BOOK II: THE REFORMATION
PART ONE: THE ROAD TO BABYLON
III
The Looting of Christendom
In 1507 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ulm officially began the so-called Reformation, though a long history of church reforms prior to 1507 should be readily known to a basic reader of Christian history, by breaking away and starting its own diocese claiming independence from Rome and ability to control clerical appointments.* As already mentioned, the Reformation was more than just about corruption. And corruption in the church was nothing particularly new either. Even in the days of Augustine, who formulated the doctrine of the corpus permixtum—mixed body (or church)—to deal with the problem, failings of the church and clerical leadership led to St. John of Chrysostom to declare that the “Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”
The revolution that swept through Christendom wasn’t a benign reformation as the most ignorant of pro-Protestant apologists like to claim. The Reformation was the perfect storm of institutional corruption, institutional unrest, intellectual competition, political ambition and strife (especially from the German princes), and nascent formation of linguistic nationalism, coming together to create the storm that would ravish Europe until 1637.** The longstanding Ghibelline-Guelph conflict was also a motivating factor among some of the German princes to seek to breakaway from Rome—the breakaway their key to greater temporal/political power without Curia interference. The growth of vernacular translations, coinciding with the rise of a general ethno-linguistic nationalism, also proved to be fertile ground for the revolution that swept across Europe.
The land that was most fervently anti-Catholic was England. By 1511 the English Monarchy had passed the dissolution of the monasteries act, whereby English aristocrats plundered the common ownership and wealth of the church and seized it for themselves. It wasn’t until Catholic emancipation in the 1820s that Catholics were allowed to serve in parliament, own land, and engage in any profession, and it was a crime to attend a Catholic mass and build an official Catholic church. In the words of the greatest English, and still Protestant, historian of the Reformation in England, William Cobbett, “The Reformation was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood.”[1]
SCREENSHOT 1: The Reformation in Europe, 1511, just after the English Monarchy broke away from Rome. Note, the Protestant east is Danish held lands.
In the words of an Englishman to Englishmen, in a prose even greater than I could manage to write in a hundred lifetimes, a prose second only to Shakespeare and Milton and Swift:
It was not a reformation but a devastation, of England, which was, at the time when this event took place, the happiest Country, perhaps, that the world had ever seen; and, it is my chief business to show, that this devastation impoverished and degraded the main body of the people. But, in order that you may see this devastation in its true light, and that you may feel a just portion of indignation against the devastators, and against their eulogists of the present day, it is necessary, first, that you take a correct view of the things on which their devastating powers were exercised.
The far greater part of those books, which are called ‘Histories of England,’ are little better than romances. They treat of battles, negotiations, intrigues of courts, amours of kings, queens and nobles: they contain the gossip and scandal of former times, and very little else, There are histories of England, like that of Dr. Goldsmith, for the use of young persons; but, no young person, who has read them through, knows any more, of any possible use, than he or she knew before. The great use of history, is, to teach us how laws, usages and institutions arose, what were their effects on the people, how they promoted public happiness, or otherwise; and these things are precisely what the greater part of historians, as they call themselves, seem to think of no consequence.
We never understand the nature and constituent parts of a thing so well as when we ourselves have made the thing: next to making it, is the seeing of it made: but, if we have neither of these advantages, we ought, at least, if possible, to get at a true description of the origin of the thing and of the manner in which it was put together. I have to speak to you of the Catholic Church generally; then of the Church in England, under which head I shall have to speak of the parish churches, the monasteries, the tithes, and other revenues of the Church. It is, therefore, necessary that I explain to you how the Catholic Church arose; and how churches, monasteries, tithes and other church revenues came to be in England. When you have this information, you will well understand what it was which was devastated by [William III]. and the ‘Reformation’ people. And, I am satisfied, that, when you have read this one Number of my little work, you will know more about your country than you have learned, or ever will learn, from the reading of hundreds of those bulky volumes, called “Histories of England.”
The Catholic Church originated with Jesus Christ himself. He selected Peter to be head of his Church. This Apostle's name was Simon; but, his Master called him Peter, which means a stone or rock; and he said, "on this rock will I build my church." Look at the Gospel of Saint Matthew, xvi. 18, 19, and at that of Saint John, xxi. 15, and onward; and you will see, that we must deny the truth of the Scriptures, or acknowledge, that here was a head of the Church promised for all generations…
…This was the real ‘Reformation reign’; for, it was a reign of robbery and hypocrisy without any thing to be compared with them; any thing in any country or in any age. Religion, conscience, was always the pretext; but in one way or another, robbery, plunder was always the end. The People, once so united and so happy, became divided into innumerable sects, no man knowing hardly what to believe; and, indeed, no one knowing what it was lawful for him to say; for it soon became impossible for the common people to know what was heresy and what was not heresy.
That prince of hypocrites, Cranmer, who, during the reign of [William], had condemned people to the flames for not believing in transubstantiation, was now ready to condemn them for believing in it. We have seen, that Luther was the beginner of the work of "Reformation "; but, he was soon followed by further reformers on the continent. These had made many attempts to propagate their doctrines in England; but, old [William] had kept them down. Now, however, when the churches were to he robbed of what remained in them, and when, to have a pretext for that robbery, was necessary to make a complete change in the form of worship, these sectarians all flocked to England, which became one great scene of religious disputation. Some were for the Common Prayer Book; others proposed alterations in it; others were for abolishing it altogether and there now began that division, that multiplicity of hostile opinions, which has continued to the present day. Cranmer employed a part of the resources of the country to feed and fatten those of these religious, or, rather, impious, adventurers, who sided with him, and who chose the best market for their doctrines. England was over-run by these foreign traders in religion; and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence, was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only to foreigners, but to foreigners of the most base and infamous character and description. Cranmer could not find Englishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in executing the work that he had in hand. The Protector Hertford, whom we must now call Somerset (the child king having made him Duke of Somerset ), was the greatest of all ‘reformers’ that had yet appeared in the world, and, as we shall soon see, the greatest and most audacious of all the plunderers that this famous Reformation has produced, save and except old Harry himself. The total abolition of the Catholic worship was necessary to his projects of plunder; and, therefore, he was a great encourager of these greedy and villainous foreigners. Perhaps the world has never, in any age, seen a nest of such atrocious miscreants as Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Beza and the rest of the distinguished reformers of the Catholic religion. Every one of them was notorious for the most scandalous vices, even according to the full confession of his own followers. They agreed in nothing but in the doctrine, that good works were useless; and their lives proved the sincerity of their teaching; for there was not a man of them whose acts did not merit a halter.[2]
The Reformation was, from the dissolution of the monasteries, the sprinkling of holy water on robbery and theft and plunder, the writing of homilies supporting the plunder of the wealth of the Catholic Church used for the welfare of the people, was nothing short of a looting operation. But no one in a Protestant land, sans Cobbett, who was himself a Protestant, was courageous enough to speak of the reality of the Reformation’s looting operation.
FIGURE 1: The ruins of Biland Monastery, 500 years after its plunder.
Of course, there is a certain justice to the fact that many of the European, and especially English, aristocrats who plundered out of lust and greed lost their fortunes within a generation, thus causing them to be enslaved by a new system of economics unique to the Protestant world: debt. Usury was always considered a sin in Catholicism, but through the Protestant Reformation, the liberation of the bourgeoisie, and the irresponsibility of the princes who sacked the churches of Christ, the princes wielded their strong arm again and advanced the acceptability of usury as a means to allow for their lavish lifestyles to continue.
In fact, it is well-attested to in Reformation history that the areas that were hardest hit by the Reformation were not areas in which the corruption was a major problem. If so then the Reformation would have been contained to Italy and a few pockets of Germany and France. The areas that were hit hardest by the Reformation, at least the first wave of the Reformation, were regions with strong monastery presences. And with the monasteries great wealth.[3] In England alone over 800 monasteries were plundered and many of their lands sold to aristocrats who privatized the land immediately afterward. Close to 10,000 monks, friars, and nuns were cast out into the open. In Germany, when Luther declared monastic life unbiblical, German zealots stormed hundreds of monasteries across the German principalities and raided them dry, forcing thousands of monks, friars, and nuns into the cold open countryside and forests of Germany. Some 250 monasteries were hit and plundered with full approval of Luther. In the Dutch provinces, unlike in England, the many hundreds of monasteries and churches looted were converted to Calvinist houses of worships or turned into secular offices like museums and meeting houses. By 1550, over 1500 monasteries were looted across Christendom and more than 20,000 religious ordinates turned into refugees. Areas with a limited number of monasteries, like Spain, Portugal, Croatia, and poor rural areas across Europe, were otherwise untouched or minimally affected by the Reformation.
That more modern and equally eminent historian of the English Reformation, Eamon Duffy, explained that English Christianity prior to the Reformation was a rich and vigorous movement with widespread popularity. Duffy’s work, of course, serves as a corrective to those pro-Protestant babblers who speak of decadence and decay as if it were widespread while the reality of the lay church was one of popularity and vigor. The multitude of popular Catholic devotions were, in a moment, stripped clean by the zealots who promised to build the New Jerusalem in England’s depressed (“happy”) lands. The last vestiges of civilization were wiped out, stone by stone, by the den of thieves eulogized by the Reformation historians.
But the struggle over the Reformation, Christianity, and Rome in England were just beginning. And the rise of the most incredible, and consequential, birth of “bible nationalism” among the English-speaking peoples now commencing. Jumping from the Isles to the New World led to the contest of the English-speaking peoples and their Providential mission to bring the gospel to the world against the corrupt agents of Babylon trying to prevent this Godly mission from happening—the fabric and DNA from which the United States of America was eventually born. While Catholic nations saw themselves as the “Christ of Europe” or “Christ of the Nations,” emphasizing suffering: Hungary and Poland especially,[4] the English-speaking peoples saw themselves as the Apostles of the Nations, missionizing the world for the glory of Jesus, Paul, and the English people most importantly.
[1] William Cobbett, A History of the Reformation in England and Ireland, Intro., para. 4.
[2] Ibid., para. 37-40, 199-200. The name Henry VIII has been replaced by William III, in brackets [William], to reflect the in-game ruler of England at the time.
[3] This is historically true in OTL.
[4] Christ of Europe or Christ of the Nations has been used to describe Hungary, Poland, and Russia, historically. In our timeline it is coincidental that all three countries can keep the moniker.
*I briefly alluded to the Reformation beginning in Ulm back in this chapter.
**In my game the end of continuous Catholic-Protestant conflict roughly concluded in that year where future conflicts between states was not “religious” in nature.
SUGGESTED READING
William Cobbett, A History of the Reformation in England and Ireland
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580
Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Joyce Youings, Dissolution of the Monasteries