History of the Catholic Church, vol 1 | Page 5

J. MacCaffrey
the divine constitution of the Church was concerned, and the one which secured ultimately whatever degree of success his revolution attained, was the theory of royal supremacy, or the recognition of the temporal ruler as the source of spiritual jurisdiction. But even this was more or less of an after- thought. Keen student of contemporary politics that Luther was, he perceived two great influences at work, one, patronised by the sovereigns in favour of absolute rule, the other, supported by the masses in favour of unrestricted liberty. He realised from the beginning that it was only by combining his religious programme with one or other of these two movements that he could have any hope of success. At first, impressed by the strength of the popular party as manifested in the net-work of secret societies then spread throughout Germany, and by the revolutionary attitude of the landless nobles, who were prepared to lead the peasants, he determined to raise the cry of civil and religious liberty, and to rouse the masses against the princes and kings, as well as against their bishops and the Pope. But soon the success of the German princes in the Peasants' War made it clear to him that an alliance between the religious and the social revolution was fraught with dangerous consequences; and, at once, he went to the other extreme.
The gradual weakening of the Feudal System, which acted as a check upon the authority of the rulers, and the awakening of the national consciousness, prepared the way for the policy of centralisation. France, which consisted formerly of a collection of almost independent provinces, was welded together into one united kingdom; a similar change took place in Spain after the union of Castile and Aragon and the fall of the Moorish power at Granada. In England the disappearance of the nobles in the Wars of the Roses led to the establishment of the Tudor domination. As a result of this centralisation the Kings of France, Spain, and England, and the sovereign princes of Germany received a great increase of power, and resolved to make themselves absolute masters in their own dominions.
Having abandoned the unfortunate peasants who had been led to slaughter by his writings, Luther determined to make it clear that his religious policy was in complete harmony with the political absolutism aimed at by the temporal rulers. With this object in view he put forward the principle of royal supremacy, according to which the king or prince was to be recognised as the head of the church in his own territories, and the source of all spiritual jurisdiction. By doing so he achieved two very important results. He had at hand in the machinery of civil government the nucleus of a new ecclesiastical organisation, the shaping of which had been his greatest worry; and, besides, he won for his new movement the sympathy and active support of the civil rulers, to whom the thought of becoming complete masters of ecclesiastical patronage and of the wealth of the Church opened up the most rosy prospects. In Germany, in England, and in the northern countries of Europe, it was the principle of royal supremacy that turned the scales eventually in favour of the new religion, while, at the same time, it led to the establishment of absolutism both in theory and practice. From the recognition of the sovereign as supreme master both in Church and State the theory of the divine rights of kings as understood in modern times followed as a necessary corollary. There was no longer any possibility of suggesting limitations or of countenancing rebellion. The king, in his own territories, had succeeded to all the rights and privileges which, according to the divine constitution of the Church, belonged to the Pope.
Such a development in the Protestant countries could not fail to produce its effects even on Catholic rulers who had remained loyal to the Church. They began to aim at combining, as far as possible, the Protestant theory of ecclesiastical government with obedience to the Pope, by taking into their own hands the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, by making the bishops and clergy state- officials, and by leaving to the Pope only a primacy of honour. This policy, known under the different names of Gallicanism in France, and of Febronianism and Josephism in the Empire, led of necessity to conflicts between Rome and the Catholic sovereigns of Europe, conflicts in which, unfortunately, many of the bishops, influenced by mistaken notions of loyalty and patriotism, took the side of their own sovereigns. As a result, absolute rule was established throughout Europe; the rights of the people to any voice in government were trampled upon, and the rules became more despotic than the old Roman Emperors had been even in their two-fold capacity of civil
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