theses (written in Latin) on October 31, 1517. By December at least three different printers in three different cities had produced German translations. During the next several months translations
were published in France, England, Italy, and beyond.
⁸
Probably because Luther’s critique became so widely known outside the Latin-reading elite, the Church responded angrily. Pope Leo X ordered Luther to Rome. Had Luther gone, he probably would have become just another obscure martyr to reform. But the German Elector Frederick objected to his summons (he, too, opposed the sale of Roman indulgences in Germany), and the Church agreed to have Luther instead appear before Cardinal Cajetan in Augsburg.

Arriving in Augsburg on October 7, 1518, with a safe conduct from Frederick, Luther discovered that the cardinal had no interest in anything but a retraction of his theses. When Luther refused, he was ordered into seclusion until he was ready to conform. Soon rumors reached Luther that the cardinal was planning to violate his safe conduct and send him to Rome in chains. Friends helped Luther to escape back to Wittenberg, where the faculty rallied to his cause and petitioned Frederick to protect him. This amounted to an irreconcilable break with the church hierarchy. Luther responded in 1520 by publishing three famous and defiant tracts, now known as the “Reformation Treatises.”

Written in German, Luther’s tracts denounced the Roman Church for bleeding Germany: “Every year more than three hundred thousand gulden [gold coins] find their way from Germany to Rome, quite uselessly and fruitlessly; we get nothing but scorn and contempt. And yet we wonder that princes, nobles, cities, endowments, land and people are impoverished.”
⁹
He wrote of Rome and the pope in colorful, violent language: “Hearest thou this, O pope, not most holy, but most sinful? O that God from heaven would soon destroy thy throne and sink it in the abyss of hell! … O Christ, my Lord, look down, let the day of thy judgment break, and destroy the devil’s nest at Rome.”
¹⁰

Luther also proposed radical changes in both practice and doctrine. He called for an end to the sale of indulgences, to saying Masses for the dead, and to all “holy days” except for Sundays. He declared that the whole congregation, not just the priest, should sip the communion wine. Moreover, he proposed that priests be allowed to marry and that no one be permitted to take binding monastic vows before the age of thirty. (Later he advised the dissolution of all religious orders and that there be no more vows of celibacy.) As for doctrine, Luther asserted the absolute authority of Holy Scripture and that each human must discover the meaning of scripture and establish his or her own, personal relationship
with God. Most radical of all, Luther proposed that salvation is God’s gift, freely given, and is gained entirely by faith in Jesus as the redeemer. That is, salvation cannot be earned or purchased by good works. Consequently, there is no purgatory, since no atonement for sins, other than that wrought by Christ, is necessary or possible. One either has faith and is saved or lacks faith and is damned. Good works are the result, or fruits, of faith.