Case Study: The Martyrdom of Savonarola
Reading:
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For this case study you are to analyze Chapter 13 The Early Reformation (Pgs. 392 - 400) and review the sources provided below. You are expected to be able to answer the guiding question in full depth with specific historical evidence and supporting details.
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Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican monk imported to Florence's San Marco Church for his eloquence by Lorenzo de' Medici. Savonarola's earnest reformist message placed him in the limelight of the restored Republic in Florence. From his bully pulpit in San Marco, his confidence reached new peaks of daring. The "scourge of princes" arranged a bonfire of vanities that largely limited itself to the instruments of gambling and pornography. As Florence became an ideal Christian community, its ambitious Dominican directed his demands for reform to the Church at large, to Roman hierarchy in general, and to the licentious private life of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI in particular. Supporters of the exiled principality, now allied with the Borgia pope, took the occasion to silence Savonarola's inflexible dogmatism by reestablishing Medic rule. The monk was tortured, tried, found guilty of heresy , hanged, forgiven by the triumphant Pope, and burned in his own private bonfire amidst a carnival atmosphere in the Piazza della Signoria. The same crowds who had applauded his rise to power, and faithfully took down verbatim his sermons were pleased to bear witness to his self-inflicted martyrdom. After his death Savonarola was canonized for his purity in the hearts of many Florentine's, but never officially by the Roman Catholic Church.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the principal source of the reform spirit was a widespread popular yearning for a more genuine spirituality. It took many forms: the rise of new pious practices; greater interest in mystical experiences and in the study of the Bible; the development of communal ways for lay people to live and work following the apostles' example; and a heightened search for ways within secular society to imitate more perfectly the life of Christ - called the New Devotion movement.
Several secular factors contributed to this heightening of spiritual feeling. The many wars, famines, and plagues of the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries had traumatized Europe. The increasing educational level of the urban middle class and skilled laborers and the invention of the printing press allowed the rapid and relatively inexpensive spread of new ideas. Finally, there was the influence of the humanist movement, particularly in norther Europe. and Spain. Many humanists dedicated themselves to promoting higher levels of religious education. They stimulated public interest in biblical study by publishing new editions of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the church fathers, along with new devotional literature. Nearly all the religious reformers of the sixteenth century were deeply influenced by the ideals and methods of the Christian humanist movement.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the principal source of the reform spirit was a widespread popular yearning for a more genuine spirituality. It took many forms: the rise of new pious practices; greater interest in mystical experiences and in the study of the Bible; the development of communal ways for lay people to live and work following the apostles' example; and a heightened search for ways within secular society to imitate more perfectly the life of Christ - called the New Devotion movement.
Several secular factors contributed to this heightening of spiritual feeling. The many wars, famines, and plagues of the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries had traumatized Europe. The increasing educational level of the urban middle class and skilled laborers and the invention of the printing press allowed the rapid and relatively inexpensive spread of new ideas. Finally, there was the influence of the humanist movement, particularly in norther Europe. and Spain. Many humanists dedicated themselves to promoting higher levels of religious education. They stimulated public interest in biblical study by publishing new editions of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the church fathers, along with new devotional literature. Nearly all the religious reformers of the sixteenth century were deeply influenced by the ideals and methods of the Christian humanist movement.
Key Concept:
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Guiding Question - Skill: Causation
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Sources:
Source 1: What Was the Reformation? From Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, 1991
Historians usually agree that the Reformation comprised the general religious transformations in Europe during the sixteenth century. However, they often disagree on what exactly was at the core of the Reformation. In the following selection Euan Cameron argues that the essence of the Reformation was a combination of religious reformers’ protests and laymen’s political ambitions. Consider: How the protests by churchmen and scholars combined with the ambitions of politically active laymen to become the essence of the Reformation; what this interpretation implies about the causes for the Reformation. |
The Reformation, the movement which divided European Christianity into catholic and protestant traditions, is unique. No other movement of religious protest or reform since antiquity has been so widespread or lasting in its effects, so deep and searching in its criticism of received wisdom, so destructive in what it abolished or so fertile in what it created. . . .
The European Reformation was not a simple revolution, a protest movement with a single leader, a defined set of objectives, or a coherent organization. Yet neither was it a floppy or fragmented mess of anarchic of contradictory ambitions. It was a series of parallel movements; within each of which various sorts of people with differing perspectives for a crucial period in history combined forces to pursue objectives which they only partly understood. First of all, the Reformation was a protest by churchmen and scholars, privileged classes in medieval society, against their own superiors. Those superiors, the Roman papacy and its agents, had attacked the teachings of a few sincere, respected academic churchmen which had seemed to threaten the prestige and privilege of clergy and papacy. Martin Luther, the first of those protesting clerics, had attacked "the Pope‟s crown and the monks‟ bellies‟, and they had fought back, to defend their status. The protesting churchmen—the "reformers‟—responded to the Roman counter-attack not by silence or furtive opposition, but by publicly denouncing their accusers in print. Not only that: they developed their teachings to make their protest more coherent, and to justify their disobedience. Then the most surprising thing of all, in the context of medieval lay people's usual response to religious dissent, took place. Politically active laymen, not (at first) political rulers with axes to grind, but rather ordinary, moderately prosperous householders, took up the reformers' protests, identified them (perhaps mistakenly) as their own, and pressed them upon their governors. This blending and coalition—of reformers' protests and laymen's political ambitions—is the essence of the Reformation. It turned the reformers' movement into a new form of religious dissent: it became a "schism‟, in which a section of the catholic Church rose in political revolt against authority, without altering beliefs or practices; nor yet a "heresy‟, whereby a few people deviated from official belief or worship, but without respect, power, or authority. Rather it promoted a new pattern of worship and belief, publicly preached and acknowledged, which also formed the basis of new religious institutions for all of society, within the whole community, region, or nation concerned. |
Source 2: A Political Interpretation of the Reformation From G.R. Elton, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. II, The Reformation, 1958,
In more recent times the religious interpretation of the Reformation has been challenged by political historians. This view is illustrated by the following selection from the highly authoritative New Cambridge Modern History. Here, G.R. Elton of Cambridge argues that while spiritual and other factors are relevant, primary importance for explaining why the Reformation did or did not take hold rests with political history. Consider: How Elton supports his argument; the ways in which Cameron might refute his interpretation. |
The desire for spiritual nourishment was great in many parts of Europe, and movements of thought which gave intellectual content to what in so many ways was an inchoate search for God have their own dignity. Neither of these, however, comes first in explaining why the Reformation took root here and vanished there—why, in fact, this complex of anti-papal "heresies‟ led to a permanent division within the Church that had looked to Rome. This particular place is occupied by politics and the play of secular ambition. In short, the Reformation maintained itself wherever the lay power (prince or magistrates) favored it; it could not survive where the authorities decided to suppress it. Scandinavia, the German principalities, Geneva, in its own peculiar way also England, demonstrate the first; Spain, Italy, the Habsburg lands in the east, and also (though not as yet conclusively) France, the second. The famous phrase behind the settlement of 1555— cuius region eius religio [Latin: “Whose the region is, his religion”]—was a practical commonplace long before anyone put it into words. For this was the age of uniformity, an age which held at all times and everywhere that one political unit could not comprehend within itself two forms of belief or worship.
The tenet also rested on simple fact: as long as membership of a secular polity involved membership of an ecclesiastical organization, religious dissent stood equal to political disaffection and even treason. Hence governments enforced uniformity, and hence the religion of the ruler was that of his country. England provided the extreme example of this doctrine in action, with its rapid official switches from Henrician Catholicism without the pope, through Edwardian Protestantism on the Swiss model and Marian papalism, to Elizabethan Protestantism of a more specifically English brand. But other countries fared similarly. Nor need this cause distress or annoyed disbelief. Princes and governments, no more than the governed, do not act from unmixed motives, and to ignore the spiritual factor in the conversion of at least some princes is as false as to see nothing but purity in the desires of the populace. The Reformation was successful beyond the dreams of earlier, potentially similar, movements not so much because (as the phrase goes) the time was ripe for it, but rather because it found favor with the secular arm. Desire for Church lands, resistance to imperial and papal claims, the ambition to create self-contained and independent states, all played their part in this, but so quite often did a genuine attachment to the teachings of the reformers. |
Source 3: From R.R. Palmer, A History of the Modern World, 6th ed.
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It has sometimes been maintained that one of the motivations in Protestantism was economic—that a new acquisitive, aggressive, dynamic, progressive, capitalistic impulse shook off the restrictions imposed by medieval religion. The fact that Protestant England and Holland soon underwent a rapid capitalistic development gives added likelihood to this idea. The alacrity with which Protestant governments confiscated church lands shows a keen material interest; but in truth, both before and after the Reformation, governments confiscated church properties without breaking with the Roman church. That profound economic changes were occurring at the time will become apparent in the following chapter. Yet it seems that economic conditions were fare less decisive than religious convictions and political circumstances. Calvinism won followers not only in cities but also in agrarian countries such as Scotland, Poland, and Hungary. Lutheranism spread more successfully in the economically retarded north Germany than in the busy south. The English were for years no more inclined to Protestantism than the French, and in France, while many lords and peasants turned Protestant, Paris and many other towns remained as steadfastly Catholic. It is possible that Protestantism, by casting a glow of religious righteousness over a person‟s daily business and material prosperity, later contributed to the economic success of Protestant peoples, but it does not seem that the Protestant work ethic or any other economic factors were of any distinctive importance in the first stages of Protestantism.
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Source 4: Desiderius Erasmus, Julius Excluded from Heaven,
Excerpt of play performed on Paris stage, 1514. |
Persons.—POPE JULIUS II; FAMILIAR SPIRIT; ST. PETER.
Scene.—GATE OF HEAVEN. Julius: What the devil is this? The gates not opened! Something is wrong with the lock. Spirit: You have brought the wrong key perhaps. The key of your money-box will not open the door here. You should have brought both keys. This is the key of power, not of knowledge. Julius: I never had any but this, and I don’t see the use of another. Hey there, porter! I say, are you asleep or drunk? Peter: Well that the gates are adamant, or this fellow would have broken in. He must be some giant, or conqueror. Heaven, what a stench! Who are you? What do you want here? Julius: Open the gates, I say. Why is there no one to receive me? ... Julius: Will you make an end of your talking and open the gates? We will break them down else. You see these followers of mine. Peter: I see a lot of precious rogues, but they won’t break in here. Julius: Make an end, I say, or I will fling a thunderbolt at you. I will excommunicate you. I have done as much to kings before this. Here are the Bulls ready. Peter:Thunderbolts! Bulls! I beseech you, we had no thunderbolts or Bulls from Christ. Julius: You shall feel them if you don’t behave yourself…. |
Source 6: Protestant Broadsheets
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Source 7: Sir Thomas More, Utopia, 1516
Unlike the England of More's lifetime, the Utopia he imagined practiced freedom of religion, as described in this excerpt from Book II. His description of Utopian priests is a casual indictment of contemporary clergy, switching ecclesiastic robes from those of one church to those of another as they jockeyed for position with the capricious monarch. |
They have priests of extraordinary holiness, and therefore very few. They have no more than thirteen in each city - with a like number of churches... They preside over divine worship, order religious rites, and are censors of morals. It is counted a great disgrace for a man to be summoned or rebuked by them as not being of upright life. It is their function to give advice and admonition, but to check and punish offenders belongs to the governors and the other civil officials. The priests, however, do exclude from divine services persons whom they find to be unusually bad. There is almost no punishment which is more dreaded: they incur very great disgrace and are tortured by a secret fear of religion. Even their bodies will not long go scot-free. If they do not demonstrate to the priests their speedy repentance, they are seized and punished by the senate for their impiety.
To no other office in Utopia is more honor given, so much so that, even if they have committed a crime, they are subjected to no tribunal, but left only to God and to themselves. They judge it wrong to lay human hands upon one, however, guilty, who has been consecrated to God in a singular manner as a holy offering. It is easier for them to observe this custom because their priests are very few and very carefully chosen. Besides, it does not easily happen that one who is elevated to such dignity for being the very best among the good, nothing but virtue being taken into account, should fall into corruption and wickedness. Even if it does happen, human nature being ever prone to change, yet since they are but few and are invested with no power except the influence of honor, it need not be feared that they will cause any great harm to the state. In fact, the reason for having but few and exceptional priests is to prevent the dignity of the order, which they now reverence very highly, from being cheapened by communicating the honor to many. This is especially true since they think it hard to find many men so good as to be fit for so honorable a position for the filling of which it is not enough to be endowed with ordinary virtues. |