The Reformation a Revolution?

[Andi]

ref. to the Reformation 14thC-late 18thC.

To put my own views on this forward - no. Protestantism was not revolutoionary and indeed where it did suceed, established a far more intolerant inflexible regime than the catholic church could have possibly instated. e.g. puritanism- that was far from liberal

Although Protestantism took the fore, far more movements based around humanitarianism emerged.

Religion and the bible to the Papacy vs Sovreignty was the excuse to rage about everything unpleasant from the wording of the bible to middling landowners paying extra taxes to have churches on their land, to, more vitally, the lower working and peasant classes profoundly pissed off at basically everything.

Your ideas?

[mir]

Of Course the Protestant Revolution was not in any way revolutionary.  To the Catholic Church it was a full blown rebellion, but to the people it didn't mean anything except fighting in religious wars they didn't even support.

[Andi]

Yes, but what about the significance of the everyday changes such as reading bibles rather than listening to the interpretations of the local parish?

The rise of huge splinter groups from Quakers to Methodists, the acceptance of (albeit limited) sciences and growing theology, the best and most wise example: Descartes?

The explosion in ideas that inevitably led to atheism and enlightenment?

[mir]

Reading Bibles has no signifigance to regular people.  No ideas can arise from reading holy texts like the Koran, Bible, Talmud, etc.  These are all ideas created by Fraud Prophets to deceive the workers.  During the Rennaisance when people began to become literate and start reading, what did they read?  Of course, the Bible.  Religion doesn't shape people's minds toward revolution but rather contentment with their poverty-stricken lives.  And I fail to see the changes in everyday life by people who read the bible.  I know many people who claim to be religious and go to church and read the bible, but nevertheless they go out into public and get drunk, wear indecent clothes, and say every imaginable curse word except "Goddamn."  Now if that isn't hypocriticism, then I don't know what is.

[Andi]

Wooha-uhmm calm down.

You fail to see the point I am raising.

Are you trying to say that an uneducated peasant with nothing but the parish to heard word from felt the bible was irrelevant?
In the middle of nowhere, the only book in miles the bible, the only educated person in mile, the priest? Remember I'm not talking about NOW but the 15th to 18thC

The only education at the time was a religious one and you can see that by reading for themselves people became to see things for themselves, either totally modifying the interpretations of the bible or abandoning it altogether.

Can u see? The explosion inf independent thought that contibuted to the enlightenment and the everyday lives of the ordinary people. They could not necessarily choose what to believe openly due to reprisals and accusations of heresy BUT they could now start thinking for themselves in a way that wasn't availible when the bible was in Latin and only scholars and the schoolastic could read latin.

Besides, the bible was only my example. I mean what about the English Civil War, loyalty to the sovereign or the papacy was often cited from the bible and to suddenly read the bloody thing and see it is not covered there....

Can u see?

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Polite n/b. If you call yourself a socialist then you should respect the views held by others, though not religious.

Socialism is political and to be political is to tread a very shaky line, watch that tonge

[djn]

I think Protestantism, being a rejection of the Catholic Church, created the right conditions for the Enlightenment to begin, because it alleviated the pressure on philosophers dabbling with reason, observation and logic. However, to say that the Protestants are the 'people' who started the Enlightenment, would be misleading. The figures considered the precursors of the Enlightenment were located in Italy's city-states which were still under Catholic control. The later, full-blown Enlightenment was continent-wide.

The Enlightenment, I would argue, is a revolution in thought, and a product of Catholic oppression. The Reformation was also a product of Catholicism, however, it is not a revolution. It is simply the reform of a religion. The Enlightenment and Reformation are seperate, but come from the same soil - both products of Catholicism. Its just like Fascism and Socialism being the products of Capitalism. They're different, but from the same soil.

[mir]

Yes, I see both of your points but may I ask what good did the Reformation or the Enlightenment bring to the Workers of Europe and America?

[djn]

Life became a little more bearable. Marxism, socialism, communism - these ideas would be impossible without a revolution in thought where reason triumphed over myth. There is still a long way to go, but its a step forward.

[Andi]

Indeed, although the pressure to obey continued at risk of heresy (i.e. burnings and other ritual deaths - sarc) it was prior unthinkable to disobey.

If you didn;t like it, now you could found your own church, write a book and circulate it underground (circumstantially more difficult before 17thC + print press) or simply rebel.

You find historially far more incidents of peoples' rebellions during the reformation, people fighting the state for humanitarian reasons, although often still with religious content, you have to realsie religion was an intergral part of the community and we see in the reformation the beginnings of cynicism in all religions and the breeding ground to disassociate with the state/religion etc in any meaningful (successful) way

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n/b I didn;t say the reformation spurred the enlightenment, but it did help the enlightenment.

Please read my thread before leaping into bit my neck and ripe me to pieces. I'm delicate enough as it is

[djn]

"The rise of huge splinter groups from Quakers to Methodists, the acceptance of (albeit limited) sciences and growing theology, the best and most wise example: Descartes? The explosion in ideas that inevitably led to atheism and enlightenment?"

I see you drawing a direct line here between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. My point, which you didn't make, is that the roots of the Enlightenment occured before the Reformation. Reason, logic and observation were already developing prior to the Reformation in Italian city-states which were very Catholic. The Reformation, rather than being the 'inevitable' precursor of the Enlightenment, only accelerated the development of reason by creating better conditions for it to develop (and therefore be named an 'era' of sorts). The two are seperate but played off each other in a dialectic. If this is what you are saying, you didn't make it clear - at least not in my mind.

[Andi]

Do you mean the Renaissance, in which case 15thC to 17thC, the reformation (co-incidentally) overlaps the renaissance - so....

I understand the humanism of the civillised world (your e.g. was Italy) but that seldom reached the farthest realms of the Holy Roman Empire and only if endorsed, and only endorsed if it related to classical thought, predominantl aristotle beacuse he shaped the reformed Christian thought i.e. the idea of god being all seeing hearing etc etc

I'm just wondering about the middle of nowhere's folk who've bearly seen anything outside the shire let alone the light of secular or scientific understanding

[des-esseintes]

Originally posted by Andi
Do you mean the Renaissance, in which case 15thC to 17thC, the reformation (co-incidentally) overlaps the renaissance - so....

I understand the humanism of the civillised world (your e.g. was Italy) but that seldom reached the farthest realms of the Holy Roman Empire and only if endorsed, and only endorsed if it related to classical thought, predominantl aristotle beacuse he shaped the reformed Christian thought i.e. the idea of god being all seeing hearing etc etc

I'm just wondering about the middle of nowhere's folk who've bearly seen anything outside the shire let alone the light of secular or scientific understanding

The Reformation and the Renaissance did not "coincidentally" overlap. They were both the first kickings of the class-consciousness of an infantile bourgeoisie struggling to find its role in the world. The revolution in art and science that we call the Renaissance originated in the trade republics/principalities of Northern Italy, the Reformation in the Hansa republics. Both were places with high merchant density. From Germany the Reformation spread to all European countries with an interested bourgeoisie. Where the feudal class outweighed the revolutionary, as in Poland or Russia, there was no Reformation.

In The History Of The Russian Revolution, Trotsky writes, with emphasis on England but applicable to the Reformation in general:

"In the middle of the seventeenth century the bourgeois revolution in England developed under the guise of a religious reformation. A struggle for the right to pray according to one's own prayer book was identified with the struggle against the king, the aristocracy, the princes of the church, and Rome. The Presbyterians and puritans were deeply convinced that they were placing their earthly interests under the unshakeable Protection of divine providence." (My emphasis)

Was the Reformation a revolution in the strict scientific sense? Definitely not. Was it revolutionary? Definitely.

[Andi]

finally a constructive thread. Nice

But I disagree with the revolutionary aspect of the reformation

If so, was it a mixed revolution? There were dozens of reformations (1540s, 1606 etc)and "counter reformations"(1552, 1576, 1610, 1700) and the end products esp. in England was a church and state that was distinctly more intolerant that the last. heresy, paranoia and denounciations and record breaking heretic tortures and burnings.

So was it a mere power struggle (e.g. Sovereign vs Papacy) with element revolving around it that had revolutionary aspects and potentials? Probably so, I think, at least.

I do agree with your point about an infant bourgeois attempting the flex itself. Most qualms about the (as then) current way of running things were about petty disagreements with the wording of laws and the bible. For the commoners it was having to pay the redemption payments to exist on the landowners property and work it leaving them starving more often than not.

Around that, the educated, most noted Luther (anti-semetic git), who wrested control by putting the discontent into a protestant context. This is the key, the reformation was a massive >general< discontent brought under bourgeois terms.

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It is all difficult to grasp in class terms due to the infancy of well... everything, the political economy as it was then, had been a religiously motivated economy of taxes to have churches on one's land, deeds to lands ordained by "God" etc etc.

Although many landowners wanted change, many were content. So It's hard to divide it between bourgois and aristocrat.

The case of england is unique since this juxtopposition is more clear. Yes the highest aristocrats, the royalty did want their hands free to run the lands under their deeds as they wished and used religion as an excuse.