Daily Life During The Reformation (41 page)

When soldiers marched through the villages and towns where
people remained, the poor were forced to work for them and hand over their last
crumb of bread with no compensation. Horses, always in demand, were
commandeered from the farms and ridden away by soldiers not to be seen again.
Cattle, pigs, and sheep were slaughtered on the spot and eaten. Civilians were
beaten or killed at the slightest resistance to soldiers’ demands.

Officers, their servants and often ordinary soldiers
quartered in private houses had to be fed along with their horses depleting the
last of the owner’s supplies and money. Agreements were sometimes made between
a military commander and a regional council in which the region paid their
conquerors a certain amount of money and provided items such as straw, candles,
hay, and salt and the army refrained from plundering.

THE FATE OF CITIES

Leaving their quarters at night Imperial soldiers
terrorized the inhabitants of the Baltic coast sacking the surrounding villages
and towns. Some towns were forced to lodge and feed soldiers for months and
even years. For the peasants and shopkeepers to furnish the beer, wine, meat,
bread, or whatever the soldiers demanded, resulted in profound deprivation for
lower and middle class families.

German cities and towns were not safe for minority groups
whether Catholic or Protestant as the war spread across the empire in the
spring of 1625. The Protestant citizens of Ulm suffered nine days of beatings,
rape, and murder when at harvest time, a troop of cavalrymen appeared and
looted and burned a good part of the town in a rampage.

Magdeburg, a Lutheran city on the Elbe River, rebelled
against the emperor, but its inadequate forces were quickly defeated in the
field. With Tilly’s army camped outside the city’s walls, the months came and
went. The city vainly tried to entice other Protestant princes to its rescue.
By May 1631, the defenses in shambles, Tilly’s troops broke in. The rich city
was stripped of priceless manuscripts and books, paintings, tapestries, and
every other removable treasure. Whoever they encountered, the soldiers slew.
Women of all ages were raped; old and young were cut down. The massacre at
Magdeburg was the worst slaughter of the Thirty Years’ War.

Of the 20,000 or so citizens, the vast majority were slain.
In addition, of the numerous peasants who had crowded into the city along with
many nobles, only about 1,000 survived the killing according to the then new
French weekly newspaper, the
Gazette
.

Heidelberg was looted for three days after which the town
was more systematically stripped of its treasures. Books and manuscripts in its
famous library were shipped off to the Vatican as a present to the pope.

Some cities fared better than others: the Protestant city
of Leipzig, although sacked on a few occasions, remained a valuable trading
center. The Catholic city of Regensburg, seat of the elections to the imperial
throne, although plundered by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, was retaken 10 months
later by imperialist troops and quickly rebuilt. A few other cities escaped the
devastation of war altogether such as the imperial city of Vienna, and the free
imperial city of Hamburg. As a neutral area, Hamburg flourished during the war
attracting Catholics, Jews, and Protestants to its lucrative commercial
markets.

DISEASE

Pestilence raged throughout the war zones and surrounding
areas among both civilians and soldiers spread by troop movements and migrating
populations. The overcrowding of refugees from the countryside into walled
cities already ridden with vermin, decaying garbage, and unclean water along
with shortages of food, further accelerated mortality rates; and untold people
perished from typhus, scurvy, and endemic dysentery. Estimates of civilian
casualties have ranged up to as high as 30 percent of the population of
Germany.

ATROCITIES AND REVENGE

The sack of Magdeburg, the worst atrocity of the war, was
far from the only act of senseless cruelty. The imperial armies burned
villages, burned churches, and killed indiscriminately. Civilians were
diabolically tortured to disclose where their money and valuables were hidden,
their houses were burned, and hangings were common. When a man had nothing
further to give, soldiers took his life. Neither the old, nor the young were
safe.

When 50 Swedish troops were surprised and captured by an
army of peasants, they had their feet, hands, noses, and ears severed from
their bodies and their eyes poked out. The Swedish army took full revenge for
the outrage by burning 200 Catholic villages to the ground. Now it was the
Catholics’ turn to seek shelter in the forests and hills where many starved or
died of exposure.

PRICES

Due to shortages of food and rising prices, landlords of
the estates worked their land to capacity, and their peasants toiled longer
hours to produce more. Peasants had little choice in the matter since they
needed work. The larger profits did not accrue to them, however. Distributors
were also in a position to raise prices and did so.

TREATY OF WESTPHALIA

Some four million people lost their lives, and many more
returned home to find it in ruins. Another half century would go by before the
damage was repaired and the grief and pain of the war began to subside. After
30 years of bloody conflict, the Peace of Westphalia was signed by the warring
parties, bringing the conflict to a close.

Christians living in principalities where their
denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to
practice their faith in public during allotted times, and in private at any
time. Jews were excluded. Any individual living in an undesirable region had
the right to emigrate. The Protestant princes and cities were allowed to keep
whatever Church lands they had confiscated up to the year 1624, but they now
could take no more land. The document also declared that any Catholics or
Protestants who wished to change their religion must “be patiently tolerated
and have freedom of conscience in their homes without investigation or
disturbance.”

The treaty ended the pope’s European political power, and
Innocent X declared it “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable,
reprobate, inane, and meaningless.” European sovereigns, both Catholic and
Protestant, ignored his opinion.

19 - CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE AND COUNTER-REFORMATION

Well
before the Protestant Reformation, some efforts were made by the Catholic
Church itself to reform abuses; but lacking rigorous enforcement, little was
accomplished.

A TROUBLED CHURCH

As some members of the Church acknowledged, a regrettable
worldliness manifested itself among high ecclesiastics. Apologists admitted
that this had diverted many from their primary objective of saving souls, but
found numerous reasons as to why the Church was not more effective in its
suppression of Protestantism. The Turks were pressing on Hungary and Austria
from the southeast threatening Europe, a great concern and preoccupation of the
popes; while the French allied themselves with the reformers for political
reasons and invaded the German west, annexing some of the bishoprics and aiding
heretics. As the Church itself was aware, Catholic religious idealism had
failed to a large extent in its primary purpose as an intermediary between God
and mankind. Accordingly, intellectual cultivation, previously confined in
large measure to the clergy, had become more common among the people, giving
rise to a Renaissance and Humanistic pagan morality along with the desire for
luxury associated with the revival of Greco-Roman heathenistic traditions.
Crass materialism had begun to manifest itself within the upper classes of
society including some high ranking clergy, who had sought accumulation of
wealth and a sybaritic life style diametrically opposed to the spirit of
Christianity and its ascetic virtues.

At first, many bishops and high clerics, paid little heed
to the new movement among them. Similarly, the too often poorly educated, lazy,
and indifferent village clergy made little effort to preserve the loyalty of
their parishioners and restrain their defection. As the Church soon realized,
Reformers, on the other hand, displayed a prodigious passion for what was
considered in the eyes of the Catholic Church a false cause.

Deceptively feigning adherence to Catholic principals,
Reformers retained for a time many of the ceremonies of Catholic worship, but
had lied about repudiating only matters pertaining to human invention deceiving
the people concerning their real objectives. They had indulged the people by
singing popular religious hymns and reading the Bible in the vernacular at
divine service.

Protestant tenets that advocated justification by faith
alone, giving everyone a share in sacerdotal functions, thus denied the difference
between priests and ordinary people along with the virtues of good works.
Protestant rejection of free will furnished an excuse for immoral and debauched
behavior.

COUNCIL OF TRENT

To thwart the Reformation, the Roman Church initiated a
Counter-Reformation (the Protestant name) in 1545 with the Council of Trent
that intermittently met in 25 sessions until 1563. In this major reform
council, the participants addressed the most serious problems confronting the
internal workings of the Church. They reviewed Church doctrines and all were
upheld such as the trinity, apostolic succession, good works, veneration of
saints, and the celibacy of priests. The seven sacraments remained as they were
throughout medieval times, but priests were to be better educated and teach
plainly and coherently what was necessary for salvation according to the
Catholic principals. The tradition handed down from previous councils was
considered of paramount significance, but the plurality of offices was
abandoned, and bishops were no longer to be appointed on political grounds.
They were now required to preach and live within their bishopric. Theological
seminaries were to be created in all dioceses to both address the problems of
clerical deficiencies in literacy and to retrain priests on all levels in a
manner befitting religious principles of spirituality, focusing on asceticism
rather than temporal or earthly preoccupations. By defining doctrine on
salvation, the sacraments, and the Biblical canon, the Council of Trent attempted
to rebut Protestant dissension. A Roman Inquisition, already established
earlier to control heresy within Catholic territories, would continue.

VILLAGE REFORM

In the middle of the sixteenth century, before the reforms
of the Council of Trent became effective, life in the villages was conservative
in most matters of change; and while some villagers were open to new Protestant
ideas, others rejected out of hand both Protestant and Catholic reforms that
interfered with established daily patterns of life.

A major problem for the Catholic Church was to be found in
the villages and small towns of the countryside where misuse of the sacraments
took place, and other sinful activities such as heavy drinking on religious
holidays, overindulgent feasting, worship at unauthorized shrines, the failure
to attend Mass, and the superstitious allure of witches and black magic.

It was also considered desirable to install schools for
catechism classes and primary schools to give the young a better understanding
of Catholicism.

Popular culture embedded in the countryside that prevailed
at carnivals and local fetes, especially among the youth, included immoral
pagan practices such as parades in bizarre costumes, enormous ugly giants (men
on stilts), dancing around the bonfire, allusions to witches and goblins,
flirtations, licentious plays, and prodigious drinking, as far as the Church
was concerned. The banning of masks at carnival time as well as actors and
plays did not set well in town or village and were generally not enforced.

It was also felt that a clear and sharp distinction should
be made between Catholicism and Protestantism; but here the Church walked a
fine line. To impose discipline, obedience, and morality on the people appeared
to imitate the strict principles of Protestantism. If reform were needed, were
not the Protestants correct? If the need for reform was denied, most people
could see that this was not true.

It was well understood that more often than not parish
priests did not try to force on their parishioners reforms that were unpopular
and opposed by the congregation. As they also frequently preached in an
uninspiring manner, much of the flock nodded off or left before the sermon was
over. The Catholic reforms were now to bring a new kind of better educated
priest who would encourage conformity through energetic preaching and example.