The Age of the Reformation | Page 4

Sixteenth Century.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE REFORMATION INTERPRETED . . . . . . . 699
1. The Religious and Political Interpretations. Burnet, Bossuet, Sleidan,
Sarpi.
2. The Rationalist Critique. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Robertson, Hume,
Gibbon, Goethe, Lessing.
3. The Liberal-Romantic Appreciation. Heine, Michelet, Froude, Hegel,
Ranke, Buckle.
4. The Economic and Evolutionary Interpretations. Marx, Lamprecht,
Berger, Weber, Nietzsche, Troeltsch, Santayana, Harnack, Beard,
Janssen, Pastor, Acton.
5. Concluding Estimate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

{3}
THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION
CHAPTER I

THE OLD AND THE NEW
SECTION 1. THE WORLD.
Though in some sense every age is one of transition and every
generation sees the world remodelled, there sometimes comes a change
so startling and profound that it seems like the beginning of a new
season in the world's great year. The snows of winter melt for weeks,
the cold winds blow and the cool rains fall, and we see no change until,
almost within a few days, the leaves and blossoms put forth their
verdure, and the spring has come.
Such a change in man's environment and habits as the world has rarely
seen, took place in the generation that reached early manhood in the
year 1500. [Sidenote: 1483-1546] In the span of a single life--for
convenience let us take that of Luther for our measure--men discovered,
not in metaphor but in sober fact, a new heaven and a new earth. In
those days masses of men began to read many books, multiplied by the
new art of printing. In those days immortal artists shot the world
through with a matchless radiance of color and of meaning. In those
days Vasco da Gama and Columbus and Magellan opened the watery
ways to new lands beyond the seven seas. In those days Copernicus
established the momentous truth that the earth was but a tiny planet
spinning around a vastly greater sun. In those days was in large part
accomplished the economic shift from medieval gild to modern
production by capital and wages. In those days wealth was piled up in
the coffers of the merchants, and a new power was {4} given to the life
of the individual, of the nation, and of the third estate. In those days the
monarchy of the Roman church was broken, and large portions of her
dominions seceded to form new organizations, governed by other
powers and animated by a different spirit.
[Sidenote: Antecedents of the Reformation]
Other generations have seen one revolution take place at a time, the
sixteenth century saw three, the Rise of Capitalism, the end of the
Renaissance, and the beginning of the Reformation. All three,
interacting, modifying each other, conflicting as they sometimes did,

were equally the consequences, in different fields, of antecedent
changes in man's circumstances. All life is an adaptation to
environment; and thus from every alteration in the conditions in which
man lives, usually made by his discovery of new resources or of
hitherto unknown natural laws, a change in his habits of life must flow.
Every revolution is but an adjustment to a fresh situation, intellectual or
material, or both.
[Sidenote: Economic]
Certainly, economic and psychological factors were alike operative in
producing the three revolutions. The most general economic force was
the change from "natural economy" to "money economy," i.e. from a
society in which payments were made chiefly by exchange of goods,
and by services, to one in which money was both the agent of exchange
and standard of value. In the Middle Ages production had been largely
co-operative; the land belonged to the village and was apportioned out
to each husbandman to till, or to all in common for pasture.
Manufacture and commerce were organized by the gild--a society of
equals, with the same course of labor and the same reward for each, and
with no distinction save that founded on seniority--apprentice,
workman, master-workman. But {5} in the later Middle Ages, and
more rapidly at their close, this system broke down under the necessity
for larger capital in production and the possibility of supplying it by the
increase of wealth and of banking technique that made possible
investment, rapid turn-over of capital, and corporate partnership. The
increase of wealth and the changed mode of its production has been in
large part the cause of three developments which in their turn became
causes of revolution: the rise of the bourgeoisie, of nationalism, and of
individualism.
[Sidenote: The bourgeoisie]
Just as the nobles were wearing away in civil strife and were seeing
their castles shot to pieces by cannon, just as