Europe: A History (83 page)
Switzerland,
die Schweiz
, takes its name from the district of Schwyz on Lake Lucerne, one of three cantons that began to assert their separate political identity against the German Empire in the late thirteenth century. In 1291 Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden signed an ‘Everlasting League’ of self-defence, swearing to assist each other against outside interference. In this way they sought to break free of the local counts, the Habsburgs, who had tried to impose servile judges on the free men of the valleys. In 1315, at the battle of Morgarten, a Habsburg army was routed, and the League became the nucleus for other disaffected districts. The first of these was Luzern (1331) whose advent created the
Vierwaldstaette
of ‘Four Forest Cantons’. After that came the Imperial city of Zurich (1351), Glarus (1351), Zug (1352), and the powerful city-state of Bern (1353). Another Habsburg defeat, at Sempach in 1386, where dismounted knights were cut to pieces by Swiss halberdiers, established the cantons’ practical independence. (See Appendix III, p. 1257.)
In the mid-fifteenth century the Habsburgs fomented a civil war by supporting Zurich against its neighbours. But a crushing Swiss victory over Burgundy in 1474–6, when the red flag with white cross was first carried, brought another train of members—Fribourg and Solothurn (1481), Basle and Schaffhausen (1501), and Appenzell (1513). By then, Switzerland stretched from the Jura in the west to Tyrol in the east. There were extensive ‘subject’ and ‘protected’ territories, including the Vaud round Lake Geneva, the Valais on the upper Rhône, the Ticino as far south as Lake Lugano, and the Graubunden or Grisons, the ‘Grey Leagues’, to the east. There were German-speakers, French-speakers, Italian-speakers, and speakers of Romansch. Yet apart from the Compact of Stans (1481), which regulated the network of mutual alliances, there were no common institutions. Though the Empire recognized the League’s existence by the Treaty of 1499, there had been no formal declaration of independence. The Swiss had proved themselves the finest soldiers in Europe, widely in demand as mercenaries. The Switzers or Swiss Guard of the Vatican, with costumes by Michelangelo, date from 1516.
South and west of Switzerland, the ancient House of Savoy was consolidating its own alpine territories. Amadeus V (r. 1285–1323) reunited the county of Savoy round Chambéry with the principality of Piedmont at Turin. Amadeus VT (r. 1343–83)> the
Conte Verde
, a crusader, introduced a system of state-supported poor relief. Amadeus VIII (r. 1391–1440) lived in the hermitage of Ripaille on Lake Geneva. The Emperor made him a Duke, and the Council of Basle elected him the last anti-pope, as Felix V (1439–49).
Given the disarray of the Empire and the Papacy, the kingdom of France faced the first of several historic opportunities to become the dominant power in Europe. As the heirs of St Louis, the last three generations of Capetian kings—Philippe III le Hardi (r. 1270–85), Philippe IV le Bel (r. 1285–1314), and the latter’s three sons,
Louis X (r. 1314–16), Philippe V (r. 1316–22), and Charles IV (r. 1322–8)—ruled a large population which was growing in numbers and prosperity and was well administered. That they failed to press home their advantage can be attributed partly to the disputed succession, partly to their ruinous rivalry with England, and partly to the pestilence.
MAGIC
T
HE
‘Twelve Conclusions’ of the Lollards of 1395 contains a direct attack on the medieval English Church’s involvement with magic. The Protestant movement contained a very strong impulse ‘to take the magic out of religion’, and this very first manifestation of Protestantism demonstrated the impulse in no uncertain manner:
That exorcisms and hallowings, made in the Church, of wine, bread and wax, water, salt and oil and incense, the stone of the altar, upon vestments, mitre, cross and pilgrims’ staves, be the very practice of necromancy, not of holy theology. For … we see nothing of change in no such creatures that is so charmed, except by false belief, which is the principle of the devil’s craft.
1
None the less, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries Europe continued to be devoted to every form of magical belief. The landscape was filled with alchemists, astrologers, diviners, conjurers, healers, and witches,
[ALCHEMIA] [HEXEN] [NOSTRADAMUS]
The countryside was populated with ghosts, fairies, hobgoblins, and elves. Wyclif, the Lollards’ guru, translated the Bible into English to make it accessible to all. Yet 300 years later, in Cromwell’s Puritan England, the sales charts were topped by William Lilly’s astrological almanac, the
Merlinus Anglicus
, and by his
Collection of Ancient and Moderne Prophecies
.
2
Magic and religion were often inseparable. People who venerated the Christian saints also believed in Puck and Queen Mab and Merlin the Magician. Magic held its own throughout the Reformation era.
In this respect, therefore, the Protestant onslaught on magic enjoyed only partial success, even in countries where Protestantism was to be nominally triumphant. But the intentions of the radicals were unmistakable. After Wyclif came Luther’s attack on indulgences (see p. 484) and Calvin’s dismissal of transubstantiation as ‘conjury’. Every aspect of religious life with the slightest supernatural connotation came under suspicion. Protestants abhorred oaths, miracles, consecrations, symbols, images, holy water, saints’ days, processions, pilgrimages. Moreover, since Protestant Christianity was supposedly magic-free, Protestantism’s enemy, ‘Popery’, was judged equivalent to black magic; the Pope was a wizard; and the Catholic Mass was a branch of devil-worship.
In reality, such views contained a high dose of hypocrisy. Despite all manner of statutes and reforms, the Protestant clergy could not avoid finding a
modus vivendi
with magic. Anglicans and Lutherans would stay closer to sacramental religion than did Calvinists, Anabaptists, and other evangelicals. But it proved difficult to abandon the sign of the Cross, oaths in court, or the ‘churching’ of women after childbirth. It proved virtually impossible to abandon the consecration of church buildings, of battle standards, of food, of ships, and of burial grounds. Protestantism was due to create a new form of Christianity, with the emphasis on conscious belief; but magic was never eliminated.
The decline of magic did not really commence until the latter part of the seventeenth century. It has been attributed to the Scientific Revolution (see pp. 507–10), to the consequent rise of rationalism, to modern medicine, to mathematics and a greater understanding of probability, and to a social environment which gradually grew less threatening.
[
LLOYD’S
]
Yet belief in magic, and its interdependence with religion, has never died out. In the twentieth century, horoscopes are ubiquitous. In the land of the Lollards, sacramental magic was revived in the newfangled rituals of the British monarchy, reaching a pinnacle in the coronation of 1953.
3
In Catholic countries such as Poland and Italy, priests bless everything from motor cars to football mascots. The Vatican still holds with faith-healing and prophecies,
[BERNADETTE] [FATIMA]
Even in Russia, where Communism decimated Orthodox religion, belief in astrology and fairies could not be purged.
The study of magic and religion is inevitably coloured by prejudices and preferences. Ever since Frazer’s
Golden Bough
, scientific anthropologists have tried to act with impartiality. But scholars cannot always resist the temptation to denigrate other people’s magic. That may be a form of superstition in itself,
[
ARICIA
]
Philippe le Bel, grandson of St Louis, was fair of face, and unfair by nature. He was notorious for minting debased coinage and for extorting ingenious taxes. His one act of successful territorial aggrandisement—the incorporation of the city of Lyons in 1312—was undertaken by stealth during the absence of the Emperor in Italy. His confrontation with the Papacy, which led to the scandal of Anagni, began over money. When faced with the Bull
Clericis laicos
, whereby Pope Boniface had sought to prevent him taxing the clergy, he simply banned the export of all money. His vendetta against the Templars, which ended with their proscription, was rooted in envy and pursued with malice. Their trial, 1307–12, was marked by fiendish accusations about leagues with the Devil or with the infidel, by confessions extracted under torture, and in the end by legalized murder and state robbery. The death of the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molai, burned at the stake in Paris after retracting all his confessions, left a lasting stain.
[
ANGELUS
]
Yet Philippe le Bel was the author of durable institutions. With the aid of his
légistes
or legal counsellors, he found all manner of pretexts to fleece his subjects, to institutionalize his depredations, and to cloak them in the guise of a national consensus. His guiding principle lay in the Roman adage
quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem
(whatever pleases the king has the force of law). The old royal court was divided into three branches: The royal council governed the kingdom; the
chambre des comptes
, or exchequer, managed its finances; the
parlement
was charged with royal justice, and with registering all royal edicts. (It was not a true parliament.) The Estates-General, which first met in 1302, summoned nobles, clergy, and commoners to approve royal policy. Philippe le Bel died opportunely, thereby avoiding a popular outburst; but much of his administrative machinery survived till 1789.
In 1316 the Capetian succession was thrown into confusion. The three sons of Philippe le Bel had produced six daughters between them, but no male heir. When Louis X le Hutin (the Quarrelsome) died suddenly, he left one daughter, a pregnant queen, and an unborn child, who, as Jean I the Posthumous, lived and reigned for less than a week. The ultimate outcome was the so-called Salic Law,
which the lawyers of Louis’s brothers devised to exclude their sister (and all subsequent females of the French royal house). But in 1328, when the throne passed to the founder of a new line, Philippe de Valois, the succession was inevitably challenged. The challenger was Philippe le Bel’s only surviving grandson, Edward III, King of England,
[
MONTAILLOU
]
ANGELUS
W
HILST
preaching the First Crusade, Pope Urban II had urged the faithful to recite the ‘Angelus’ three times daily. The Blessed Virgin was patroness of the Crusaders; and the prayer which begins
Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae
(‘The Angel of the Lord announced to Mary’) was already the standard invocation to the Virgin. The Pope’s proposal was largely ignored. But the cathedral church of Saint-Pierre at Saintes in Poitou was an exception. Not only did the clergy of Saintes recite the Angelus regularly; they established the practice of sounding a bell at sunrise, noon, and sunset to announce the commencement of their devotions.
According to local tradition, Pope John XXII renewed the appeal of his predecessor in 1318, ordering the custom of Saintes to be adopted throughout the universal Church.
1
Other authorities point to the pontificate of Callistus III in 1456. At all events, the sound of the angelus bell was to become as characteristic for the towns and villages of Latin Christendom as the sound of the muezzin in Islam. The Middle Ages was a world without background noise. There were no factories, no engines, no traffic, no radio, no musak. Sound had not been devalued. In the narrow, crowded streets of tiny towns, vendors’ cries mingled with the bustle of artisans’ workshops. But in the vast open countryside, the sounds of nature were largely undisturbed. The only serious competition for the church bell came from the wind in the trees, the lowing of cattle, and the distant clang of the blacksmith’s forge,
[
SOUND
]
England under three Edward Plantagenets—Edward I (r. 1272–1307), Edward II (r. 1307–27), and Edward III (r. 1327–77)—saw only three reigns in more than a century. There was no lack of baronial discontent and foreign wars; and, since the Plantagenets continued to hold Gascony and Guyenne as fiefs of France, the territorial base was still fluid. But the wool trade with Flanders was booming, and the towns were growing. Under Edward I, in particular, there were concerted policies to consolidate the institutions of government, and to secure England’s dominant position within the British Isles. The ‘model parliament’ of 1295, which followed De Montfort’s precedent thirty years before, summoned burgesses as well as lords and knights of the shire, thereby laying the foundation of the House of Commons. Magna Carta was reconfirmed. But in an amendment accepted during a parliamentary session on Stepney Green in 1297, the principle of ‘no taxation without representation’ was established. Thereafter, Westminster Hall became the permanent site of England’s Parliament. Edward’s writ of
Quo Warranto
(1278) had threatened the barons’ landholdings: but the Second Statute of Westminster (1285), which favoured the entailing of estates, benefited both the monarchy and the tenants-in-chief. His conflict with the Church over
Clericis laicos
was controlled by the simple device of outlawing the clergy. His conquest of Wales, 1277–1301, which was held down by the chain of magnificent castles from Harlech to Conway, proved to be permanent. But his invasion of Scotland provoked the Scots’ bid for total independence. Edward II, who understood little of his father’s motto
Pactum servare
, ‘Keep Troth’—was murdered at Berkeley Castle on the orders of his queen. Edward III fell into the endless struggle of the Hundred Years War with France.
Scotland emerged as a nation-state much sooner than England did. The Scots had not been directly overrun by the Norman Conquest; and they reached a
modus vivendi
with the Gaelic clans long before the English came to terms with the Welsh. Scots monarchs and nobles had long been embroiled in English affairs, much as the English were embroiled in France. But they cut themselves free nearly two centuries earlier. The critical moment occurred during the decades of war which followed Edward I’s intervention in a disputed succession. One contender, John Balliol (d. 1313), was imprisoned in England, then exiled in France. Another, Robert the Bruce (r. 1306–29), victor of Bannockburn in June 1314, started as England’s vassal and finished as Scotland’s saviour. But none had a greater impact than William Wallace (1270–1305), who roused the commons of Scotland to resistance. Betrayed, and hanged in London as a common bandit, he was the martyrhero of Scotland’s cause:
