The Fall of Silesia, the Radical Reformation, and The Constantinian Decision
Silesia had been fighting for its own independence for 200 years. Ever since it had broken off from Poland, Silesia stood between the stronger Polish King on one side and its overlord, the Bohemian king, on the other. But in the hundred years since the fall of Constantinople, Silesia had transformed from a buffer state to a genuinely independent identity. Philosophically and politically Silesia was easily a century ahead of some of its neighbors. While England and Prussia had laws giving the right of life and speech to all of their citizens regardless of religion, Silesia had passed laws banning the legal rights of the nobility and had created a concept of 'nation' based around the idea that the Silesians were a 'river people', and river people, who met thousands of men and women who traveled up and down the river, had to be tolerant by default. By 1545, the congregations of Jews in Silesia had become simply another one of the several demographical groups. There is little doubt that Krystian Ludwig I was one of the most liberal rulers of the time when he passed a law allowing any man to go to any school he could afford. This meant that recently converted Jews could go to Seminary, which caused a great deal of controversy internationally, though not within Silesia.
Silesia was, by 1550, the most tolerant state in Europe
However there was one problem--while Krystian Ludwig was a fantastic duke, he had not sired any sons, and as the 1540s came to a close and his wife died, it became clear that he would not have another chance to have any children. So he needed to make a hard decision--he needed to decide which nation would inherit his nation. The three inheritors who had the best claims were Frederich of Prussia (also the Heir of Prussia), Janislaw of Bohemia, and Johann III, Margrave of Baden. For quite a while the intellectuals of Wroclaw considered Baden the best choice--as Baden was a weak country, the Duchy of Silesia would soon be able to break free and establish another dynasty. Krystian knew better though--the new Emperor strongly believed in the Austrian international relations concept of "integrated convergence", or creating stronger links (preferably through inheritances) between the Catholic powers in order to counter the ever more radical Protestant threat.
Beyond this, Krystian's faith in Catholicism wasn't at its strongest near the end of his life. The 6th Council of Archbishops was held in the Highlands region in Scotland. Partially this was to make sure that the council would not be interrupted by war (as the councils in Denmark were), but there was another attractive aspect to the council--it was being held in a town that was half Protestant, half Catholic. The more moderate rulers were attracted to this, as the last several councils had led to highly conservative decisions. However this council was more of the same, and though the "Good Works Catholics" (the followers of Kreyitz' Catholicism, which included Prussians but also Pomeranians, Silesians, Mecklemburgers, Saxons and northern Bohemians and which involved respect for Judaism , a focus on literacy and theological argument, and Bibles printed in Vernacular, which Kreyitz thought brought more people closer to God) managed to get the College of Cardinals to ban Simony (the exchange of bribes for benefices), the Spanish archbishops also succeeded in limiting the communion host, which was a slap in the face to the followers of Kreyitz, who had shared communions for the past several decades. When this decision was passed, the whole Good Works contingent left the council in a rage. The trip back to the Elbe from Scotland was one of the first times that Johann Cicero and Krystian had met each other.
The decision to limit the Communion was one of the major reasons for the en masse conversion of northern Germany
Though Cicero was also near to his death, he knew that if he negotiated the combination of Prussia and Silesia, he would be able to guarantee the safety of both. Beyond that he had been waiting for years to find the right time to convert--it was clear even before the 4th Council that the Catholic Church was not going to accept concessions from the Good Works contingent--and a Prussia that included Silesia (one of the most urbanized areas of Europe outside of Italy) would be able to defend itself far better. On the other hand, Krystian saw Prussia as the closest fit to Silesia's culture. The works of Kreyitz (which Albrecht, and later Cicero, had translated into Czech) had an even stronger effect on Silesia than it did in Prussia, and Kreyitz's respect for Jewish culture had led to the Silesian concept of a 'river people'. Beyond that, Berlin and Wroclaw had been joined at the hip ever since the annexation of Glonowski, and trade up and down the Elbe had enriched both cities.
While Krystian was well read on Kreyitz' theology, the life of hard work asserting Silesia's independence from Bohemia meant that he had never had the chance to read Finck's
The Spirit of Laws. Being that Cicero had been Finck's editor the whole time, it would be reasonable to say that there was no better Finck scholar at the time than Johann Cicero. At the same time, it would be dishonest of me to say that Cicero was giving a full summation of Finck's philosophy--he focused mostly on the concept of a 'bloodless state', and any of the other concepts which he felt Krystian would be attracted to. A Catholic scholar who traveled with the two said that the conversation they had over the weeks was "closer to seduction than lecture". By the end of the trip, Krystian and Cicero were close friends.
This was still not enough, however. Before Krystian signed his whole legacy off to the next Prussian King, he first needed the guarantee that the King would respect the laws of Silesia and that the next King would integrate rather than dominate the Duchy. This started a period of Silesian near-dominance of Prussian internal affairs. Tariffs across the Elbe (even with Pomerania) were lowered, Good Works Catholic seminaries were opened, and tax privileges were rearranged so that Cities were given preferential treatment over the estates (which, sadly, put even more pressure on the towns). A Silesian theologian was hired so that the Silesian concept of a "church tax" could be spread to Prussia.
The Tax Reform of 1547 finally placed cities on an equal basis as the nobility, which led to even more urbanization
Krystian was pleased, and before his death he made the young Frederich the duke of Silesia, with a regent in his place until he took the Prussian crown. Cicero could not be more pleased--in his lifetime he had effectively doubled the size of his realm.
The personal union between Silesia and Prussia
While this seems like a tremendous event in and of itself, it led to one of the most important and underrated political inventions of the early modern era--the independent police force. When it was clear that prince Frederich would add the Silesian crown to his own, the Doppelkorps claimed that by the precedent set by its administration of Glonowski, it had the appropriate claim of administration over the rest of the provinces of Silesia. The Doppelkorps established multiple reasons for this--
1.Making Opolski, Wroclaw, and Rackinborski into military districts would by helpful, as Silesia would quickly be the main target of any belligerent.
2.While the nobility had accepted the provisions required for representation in the Kronesohr, they had their own estates, so the King would not lose the advantage of information seeping into the administration.
3.Silesia does not have a tradition of appointed mayors. Rather, they have a tradition of elected mayors and if we were to replace their system of government it could cause a revolt. It would be better, instead, to create a parallel system.
The Kronesohr then used its charter, which established it as the voice of the provinces for the King, as the counterclaim. However, De Fournay, who knew that his case wasn't that strong (Cicero had, by this point, put many of the administrative duties upon his son, so Fournay would have to argue to Frederich, a man who didn't know him all too well), established a counterclaim.
Two years before, a report came from the Doppelkorps stating that the city of Berlin was so large by this point, that it would be best if a separate policing force outside of the garrison and army could be established. The Army of the Mark was spending most of its time in Berlin, rather in the far more volatile Altmark, because any revolt that occurred within Berlin had the risk of overwhelming the King--the short-lived Peasants War was fresh in the minds of all of the senior military officers. Even the 3,000 man garrison was no where near enough people to police the city's urban population of 45,000, not even to mention the provincial population of nearly 100,000. So funds were allocated so that a policing organization could be created in Berlin. Two years later, the First Police District of Prussia was nearly fully formed, and the Kronesohr claimed that policing was a part of administration and domestic, rather than foreign policy, and if one wanted to maintain the spirit of the charters of the 3 Departments, domestic policy fell under the wing of the Kronesohr and therefore so did policing.
This was a feint. Diaries and public records show that this was simply De Fournay and the Kronesohr placing their chip on the table--if the Doppelkorps were to allow the Kronesohr to administer Silesia, then the Kronesohr would allow the Doppekorps to control policing. The Doppelkorps was far more interested in the greater prize, however. Frederich agreed to the 'parallel governance' plan, wherein military and diplomatic appointees would act as garrison commanders in Silesia, while Silesian mayors would be elected as per tradition. In order to sate the other two departments, the Kronesohr was now given control over policing and a Kronesauge 'market commissioner' would be in control over the Marketplaces of each of the provincial capitals plus Konigsberg and Berlin--beyond that promises were made that Kronesauge legal offices would be built in the provincial capitals of Silesia.
This led to the idea of modern policing. Paul Chevigny's "
Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas" argues that one of the causes of police brutality is the 'militarization' of police and whether the military dominates the police force, for the nature of the military's occupation and the job of the police is greatly different: the military is generally taught of war in the Clauswitzian sense of Ideal War: a short act of overwhelming force which totally subjugates the enemy. Policing, however, is different: it's a constant reproduction of society's concept of Order. The Military, with its focus on quick solutions, is more willing to resort to violence in order to achieve results, see, for instance, French forces in Algeria or the Brasilian police (which has large para-military organizations within it). However, the utilization of force goes against the philosophical objective of the police, that is, reproducing order. "
The separation of the police and military which occurred in 1548," Chevigny argues, "
was the beginning of the European model of policing: concerned primarily with pacification and order rather than the destruction of criminals". This objective, combined with conceptions of an absolute Westphalian state and the legacy of the Second World War, has been argued by multiple sources to be the reasons for Europe's lower crime rates and its lower levels of violence.
Within a decade, the Police subdepartment of the Kronesohr had cut down drastically on Brandenburg's smuggling
By this point, Cicero knew that he was close to his death. However, with an army of 30,000 men who were now newly outfitted with gunpowder weapons, Cicero was confident that Prussia could fight any one of the Catholic powers to a standstill if it was needed. With the duchy of Silesia under their control, Prussia would be in total control over the Elbe river, which would give an excelled defensive position for their army.
Beyond this, there was one final insult. The next council, the 7th, which had been boycotted by the Kreyitzan Catholics, passed two provisions which were a spit in the face to the followers of Kreyitz. The concept of 'good works' was now limited to donations, with the suggestion that donations to the Church were to be considered higher. While this was insulting, Charity was one half of the Kreyitzan definition of "Good Works"--the other being Industry. The true insult was the establishment of Latin as the sole holy language.
The entire Berlin printing press system was based on the concept of works being printed in the vernacular for all to read, and Polish Catholicism had been based in vernacular for a century by this point, going so far as to translate Lithuanian and Belorussian into a Romantic characters system in order to print books for Lithuanians. "
If we are to print all religious texts into Latin," said the Prince of Poland August III, "
then we must be prepared for widespread illiteracy and philistinism. The Patriarch has no qualms with using Belorussan and Lithuanian to convert my peoples, neither do the Pagans" To the Eastern Europeans, the decision to stop teaching in vernacular was a product of Western European arrogance. There was no threat of Pagan, Orthodox, or Sunni conversions in France or England.
Beyond that, the printing of Bibles in the vernacular had created unprecedented literacy rates in Eastern Germany and Poland, and finally had given them some degree of knowledge of their own religion, and it nearly led to a parity between Eastern and Western Europe over the intellectual realm. Many Eastern European intellectuals felt that this decision was just to place Western European scholars, who were more likely to know Latin, back on top. We know that the decision disgusted Eastern Europeans because in Sweden, one of the most divided of the European countries, the King converted to Beckism the day that he heard of the decision and declared himself "the guardian of Christianity, not for the priests but for the people!"
The decision on the use of the Vernacular was made nearly entirely by Western Europeans in collusion with a Spanish pope, and in the long term, this decision ended any possibility of unity between Eastern and Western Europe
Thus, the 7th Council had the effect of solidifying Catholicism in the West while abandoning it in the East, and of changing the Reformation from being based mostly on the moderate Beckian lines and changing it to being based more on the radical Italian monk, Calistus Brenta. Calistus believed that "
Latin is a dead language. If we do not speak to the people in their own tongue, then how are they to understand us? Am I to expect that they will speak Latin in Heaven?" He also believed in elected priesthoods, predestination, and that the only true virtues were Industry and Faith. In one form or another, Brentism spread across Europe just as much as Beckian Protestantism. The largest example of this was the example of Jan Leopolitania, who had been working for a decade by 1549 on his translation of the Bible into Polish. In 1550 he was informed that his work was, in fact, heretical, and to stop immediately. Instead he created a form of Reformism in his Warsaw parish, and in doing so converted the prince of Poland.
10 years after the decision to limit the vernacular, the denominational makeup of Europe had become increasingly complex. Purple indicates Brentan Reformists and outshoots (Polish Brentans integrated Kreyitz' respect for Jewish traditions with Brenta's belief in industry and still believed in the 7 virtues), Blue indicates Beckian Protestants, Orange indicates Gnostics, Green Husians, and Brown Orthodox Christians. Dots indicate minorities and white dots indicate that the country claims to speak 'for the whole of the faith'.
With this in mind, on his deathbed he signed a Statute that he had locked in his desk the year that his sons tutor, Becke, became the leader of the Protestant Reformation. With this, known as the "Constantinal Decision" for its similarity to the deathbed conversion of Constantine to Christianity, Cicero had once more defended Prussia's sovereignty by rejecting utterly the Pope and converting to Beckist Christianity.
The death of Cicero and the rise of his son, Frederich Albrecht I, the Constantinal decision, and the acceptance of the Silesian 'river people' identity.
edit: I'm going to be away for the weekend, also the world update will be held in 1560 rather than 1550 because I was so worried about the 1560s that I forgot to take screencaps at the end of Cicero's reign.