Wow...
After the first week of my history class, Western Civilization from 1500, I have to say wow, it is funny to think of how Uncivilized the world can be. We began the week (really last Friday) talking about the reformation of the church. The Reformation of the church refers to the disagreement between the Catholic church and the ideas of people like John Calvin and Martin Luther in the early 1500s. Luther believed that the church bureaucracy was corrupt and limited the common man's access to the Word of God. Calvin believed that our lives were predetermined and that we lived our lives by the mercy of God. Both Luther and Calvin believed that people should be educated and literate. The people who held with these alternative views or changes of Christianity we know as Protestants. To challenge the Church was to set an environment that pit people against each other in a very violent way.
In the mid 1500s in France many of the members of the nobility where Protestant(mostly Calvinist) while the king and rest of the nobility was very much tied to the Catholic church. Religious fighting, motivated by the desire to increase territory, power, and influence, occurred all over the country side causing increasing devastation to the infrastructure and the people. These violent and destructive occurrences remind me of the violent mob wars of the early 1900s in the United States. None more so than that of the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre. In terms of the Mob, a hit was executed on the head of the rival family(Admiral Coligny). While the hit was not successful it prompted Don Corleone(king Charles) to make a preemptive strike on the other family leaders (protestant leaders). Starting out relatively small word got out and a full scale massacre was on hand (i.e. the hits to the Dons at the end of the "Godfather"). These tribulations were not isolated to France but extend to eastern Europe as well.
By 1618 in the Holy Roman Empire or HRE, which was located in eastern Europe around the area of modern day Germany, there was a fairly diverse mix of Protestant(mostly Lutheran) and Catholic areas. Politically, the HRE was a loose collection of principalities under one Emperor. The Emperor, was not in this case very powerful. Most of the power base seemed to lie with princes who ruled over the individual principalities. These princes chose what religion their people were to practice. So there was a hodgepodge of areas with a different faith in each town. This seems to me to be like territories of gangs in Los Angeles (crips and bloods). The "gang" war that results is not an informal war like we see in our cities but the motivation is the same. These motivations are territory, power over commerce,and a willingness to send your people into battle on an ideological basis (they are Catholics and they want to oppress you or those protestants are heathens and should not be allowed to live). For thirty years HRE is ravaged by war ending in 1648 with the peace of Westphalia.
Where did all of that violence and bloodshed get the people of France and the HRE? Politically, France is much stronger while the HRE is weaker but the people of these nations are suffering under the miseries and fallout of the war. I am a Catholic and I know the stance that my religion holds now is very different from the one that led up to, and greased the wheels of, these conflicts. However, I am very embarrassed that anyone who holds to the teachings of Christian faith could corrupt the faith by their actions done in the name of that faith. It seems to me that we as people of the world do very little learning from the past. We continue to make the same mistakes over and over again with no end in sight. Maybe it is just human nature.?
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I am not a religious person, but I have a great admiration for people that have a strong faith. However, I do feel that most of the major religions have severe contradictions between what they teach and what some of their followers and clergy actually practice. I know it's an easy target, but the Catholic Church has been under the microscope again because of recent charges against members of the clergy. As a Catholic what do you think should be the punishment for the clergy members guilty of the criminal acts, and those involved in covering them up? What do you think the church should do to prevent this type of thing from happening in the future?
ReplyDeleteWhen considering the religious violence of the 15th and 16th century one must consider who is to blame, religion, or man. I think religion cannot be blamed for the actions that people commit under its name when clearly violating its own beliefs. While it provides valuable moral guidelines and rules, many have used religion as a veil to carry out radical agendas,and it is unfair to blame the veil rather than the perpetrator. However, in the 15th and 16th centuries, organized Christianity was more concerned with power than religion, leading to a terrible manipulation of people and faith, a problem with organized religion that sadly often continues today.
ReplyDeleteI loved the comparison between the Godfather and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. In many ways, what began as a simple attempt to eliminate a contender for power escalated into a broader conflict. I also really liked Mike's point about the disconnected between religion and actions motivated by religious beliefs. People have done terrible things in the name of religion that I am not certain any deity would sanction.
ReplyDeleteWhile I also agree that power politics figured into much of the decision-making of religious leaders, I would also point out one of the key changes in western thinking between then and now: the notion of the individual which came into prominence during the Enlightenment. Before that period, people saw themselves much more as simply a part of the collective whole and this ideology affected how they thought about religious differences. As we talked about in class, the symbolic nature of much of the violence (mutilating corpses, throwing bodies into the rivers) that sought to cleanse the community of the dangers brought by heresy. In the modern world of individuals, where the universe operates without the hand of God and rational, scientific explanations exist for almost everything, it is easy to forget that many of these actions stemmed from true (if mistaken) belief just as much as they stemmed from efforts to gain or keep power.
I think that religion can be blammed for the immoral and criminal actions of the clergy and the common man. People that are deeply religious will do just about anything if they think that it is God's will. Just think about all of the suicide bombers. They don't know any better, they just think that they are doing god's will. I think that most of the world's problem's are caused by religion. Don't get me wrong I believe in God, but I believe that along with peace, war coinscides with it.
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