Full Text for Church History 2- Volume 37 - The Spread of Calvinism (Video)

>> It is clear that the reform movement had considerable momentum. Besides Geneva and parts of Switzerland, which other places accepted the reformed version of Protestantism instead of Lutheranism? Was it widespread? >> You're right, Josh. The reform faith, Calvinism, did have a great deal of momentum, especially in the second half of the 16th Century. It spread to a lot of different places in Europe, including some places that today we think of as strongly Roman Catholic. Places like Bohemia, which today are the Czech Republic, Hungary, even Poland. All of them had strong reformed churches by the end of the 16th Century. It's also the case that in Western Europe, reformed version of Protestantism took hold in some of the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. It took hold in the Netherlands, and as you might expect on account of Calvin's affinity for France, reformed Protestantism also attracted many French people to the faith. I'd like to talk a little bit about the course of the Reformation in some of these places, especially here beginning with France. France was one of the leading nation states in Europe at the time of the reformation. Calvin, himself, was French. Others of his colleagues in Geneva were also interested in promoting the cause of Protestantism in France. Accordingly, books and missionaries were frequently dispatched into France, and Geneva became a prime location for refugees in France to be encouraged and trained in the Protestant faith. After 1554, Calvin began to urge French Protestants to organize their own churches. And in the last 10 years of Calvin's life over 200 men were dispatched by Geneva into France for the sake of promoting French Protestantism. Calvin's associate and friend and biographer, Theodore Beza made many trips into France to promote Protestantism, and another of Calvin's associates, Pierre Viret himself spread the Protestant reform faith. Now, these efforts bore fruit, and the reformed faith began to attract people, including some of the more important people of French society into the church. By the 1550s, it was becoming increasingly prominent. In fact, in 1559 the clergy of the French Protestant churches came together in Paris really to organize a national Protestant church with a confession of faith really had been drawn up for them in Geneva. So French Protestantism was an increasingly important phenomenon within France in the second half of the 16th Century. Now, the followers of the reform faith in France are known in history as the Huguenots. We're not sure of the origin of the term "Huguenot" but it could very well be a corruption of a Swiss German term which means confederates, or associates. So perhaps that shows the connection between what was going on in France and what was going on in Geneva, and then parts of Switzerland as well. But anyway, they're called the Huguenots. That year, 1559, was important not only on account of the founding of the National Huguenot Church, but also on account of the fact that in that year the king of France died. Now, the king of France was Henry II. Although he wasn't a particularly nice person, he enjoyed, for example, putting Protestants to death by burning. But at any rate he was a strong king, and as long as France had a strong king committed to the old religion, there was kind of a leverage, or a suppression of French Protestantism. But in 1559, Henry II died. It was an accidental death. He was in the prime of his life, and yet he was gone. That basically left a power vacuum in France that while there were kings, but they were weak kings. Three sons of Henry II in turn succeeded to the throne, but none of them was a strong and capable leader. And at this point in European history when a monarch was weak this would give the opportunity for the nobility to become strong and to contest with the monarchy with each other for prominence and dominance in the realm. So France in the second half of the 16th Century fell into a prolonged period, really almost 30 or 40 years of weakness at the top. During much of that time, the strong person of the dynasty was actually the mother of the three kings, the widow of Henry II. Her name was Catherine, Catherine di Medici, because she came from the important Italian Florentine banking family, the same family that made a couple of Popes at this point, and she herself had married Henry II and became queen of France. She continued to be a strong member of the dynasty and worked very hard to preserve the authority of her sons, of her family, and, of course, of herself within the realm. As far as religion was concerned, she followed a kind of ambiguous policy, sometimes promoting concessions to the Huguenots if she thought that would serve the interest of the dynasty, and other times siding with the Catholics against the Huguenots if she thought that policy would make the dynasty strong. Among the nobility, there were several figures who were interested in power on account of the fact that it is the reformation, religion became an issue in these power struggles as well. We have at least three families that are probably worth thinking about. They were the Montmorency family. Some of them were Catholic, some were Protestants. Perhaps the most important member of the family in these years was a Huguenot. He was an important Huguenot, political, and military leader. There were the Bourbons, the Bourbons who would eventually become the royal family of France on account of being intermarried with the current dynasty. Again, some of them were Catholics, some of them were Protestants. As it turned out one of their Protestant members, Henri, would eventually succeed to the throne in the late 16th Century. And then there was the Guise family. The Guise family was fiercely Catholic, loyal to the old religion, strongly opposed to the Huguenots. One of their family members was Charles. He was a cardinal. He was very active in the last sessions of the Council of Trent. Another of the family members was the Duke of Guise. He was an active opponent of the Huguenots when war broke out. He lead the fighting against the Huguenots. And after he was assassinated his son, Henri of Guise, succeeded him and remained loyal to the old religion. Yet, another member of the Guise family, Mary, Mary of Guise, was actually married to the king of Scotland. And so she promoted Catholic French policy over in Scotland. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. So at any rate, we have nobility in France going in different directions religiously. Many of them concerned to advance their own interests at the expense of a weak monarchy. It's not surprising in these circumstances that war broke out, a civil war in France between these various political and religious factions. Since religion was such a strong component of the debate, we often call these wars Wars of Religion. But they were as much about politics and power as they were about religion. But they did pit the Catholics against the Huguenots. Now, the fighting is off and on from the early 1560s well into the 1590s. So we've got a long period of time in which there is religious warfare in France. And this is not the place to go into great detail about any of this. I would like to mention, however, one particular episode, a horrific episode of religious violence that in some ways characterizes the entire period in which people are willing to do violence, even to kill one another in the name of religion. This is the episode known as St. Bartholomew's Massacre. Summer of 1572 is when it occurred. It had to do originally with something that should have been an occasion for national celebration, and that was a marriage, a marriage of the king's sister to actually a Huguenot leader that was Henri Navarre, or the Bourbon dynasty. The king was a young man of Charles IX. He was a son of Catherine di Medici, and on account of an effort to at least provide at least a truce in the religious fighting prior to the marriage of his sister, Charles IX had permitted the Huguenot leader to come to court and serve as an advisor. Now, Coligny was a persuasive personality, and he gradually was gaining influence over the young king. To many, including the queen mother, Catherine di Medici, this appeared dangerous. Not only was there personal concern. Coligny was powerful, and they were correspondingly weaker, but it looked like Coligny might lead the young king to support Protestantism in other countries, for example, the rebels in the Netherlands who were fighting the Catholic king Philip II. But at any rate, Catherine di Medici was concerned about Coligny�s influence with Charles IX. Another man who was very concerned about that influence was Henri of Guise, the Duke of Guise, who was, as I said, a fierce Catholic. Also resentful of Coligny because he thought that he was responsible for the death of his father some years earlier. Well, Catholics and Huguenots alike gather in Paris to celebrate the marriage. But there is still a great deal of mistrust and tension between the Huguenots and the Catholics here in Paris, and at court. Catherine di Medici, and the Duke of Guise, really decide to conspiracy against Coligny. And, in fact, the Duke of Guise made arrangements for an attempt upon Coligny�s life. There was an assassination attempt in Paris against Gaspard de Coligny The assassination attempt failed. Coligny was only wounded. The young king, Charles IX, was incensed that somebody should try to assassinate the man whom he trusted as an advisor. And so he began to investigate threatening dire justice upon those who had attempted to kill Coligny. Now, obviously this is going to frighten his mother who was involved in the conspiracy and so she decided that her best defense was a great offense. So in point of fact she went to her son with what was a huge lie, telling her son that Coligny and the Huguenots were conspiring to kill the king and all of the Catholics. The king accepted the story, and so he authorized the Catholics in Paris to go after the Huguenots in Paris, and they did in what can only be described as a massacre. Some 2 to 3,000 Huguenots were killed by Catholic supporters of the king on St. Bartholomew's day in the summer of 1572. Most of the slaughter occurred in Paris over the course of a few days. Although from Paris the violence did spread to other places in France. And it was a horrific incident of religious violence. Massacre in the name of Christianity. Just a terrible really desecration of what we think of today as Christian religion and its value of life and so forth. But I mention it here just to illustrate the intensity with which the sides in France -- and not only in France but elsewhere, too -- took religion, willing in a kind of perverse way to kill in the sake of their faith. Now, as it turned out, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was not decisive for the reformation in France. Although many Huguenot leaders were killed including Gaspard de Coligny. Not all of them were. One of them who managed to escape was Henri, the bridegroom, if you will, the new brother-in-law of the king, he took refuge with his bride, and then in order to save his life he announced a very sudden conversion to Catholicism, and his life was spared. After some weeks he managed to escape Paris, managed to escape the court of the king. He announced his reconversion to Protestantism, rallied the Huguenot cause in France and the wars of religion persisted. Now, eventually in the very last phase of the wars of religion, there were three parties, each of which was lead by a Henri. There was Henri Navarre, which we've just talked about. He was the Huguenot leader. There was Henri of Guise, who was the Catholic leader. And incidentally the Catholics were being supported by Philip of Spain with money and men by the end of the war. And then there was the king of France himself, the last of the three brothers that was Henri III. So sometimes we talk about this war of religion as the war of the three Henris. Well, eventually two of the Henris died, Henri of Guise, and Henri III. That left the third Henri alone standing, and since he was related to king Henri III, and Henri III had no heir, I mean, no son to inherit the throne, Henri Navarre, Henri of Bourbon, assumed the throne of France as Henri IV. So you might say, well, the Huguenots finally won, and France would become a Protestant country. Well, it didn't work out that way. Henri had won, at least dynastically, but he had not won militarily. And there was one particular place that continued to hold out against Henri on account of their commitment to the old religion, that is to Catholicism, and that was Paris. Henri tried to take Paris on more than one occasion, but he couldn't do it. The Parisians continued to hold out against him. Now, you can hardly be king of France if you don't rule Paris. So after some years of trying, Henri is supposed to have said, "Well, Paris is worth a mass," by which I mean he negotiated with the Pope and converted one more time. This time from Protestantism to Catholicism. The Pope was happy, Paris was happy, and Henri IV finally was able to not only enter Paris, but actually to bring peace to his very trouble land. Now, of course, there is one group that wasn't particularly excited about this solution, and those were the Huguenots, the Protestants. But Henri did something for them, too. In 1598, he issued what is called the Edict of Nantes. This is a milestone document in the history of religious liberty and religious toleration. What Henri did was to guarantee to his Huguenot subjects religious liberty. The right to worship publicly and openly in several places in France that they actually already controlled, but nonetheless that was permitted. They were also permitted to participate in the public life of the country. Some of Henri�s government administrators would be Protestants. They were also permitted to fortify certain towns and places as kind of a political military guarantee that they would continue to enjoy these rights and liberties into the future. But in point of fact Henri said that this was to be a permanent arrangement whereby the Huguenots would have a measure of religious liberty in France. Now, as it turned out, the Edict of Nantes did not survive even a century. By the end of the 17th century, a new kind of king had arisen within France, one that we call an absolute monarch, and the premier expression of absolute monarchy is Louis XIV. And one thing that Louis XIV couldn't accept was for a people who did not follow the religion of the king. So in 1685 he actually cancelled the Edict of Nantes. Nonetheless, for some decades, the edict was the law of France and it did permit a measure of religious liberty to the Huguenots.