Food for Thought

Week 3: Tuesday, February 3

Dynastic and Religious War

In class today, we will look at the reasons why various powers were willing to expend prodigious amounts of blood and money in the 16th and 17th centuries. Why did military innovations follow one another so quickly? In other words, what fueled the military revolution?

We will focus on two important type of conflict: dynastic and religious wars.

At the beginning of the 14th century, the growth of dynastic ambitions, fed in part by the expansion of state power, led to a number of important conflicts throughout Europe. English monarchs expanded their influence into Wales and Scotland. French kings sought to bring Flanders to heel. As your reading makes clear, the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), which involved England and France, proved especially significant in the development of tactics, technology, and the state. During attempts to consolidate and expand his influence between 1467 and 1477, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, attempted a particularly imaginative synthesis of heavy cavalry, mounted archers, pikemen, handgunners, artillery, and foot archers.

Charles VIII of France initiated a costly and prolonged dynastic war when he invaded Italy in 1494. Until 1559, the Habsburgs would contest French domination of the peninsula as a shifting array of Italian city-states allied themselves with one side or the other. This conflict constituted part of the Valois-Habsburg wars—so named after the names of the ruling families of France and Spain, respectively. Throughout this period and well into the 17th century, France lived in fear of Habsburg domination.

These dynastic conflicts were destructive and costly, but no sooner had the Valois-Habsburg wars in Italy concluded than a new factor intensified war: religious differences stemming from the Protestant Reformation which began in 1517. A civil war, sparked in part by religious differences, tore apart France from 1562 to 1598. The seventeen provinces in the Low Countries (the Netherlands), inspired by a defense of traditional liberties, a distaste for foreign rule, and a desire to protect Protestant Calvinists from Catholic persecution, sought to expel their Spanish overlords in a war that lasted from 1568 to 1648 (the Dutch Revolt, otherwise known as the "Eighty Years' War.") Finally, the Thirty Years' War, perhaps one of the most destructive conflicts Europe ever witnessed, commenced in 1618 when Ferdinand, the Catholic Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, attempted to augment imperial authority and roll back Protestant gains in Germany. Initially, Ferdinand succeeded in resubjugating Bohemia along with much of Germany. Other Protestant powers banded together to counter him. Although Protestant Denmark failed to halt the imperial advance, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a very able military leader, took on the leadership of the Protestant cause and dealt the Imperialists some enormous blows. Eventually, Catholic France, motivated in the main by dynastic and national interests, entered the war against the Catholic Habsburgs. The war eventually ended in 1648 with all the belligerents exhausted and on the verge of collapse.

Background on Germany

There was no Germany before or during the Reformation in the sense that there was no German state. "Germany" was a geographic expression, a word people used to describe central Europe. Most people who lived in this area spoke some variant of German, but there was no united German nation.

Instead, there was a bewildering array of electors, princes, free cities, clerical city-states (tiny city-sized countries headed by an archbishop or the like). There were somewhere around 300 or so polities of various sizes throughout the area referred to as Germany.

There was, however, a Holy Roman Emperor who oversaw the Holy Roman Empire, a very loose federation that encompassed much of Germany. It was such a loose federation that the emperor had very little power over the princes who lived in his realm; the princes were more or less semi-autonomous. There was an imperial diet or assembly that met from time to time, but its powers were limited.

The position of Holy Roman Emperor was an elected one. There were only six electors: the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, along with the electors of the Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg. The electors always elected a member of the Habsburg family. Within the Holy Roman Empire, there were another half dozen important dukes, thirty less powerful princes, over 100 counts, 70 bishoprics and abbeys, around 65 free imperial cities, and the tiny bailiwicks of 2000 imperial knights, all of whom enjoyed differing degrees of semi-autonomy.

This miscellaneous collection of people did not heed the emperor because he was the emperor. They more frequently heeded him because the Habsburgs were the greatest landowner and most powerful family within the empire, with extensive domains. On the eve of the Reformation, the Holy Roman Emperor was a Habsburg, Charles V, who had also obtained the kingdoms of Spain, Bohemia, and Hungary, ruled the Netherlands, the Duchy of Milan, the Franche Comté, and the Duchy of Austria, and whose family exercised great influence over Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples. On top of that, Charles V was master of much of the New World, including Mexico and Peru. Everything colored orange on the map below was controlled by Charles V. Moreover, the area enclosed by the thick green border fell within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V was a powerful man indeed, and the French, surrounded on two sides by Habsburg possessions, had good reason to fear him.

The following map shows Europe around 1550, right before the treaty of Augsburg, which inaugurated over sixty years of peace in Germany, recognized a sort of religious status quo. Individual princes in the Holy Roman Empire could determine whether their territories remained Catholic or converted to Protestant Lutheranism. This treaty, however, did not stop the outbreak of religious war elsewhere (particularly in France, where a civil war raged, or the Netherlands, where the Dutch sought to obtain their independence from the Spanish Habsburgs).

Charles V realized his possessions were far too large for any single man to control. At the end of his reign, he divided the Habsburg lands into two. Spain, the New World, the Franche Comté, and the Italian possessions went to his son, Philip II. The Holy Roman Empire, along with Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, went to his brother, Ferdinand I. Although the Habsburg family, now divided, did not always see eye to eye, the often cooperated as best they could (e.g. the Thirty Years' War from 1618-1648).

The following is a map of Europe on the eve of the Thirty Years' War.

As you can see, the maps are pretty close to one another. The borders of the Holy Roman Empire do not appear on this map, but they looked much the same as they did in 1550.

Background on the French Wars of Religion

The reading by Contarini focuses on the French wars of religion, so a little background might help you interpret the text. Henry II of France (1519-1559 / r. 1547-1559) had ruled France with a pretty steady hand and proved a worthy foe of Charles V, the Habsburg emperor. Unfortunately, he was mortally wounded in a jousting incident, leaving behind his wife, Catherine de Medici (of the famous Florentine family from Italy) and three underage sons.

Henry's eldest son, Francis II (b. 1544) became king, but since he was a minor, his uncles, Francois, Duke of Guise, and Charles of Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, became regents.

Francis' death in 1560 led to the accession of Charles IX (b. 1550) with his mother as regent, acting with Antoine of Bourbon, King of Navarre—a Calvinist (otherwise known as Huguenots in France). Civil war broke out in France only two years later. Charles IX never had the opportunity to assert himself as king, dying in 1574. He was succeeded by Henry III who was eventually assassinated in 1589.

Upon Henry III's assassination, Henry of Navarre, the leader of the Protestants in France, became the heir to the throne. It required almost a decade of fighting, Henry of Navarre's conversion to Catholicism, and large concessions to the Protestants before the civil war eventually fizzled out.

Contarini, Venice's ambassador to France, wrote his assessment of the French civil wars in 1572, only two years before the death of Charles IX.

Food For Thought Questions: Contarini

The readings for this week are extensive yet necessary. As I figure it, Thursday's reading will be pretty light, so I can bury you on Tuesday. This will be the only time this semester that I will assign you six questions.

1) According to Contarini, what were the causes of the civil wars in France? What were the occasions of the wars?

2) According to Contarini, why did the king of France find it so difficult to end the civil wars?

3) According to Contarini, how had the wars begun to disrupt society?

Food for Thought Questions: Rice

As you do this reading, I want you to focus specifically on these questions.

1) Sola fide, sola gratia, and sola scriptura: What do these expressions mean and why are they significant to Luther's theology?

2) Which one of Luther's doctrines inadvertently fostered the fragmentation of the Protestant movement?

3) What factors influenced the decision of various German princes to remain Catholic or convert to Protestantism?

Other Matters to Consider as You Read

1) From what kind of personal religious crisis did Luther suffer? How did this crisis lead him to develop a new theology of salvation?

2) What was Luther's connection to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525?

3) How did the Reformation appear to play out in German towns like Augsburg? Who became a Protestant and why?

4) Why did 16th-century Germans resort to persecution when dealing with those who belonged to a different religious sect?

5) How did the Treaty of Augsburg (1555) effect a consolidation of the Reformation?

6) Why was the Reformation a revolution?