Nationalism and Culture (19 page)

Wycliffe at first merely defended the complete independence of the temporal power from the church and only advanced to a criticism of churchly dogmas after he had become convinced that the question would never be settled without a bold break with papism. But when the great peasant rebellion in England broke out and the revolting hordes of Wat Tyler and John Ball brought the king and the government into greatest danger, Wycliffe's opponents embraced the opportunity to raise their public accusation against him. Wycliffe declared that he did not sanction the action of the rebellious peasants j but he did it with a gentleness of understanding for the sufferings of the poor which compared most favorably with the Berserker rage wherewith Luther in his notorious screed "against the robbing and murdering peasants" encouraged the German princes to butcher them mercilessly.

When, later on, Henry VIII completed the breach with the papal church and confiscated its estates, he made himself the head of the new state church, which was completely under the dominance of the temporal power. When the same Henry had launched a virulent epistle against Luther, only, soon after, to defend the "national interest" against the Papacy, he did but prove that in England also temporal advantages possessed a greater interest for the tenant of the crown than "the pure word of God" of the new doctrine.

In Bohemia, where the general situation was already very tense, it became accentuated by the national antagonisms between the Czechs and the Germans, in consequence whereof the Reformation assumed there an

exceptionally violent expression. The real Hussite movement became prominent in Bohemia only^fter the death of Huss and Jerome of Prague at the stake. The preachings of Huss had been, on the whole, only the tracts of Wydiffe, which the Czech reformers translated for their countrymen into their own language. Huss, like Wycliffe, urged the complete liberation of the temporal power from the petty guardianship of the church. The church was to concern itself only with the salvation of men's souls and to stand aloof from every temporal governmental office. Of the "two whales," as Peter Chelcicky had called church and state, Huss Would concede only to the state the power over temporal things. The church must be poor, must renounce all earthly treasure, and the priests must be amenable to temporal government even as any other subjects. Furthermore, the priestly office was to be open also to laymen, provided they possessed the necessary moral qualities. He condemned the moral degeneracy which had become prevalent among the priesthood, turning with especial severity againts the traffic in indulgences, at that time most shamelessly practiced by the church, especially in Bohemia. Besides the purely political demands, which alone interest us here and which, being understood, appear especially favorable to the nobility, Huss made a number of theological demands directed against the oral confession, the mendicant monks, the doctrine of purgatory and other items. But what principally secured him the support of the Czech population was his teaching that the paying of tithes was no duty and his specially nationalistic position against the Germans, regarded by the Czechs as despoilers of their country.

The Calixtines and Utraquists,- to which sects chiefly the nobility and the richer citizens of Prague belonged, had been easily satisfied with the realization of these demands and refused all social reforms, being principally concerned with the acquisition of the rich church estates and, for the rest, with peace and order in the country. But the real popular movement, comprising mainly the peasants and the poorer city population, pushed further and demanded especially the liberation of the peasants from the yoke of serfdom which so heavily oppressed the rural districts. Already Charles V had been compelled to stay the nobles from putting out the eyes and cutting off the hands and feet of their serfs for the slightest transgression. The movement of the so-called Taborites ^ em\

'"Calixtines," from the Latin calix, cup; "Utraquists," from the Latin, sub utraque sfecie ("in both forms"), because they received the Eucharist in two forms, receiving from the priest not only bread but also wine, wherefore the cup became the sign of the Hussites. This custom, however, did not originate with Huss, but with Jacob von Mies, also called Jacobellus.

^ "Taborites," because they had given to a town which stood on a hill in the neighborhood of Prague, the biblical name of Tabor. Tabor remained, until the suppression of the Taborites, the spiritual center of the movement, and its inhabitants practiced a sort of communal possession which might be called a war communism.

braced especially all democratic elements of the people up to the communists and chiliasts and was inspired with an ardent courage for battle.

It was inevitable that between these two movements of the Hussite agitation violent contentions were sooner or later bound to arise j they were delayed only by the general political condition of the times. When the German Emperor Sigismund, after the sudden death of his brother Wenceslaus, became the wearer of the Bohemian crown, the whole land was seized by a mighty commotion. For by the emperor's dastardly breach of faith Huss had been compelled to mount the pyre, after which Sigismund was regarded in all Bohemia as the sworn enemy of all reform movements. Soon after his ascent of the throne, in March, 1420, Pope Martin V in a special bull called all Christendom to a crusade against the Bohemian heresy, and an army of 150,000 men recruited from all parts of Europe moved against the Hussites. Now revolt arose all over the land to a devouring flame. Calixtines and Taborites, threatened by the same immediate danger, let their inner differences rest for the time being and united quickly for common defense. Under the leadership of the aged 2izka, an experienced warrior, the first crusading army was bloodily and decisively beaten. But that did not end the struggle; pope and emperor continued their attacks against the Bohemian heresies j and thus developed one of the bloodiest of wars, waged on both sides with frightful cruelty. After the Hussites had expelled the enemy from their own country they invaded the neighboring states, wasted cities and villages, and by their irresistible bravery became the terror of their foes.

This brutal warfare lasted for twelve years, until the Hussites put the last army of the crusaders to fight in the battle of Taus. The result of the peace negotiations, concluded at the Council of Basle, was the "compact of Prague," which gave the Hussites far-reaching concessions in matters of faith and, above all, announced the renunciation by the church of its estates which the Czech nobility had appropriated.

This concluded the war against the external enemies, but only to make place for civil war. During the short breathing spells permitted the Hussites in the war against pope and emperor the differences between Calixtines and Taborites had flamed up anew, repeatedly leading to bloody conflicts. As a consequence, the Calixtines had repeatedly started negotiations with the pope and the emperor. And so it was inevitable that after the conclusion of peace, in which outcome they were chiefly instrumental, they should be supported against the Taborites by their former enemies to the best of their ability. In May, 1434, there occurred between the two parties the murderous battle of Llpan, in which thirteen thousand Taborites were killed and their army almost completely annihilated.

With this the popular movement was definitely defeated, and there began hard times for the poor populace of city and village. But thus early

it became apparent that the revolutionary popular movement, which by its own or others' fault had come to be involved in a protracted war, was forced by circumstances to abandon its original aims, because military demands exhaust all social forces and thereby nullify all creative activity for the development of new forms of social organization. War not only affects human nature calamitously in general by constant appeal to its most brutal and cruel motives, but the military discipline which it demands at last stifles every libertarian movement among the people and then systematically breeds the degrading brutality of blind obedience, which has always been the father of all reaction.

This the Taborites, too, had to learn. Their opponents, the professors of Prague University, accused them of striving for a condition where "there would be no king nor ruler nor subjects anywhere on earth, all control and guidance would cease, none could compel another to anything, and all would dwell in equality like brothers and sisters." It was soon apparent that the war drove them constantly farther away from this goal, not only because their military leaders suppressed with bloody force all the libertarian tendencies within the movement, but because the nationalist spirit which animated them and which in the course of this terrible war increased to white heat, necessarily estranged them more and more from all truly humanitarian considerations, without which no truly revolutionary movement can ever succeed. Once men have become used to the thought that all problems of social life have to be settled by force, they logically arrive at despotism, even though they give it another name and hide its true character behind some misleading title. And thus it happened in Tabor. The yoke of restriction bore more and more heavily on the citizens and crushed the spirit that had once animated them. Peter Chelcicky, a forerunner of Tolstoi and one of the few innerly free men of that epoch, who opposed both church and state, described, in the following weighty words, the terrible condition into which protracted war had plunged the country:

. . . and then someone fills vile dens with thieves and commits violence, robbery, and murder and at the same time is a servant of God and does not carry the sword in vain. And truly he does not carry it in vain, but rather to do all sorts of injustice, violence, robbery, oppression of the laboring poor. And thereby have these various lords torn the people asunder and incited them against one another. Everyone drives his people like a herd to battle against others. Thus by these many masters the whole peasantry has been made familiar with murder, for they go about armed, always ready for battle. Thereby all brotherly love is infiltrated with bloodlust and such tension created as easily leads to contest, and murder results.*

* Peter Chelcicky. The Net of Faithy translated into German from the old Czechic by Dr. Carl Vogl. Dachau, Munich, 1925, p, 145.

In Sweden, where the young dynasty founded by Gustavus Vasa imposed Protestantism on the people for purely political motives, the Reformation assumed quite a peculiar character. It was by no means holy zeal for the new divine doctrines that caused Gustavus I to break with Rome, but simply very sober political motives united with highly important economic considerations. Several grave mistakes of the papal power greatly favored the success of his plans.

Soon after the commencement of his reign the king had addressed a most respectful letter to the pope requesting him to appoint new Swedish bishops who would be "concerned to guard the rights of the Church without encroaching upon those of the Crown." More especially Gustavus wished the pope to confirm as Archbishop of Upsala the newly nominated Primus Johannis Magni, whose predecessor, Gustavus Trolle, had been condemned by the Rigsdag as a traitor because he had invited the Danish king, Christian II, into the land to overthrow the regent, Sten Sture. Gustavus had promised the pope to "prove himself a faithful son of the Church" and he assumed that the Vatican would respond to his wishes. But the pope, badly advised by his counselors, believed that Gustavus' reign would not last long, and with unyielding insistence demanded the reinstatement of Gustavus Trolle. With that the die was cast. Gustavus could not have yielded to this demand even if he had intended to avoid an open breach with Rome. Although the great majority of the Swedish people were good Catholics and wanted nothing to do with Luther, a renewal of the Danish dominion appeared even less endurable to the free Swedish peasants. The bloody tyranny of the fatuous despot, Christian II, had given them plenty of cause for fear. Hence the king could risk the breach with papism which, secretly, he doubtless desired. But although Sweden separated from the Holy See, and the king thereafter favored the preaching of Protestantism, the church service remained the same.

What Gustavus principally desired was under some pretext to confiscate the estates of the church, which in Sweden were very rich. After some cautious attempts in this direction, which aroused the opposition of his own bishops, he finally dropped the mask of impartiality and, in order to carry through his political plans, announced himself as an open enemy of the church. In 1526, he suppressed all the Catholic publishing houses in the country and seized two-thirds of the church's income to liquidate the debts of the state. Later, when a serious contention arose between the king and the spiritual dignitaries concerning the further confiscation of church properties, Gustavus Vasa gradually abolished all the prerogatives of the churches and made them subservient to the state.

The king could not, however, take such steps relying solely on his own power, for the peasants were definitely opposed to the so-called "church reforms" and were especially outraged by the theft of church

property. How little the people cared for Lutheranism is apparent from the fact that the peasantry frequently threatened to march on Stockholm and destroy that "spiritual Sodom," as they called the capital because of its Protestant tendencies. Their opposition compelled the king and his successors to rely more and more on the nobility j and the nobles granted their assistance to the Crown only for a price. Not only were a great part of the church estates yielded to the nobility to purchase their favor, but the peasants were pressed by royalty ever deeper into servitude to the nobility to retain their good humor.

Naturally, the antagonistic attitude of the peasant population repeatedly brought the young dynasty into a very dangerous position. The Swedish peasants, who had never known serfdom during medieval times, possessed a strong influence in their country. It was they who had elected Gustavus Vasa king to foil the secret machinations of the Danish party. Now, when the king tried to impose upon the country a new faith, and further burdened the peasants with heavy taxes, there arose frequent and serious disagreement between the Crown and the people. From 1526 to 1543 Gustavus had to fight not fewer than six uprisings of the peasants. While these were not at last, it is true, completely successful, they did force the king to curb somewhat his ever growing lust for absolute power.