Book V, Chapter I, 17

The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times—privileges that appear most absurd to us today—were natural, or rather necessary, consequences of this state of affairs. Consider their complete exemption from secular jurisdiction, for example, or what was called in England the benefit of clergy. How dangerous would it have been for a sovereign to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime, if his order was disposed to protect him and to maintain either that the evidence could not convict so holy a man or that the punishment was too severe for a person whom religion had made sacred? In such circumstances the sovereign could do no better than leave his trial to the ecclesiastical courts. For the honor of their own order, these courts had an interest in restraining their members, as far as possible, from committing grave crimes or even provoking the kind of gross scandal that might disgust the people.

Throughout most of Europe in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for some time before and after, the constitution of the church of Rome may be regarded as the most formidable alliance ever formed against the authority and security of civil government, and against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can flourish only where civil government is capable of protecting them. Under that constitution, the grossest superstitious delusions were so firmly supported by the private interests of so many people that they were safe from every assault of human reason. Reason might perhaps have exposed some of those delusions even to ordinary people, but it could never have dissolved the bonds of private interest. If this constitution had faced no enemy but the feeble efforts of human reason, it would have endured forever. Yet that immense, well-built structure, which all human wisdom and virtue could never have shaken, much less overturned, was first weakened and then partly destroyed by the natural course of events; and within a few more centuries it may perhaps crumble altogether into ruins.

The gradual improvement of arts, manufactures, and commerce—the very causes that destroyed the power of the great barons—likewise destroyed the clergy's entire temporal power throughout most of Europe. In the products of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the clergy, like the great barons, found goods for which they could exchange their crude produce. They thus discovered how to spend their whole revenue on themselves without giving any substantial share to others. Their charity gradually reached fewer people, and their hospitality became less generous, or less lavish. Their retainers consequently grew fewer until, by degrees, they disappeared altogether. Like the great barons, the clergy also wanted a higher rent from their estates, to spend in the same way on their own private vanity and folly. But they could obtain this increase only by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became largely independent of them. The bonds of interest that had tied the lower ranks to the clergy were thus gradually broken and dissolved. Indeed, they dissolved sooner than the bonds tying those same people to the great barons: most church benefices were much smaller than the barons' estates, and the holder of each benefice could therefore sooner spend its entire revenue on himself. Throughout most of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the great barons retained their full power in much of Europe. But the clergy's temporal power—the absolute command they once held over the great body of the people—had greatly declined. By then, throughout most of Europe, the church's power had been reduced almost entirely to its spiritual authority; and even that authority was greatly weakened when the clergy's charity and hospitality ceased to sustain it. The lower ranks no longer regarded the clergy as they once had, as comforters in their distress and relievers of their poverty. Instead they were offended and disgusted by the vanity, luxury, and extravagance of the richer clergy, who seemed to spend on their own pleasures what had always been regarded as the patrimony of the poor.

In these circumstances, the sovereigns of the different European states sought to recover their former influence over appointments to the great benefices of the church. They secured for the deans and chapters of each diocese the restoration of their ancient right to elect the bishop, and for the monks of each abbey the right to elect the abbot. Several statutes enacted in England during the fourteenth century, particularly the statute of provisors, aimed to restore this ancient order; so did the pragmatic sanction established in France in the fifteenth century. To make an election valid, the sovereign had to consent to it beforehand and approve the elected person afterward. Although the election was still supposed to be free, the sovereign could use all the indirect means afforded by his position to influence the clergy within his dominions. Similar regulations were introduced elsewhere in Europe. But before the reformation, the pope's power to confer the great church benefices seems nowhere to have been restrained so effectively and universally as in France and England. Later, in the sixteenth century, the concordat gave the kings of France an absolute right to nominate candidates to all the great, or so-called consistorial, benefices of the Gallican church.

Since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and the concordat, the clergy of France have generally shown less respect for the decrees of the papal court than the clergy of any other Catholic country. In nearly every dispute between their sovereign and the pope, they have sided with their sovereign. This independence of the French clergy from the court of Rome appears to rest principally on the pragmatic sanction and the concordat. In the monarchy's earlier days, the French clergy seem to have been as devoted to the pope as those of any other country. When Robert, the second ruler of the Capetian line, was most unjustly excommunicated by the court of Rome, even his own servants are said to have thrown the food from his table to the dogs and refused to taste anything themselves that had been polluted by contact with a man in his position. We can safely presume that the clergy of his own dominions taught them to do so.

Rome's claim to confer the great benefices of the church—a claim in defense of which its court had often shaken, and sometimes overturned, the thrones of some of Christendom's greatest sovereigns—was thus restricted, modified, or surrendered altogether in many parts of Europe even before the reformation. As the clergy's influence over the people declined, the state's influence over the clergy increased. The clergy therefore had both less power and less inclination to disturb the state.

The authority of the church of Rome was already declining when the disputes that gave rise to the reformation began in Germany and soon spread throughout Europe. The new doctrines were everywhere received with great popular favor. They were spread with all the passionate zeal that commonly animates a party when it attacks established authority. Though the teachers of these doctrines may not otherwise have been more learned than many divines who defended the established church, they seem generally to have known more about ecclesiastical history and the origin and development of the system of beliefs on which the church's authority rested. They thus had the advantage in nearly every dispute. Their austere manners gave them authority among ordinary people, who contrasted the strict discipline of their conduct with the disorderly lives of much of their own clergy. They also surpassed their opponents in every art of winning popularity and gaining converts—arts the proud and dignified sons of the church had long neglected as largely useless to them. Reason recommended the new doctrines to some, novelty to many, and hatred and contempt of the established clergy to a still greater number. But by far the greatest number were won by the zealous, passionate, fanatical, and often coarse and rustic eloquence with which the doctrines were preached almost everywhere.

The new doctrines succeeded so widely that princes then on bad terms with the court of Rome could readily use them to overthrow the church in their own dominions. Having lost the respect and reverence of the lower ranks, that church could scarcely resist. The court of Rome had offended several lesser princes in northern Germany, probably considering them too insignificant to cultivate. Accordingly, they all established the reformation in their dominions. The tyranny of Christiern II. and of Troll, archbishop of Upsal, enabled Gustavus Vasa to drive both from Sweden. The pope supported the tyrant and the archbishop, and Gustavus Vasa had no difficulty establishing the reformation there. Christiern II. was subsequently deposed from the throne of Denmark, where his conduct had made him as hated as he was in Sweden. Yet the pope remained disposed to support him; Frederic of Holstein, who had taken his place on the throne, avenged himself by following Gustavus Vasa's example. The magistrates of Berne and Zurich, though they had no particular quarrel with the pope, established the reformation with great ease in their respective cantons. There, shortly before, some of the clergy had made their whole order both hateful and contemptible by a fraud cruder than usual.

At this critical moment, the papal court took considerable pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful sovereigns of France and Spain, the latter of whom was then emperor of Germany. With their help, it managed, though only with great difficulty and much bloodshed, either to suppress the reformation altogether or to obstruct its progress substantially in their dominions. It was also quite willing to accommodate the king of England. But under the circumstances it could not do so without offending a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany. Thus Henry VIII., although he did not himself embrace most of the reformation's doctrines, was enabled by their general spread to suppress all the monasteries and abolish the authority of the church of Rome in his dominions. His going so far, even though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the reformation's supporters. Having gained control of the government in the reign of his son and successor, they completed without difficulty the work Henry VIII. had begun.

In some countries, such as Scotland, where the government was weak, unpopular, and not firmly established, the reformation was strong enough to overthrow not only the church but also the state for attempting to support it.

The followers of the reformation, scattered across the various countries of Europe, had no general tribunal like the court of Rome or an ecumenical council to settle all their disputes and prescribe to them, with irresistible authority, the precise limits of orthodoxy. When followers in one country disagreed with their brethren in another, they had no common judge to whom they could appeal, so their dispute could never be decided. Many such disputes arose. Those concerning church government and the right to confer ecclesiastical benefices were perhaps the most consequential for the peace and welfare of civil society. Accordingly, they gave rise to the two principal parties or sects among the reformation's followers: the Lutheran and Calvinistic sects, the only ones among them whose doctrines and discipline have yet been established by law anywhere in Europe.

The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church of England, retained episcopal government to varying degrees, established a hierarchy among the clergy, and gave the sovereign the power to dispose of all bishoprics and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, thereby making him the real head of the church. Without depriving bishops of the right to confer the smaller benefices in their dioceses, they not only admitted but encouraged the right of presentation to those benefices both for the sovereign and for all other lay patrons. From the beginning, this system of church government favored peace, good order, and submission to the civil sovereign. Accordingly, once established in a country, it has never caused tumult or civil unrest there. The church of England in particular has always prided itself, with good reason, on the unquestionable loyalty of its principles. Under such a government, the clergy naturally seek favor with the sovereign, the court, and the country's nobility and gentry, on whose influence they chiefly rely for advancement. Sometimes, no doubt, they court these patrons through the vilest flattery and servile agreement. Often, however, they cultivate the qualities that best deserve, and are therefore most likely to gain, the esteem of people of rank and fortune: knowledge across the useful and cultivated branches of learning, becoming generosity of manner, sociable good humor in conversation, and open contempt for the absurd, hypocritical austerities that fanatics preach and profess to practice. The fanatics use these pretenses to draw the veneration of ordinary people upon themselves and their abhorrence upon most people of rank and fortune, who openly admit they do not practice such austerities. But clergy who court the higher ranks in this fashion are very liable to neglect altogether the means of retaining influence and authority among the lower ranks. Their superiors listen to, esteem, and respect them; yet before their inferiors they are often incapable of defending their own sober and moderate doctrines effectively, and to their hearers' conviction, against the most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack them.

The clergy's privileges in those days seem absurd to us today. Their complete exemption from the ordinary courts, for example, was called the benefit of clergy in England. But it followed naturally, or rather necessarily, from the situation then. How could a sovereign safely punish a clergyman for any crime if the rest of the clergy wanted to protect him? They could say the evidence was not enough to convict such a holy man, or that the punishment was too harsh for a person made sacred by religion. In those circumstances, the sovereign's best option was to let church courts try him. Those courts had an interest in protecting their order's reputation. They would therefore try to stop its members from committing terrible crimes, or even causing scandals serious enough to turn people against the clergy.

Across most of Europe in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for some time before and after, the structure of the church of Rome was perhaps the most powerful organization ever formed against the authority and security of civil government. It also threatened human liberty, reason, and happiness, which can flourish only when civil government protects them. Within that structure, the private interests of a great many people supported the grossest superstitious delusions. This put those delusions beyond the reach of human reason. Reason might have shown even ordinary people that some superstitious beliefs were false. But it could never have broken the bonds of private interest. If the church had faced only the weak efforts of reason, its structure would have lasted forever. Instead, the natural course of events first weakened this huge, carefully built structure and then partly destroyed it. Human wisdom and virtue could never have shaken it, much less brought it down. Yet in another few centuries, it may fall completely into ruins.

Gradual advances in the arts, manufacturing, and commerce destroyed the clergy's worldly power throughout most of Europe, just as they destroyed the great barons' power. Like the barons, the clergy found goods they could buy with their crude produce. They could then spend all their revenue on themselves instead of sharing a substantial amount with other people. Their charity gradually reached fewer people, and their hospitality became less generous or lavish. They kept fewer dependents, until they eventually kept none. Like the great barons, the clergy also wanted more rent from their landed estates so they could spend it on their own vanity and foolishness. But they could get higher rent only by granting leases to their tenants. Those leases made the tenants largely independent of them. In this way, the bonds of self-interest tying people of lower rank to the clergy gradually dissolved. They dissolved even sooner than the bonds tying those people to the barons. Most church benefices were much smaller than the barons' estates, so someone holding a benefice could sooner afford to spend its entire revenue on himself. Throughout most of Europe, the great barons remained powerful during much of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But the clergy's worldly power, including their former absolute command over the mass of the people, had greatly declined. By then the church's power in most of Europe came almost entirely from its spiritual authority. Even that authority weakened when the clergy no longer backed it up with charity and hospitality. Lower-ranking people no longer saw the clergy as those who comforted them in distress and relieved their poverty. Instead, they were angered and disgusted by wealthy clergymen's vanity, luxury, and spending on their own pleasures. They believed that money had previously belonged to the poor.

In this situation, sovereigns across Europe tried to regain their former influence over the award of major church benefices. They arranged for the deans and chapters in each diocese to regain their old right to elect the bishop, and for the monks in each abbey to regain their right to elect the abbot. Several laws passed in England during the fourteenth century aimed to restore this old arrangement, especially the statute of provisors. France's pragmatic sanction, established in the fifteenth century, had the same aim. For an election to be valid, the sovereign had to consent beforehand and approve the person elected afterward. Although the election was supposed to be free, the sovereign had every indirect means of influencing the clergy within his territory that his position gave him. Other parts of Europe adopted similar rules. Before the reformation, however, nowhere else seems to have limited the pope's power to award major church benefices as effectively and extensively as France and England did. Later, in the sixteenth century, the concordat gave the kings of France the absolute right to nominate candidates for all major benefices of the Gallican church, known as consistorial benefices.

Since the pragmatic sanction and the concordat were established, the French clergy have generally shown less respect for papal court decrees than clergy in any other Catholic country. They have almost always sided with their sovereign in his disputes with the pope. Their independence from the court of Rome seems to rest mainly on the pragmatic sanction and the concordat. Early in the monarchy, French clergy appear to have been as devoted to the pope as clergy elsewhere. When the Roman court excommunicated Robert, the second ruler of the Capetian line, very unjustly, even his own servants reportedly threw food from his table to the dogs. They refused to eat anything touched by someone in his position. We can safely assume that clergy in his own lands taught them to behave this way.

The Roman court had often shaken, and sometimes overthrown, the thrones of some of Christendom's greatest sovereigns to defend its claim to award major church benefices. Yet even before the reformation, that claim had been restricted, changed, or abandoned altogether in various parts of Europe. As the clergy gained less influence over the people, the state gained more influence over the clergy. The clergy therefore had less power and less desire to disturb the state.

The authority of the church of Rome was already declining when the disputes that led to the reformation began in Germany and soon spread throughout Europe. The new doctrines were popular nearly everywhere. Their supporters spread them with the passionate zeal that often drives a party attacking established authority. Their teachers may not have been more learned in other respects than many theologians defending the established church. But they generally knew more about church history and about the origins and development of the system of beliefs supporting the church's authority. This gave them an advantage in almost every debate. Their strict way of life gave them authority among ordinary people, who compared their disciplined conduct with the disorderly lives of much of their own clergy. The new teachers were also far better than their opponents at winning public support and converts. The church's proud, high-ranking clergy had long neglected these skills because they had little use for them. Some people favored the new doctrines because they seemed reasonable, and many because they were new. Still more were drawn by their hatred and contempt for the established clergy. But by far the greatest number were won over by the passionate, zealous, sometimes fanatical preaching of the doctrines, even though the preaching was often crude and unsophisticated.

The new doctrines succeeded almost everywhere so well that rulers then at odds with the court of Rome could easily use them to overturn the church in their territories. Having lost the respect of people of lower rank, the church could offer hardly any resistance. The Roman court had offended some lesser princes in northern Germany, probably thinking they were too insignificant to bother winning over. All of them established the reformation in their territories. The tyranny of Christiern II. and Troll, archbishop of Upsal, allowed Gustavus Vasa to drive both from Sweden. The pope supported the tyrant and the archbishop, so Gustavus Vasa had no trouble establishing the reformation there. Christiern II. was later removed from Denmark's throne. His behavior had made him as hated there as in Sweden. The pope still wanted to support him, however. Frederic of Holstein, who took his place, retaliated by following Gustavus Vasa's example. The magistrates of Berne and Zurich had no particular dispute with the pope, but they easily established the reformation in their respective cantons. Shortly before, some clergy there had used a particularly blatant deception that made the whole clergy hated and despised.

At this critical time, the papal court worked hard to keep the friendship of the powerful rulers of France and Spain. The ruler of Spain was then also emperor of Germany. With their help, the papal court managed, though with great difficulty and much bloodshed, either to stop the reformation entirely or greatly slow its progress in their territories. It was also quite willing to accommodate the king of England. But circumstances prevented it from doing so without offending an even more powerful ruler, Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany. Henry VIII. did not himself adopt most of the reformation's doctrines. Still, their widespread popularity enabled him to close every monastery and end the Roman church's authority in his territories. That he went this far, even if no further, pleased some supporters of the reformation. They gained control of the government under his son and successor and easily completed the work Henry VIII. had begun.

In some countries, such as Scotland, the government was weak, unpopular, and insecure. There the reformation was strong enough to overturn not just the church but also the state when the state tried to support the church.

The reformation's followers were scattered across Europe. They had no common tribunal, like the Roman court or a council of the whole church, that could settle all their disputes and set binding, exact limits on what they must believe. When followers in one country disagreed with those in another, they had no shared judge to appeal to. So their disputes could not be settled, and many arose. Disputes over church government and the right to award church benefices were perhaps the most important for civil peace and welfare. They gave rise to the two principal groups among the reformation's followers: the Lutheran and Calvinistic sects. These are the only such sects whose teachings and rules have yet been established by law anywhere in Europe.

Luther's followers, along with the church of England, kept some degree of government by bishops and a hierarchy among clergy. They gave the sovereign control over all bishoprics and other consistorial benefices in his territory, making him the real head of the church. They left bishops the right to appoint clergy to smaller benefices in their dioceses. But even for those benefices, they allowed and encouraged the sovereign and other patrons who were not clergy to nominate candidates. From the start, this system of church government favored peace, good order, and obedience to the civil sovereign. Once established, it has never caused a riot or civil disturbance in any country. The church of England in particular has always taken pride, with good reason, in its principles of unquestionable loyalty. Under such a system, clergymen naturally try to win favor with the sovereign, the court, and the country's nobles and gentry, whose influence they chiefly depend on for promotion. Sometimes they court these patrons through the worst flattery and agreement with whatever they say. Often, though, they develop qualities worthy of the esteem of wealthy, high-ranking people, and thus likely to win it. These include knowledge of useful and cultural subjects, decently open and generous manners, pleasant conversation, and an openly expressed contempt for the absurd, hypocritical strictness that fanatics urge and pretend to practice. The fanatics use that pretense to win popular reverence for themselves and turn ordinary people against most wealthy and high-ranking people, who openly say they do not follow such rules. But clergy who court the upper ranks in this way often neglect every means of keeping their influence and authority among the lower ranks. Their superiors listen to, esteem, and respect them. Yet before their social inferiors, they often cannot defend their own sensible and moderate teachings effectively enough to persuade their listeners against even the most ignorant enthusiast who challenges them.