~ "Stormclouds" ~
Parte I: The Calm
"God has caused the sun to shine upon these your kingdoms of Spain, yet I sense there are storm clouds gathering far to the north." These were the words with which Pedro Fernández de Velasco, the 3rd Duke of Frías and Constable of Castile, addressed the 19 year old, newly crowned Juan Pelayo in 1536. Velasco had been received by Juan Pelayo for the sake of presenting the young king with an assessment of his reams and to put his mind at ease. Velasco's words would prove to be more than apt, as the rest of Europe was resembling a powder keg more each day. The conclusion of the Bauernkrieg, wretched as it was, did not change the minds of a good number of European Christians that there were many valid religious and social questions raised by the leaders of the Protestant movement that remained unanswered. It was only a matter of time, then, before Protestantism, both radical and mainline (later designations used to separate them from the Protestantism of Luther and Scheurl) began to realign itself and come back with a vengeance.
- Nur Gebet und Arbeit -
Having been living in exile in Norway since 1521, Andreas Karlstadt returned to his native Germany from Agder in 1527. The abject failure of the Bauernkrieg and his time amongst the Hanseatic communities of coastal Norway had worked an important change in Karlstadt’s social teaching. Instead of trying to foment a grassroots reversal of the social order from through the peasantry, Karlstadt, now focusing efforts on the wealthy merchant cities of Northern Germany, urged communal, semi-democratic living amongst the burgher class, encouraging frugality, moral austerity, and minimal cooperation with aristocratic authorities. Karlstadt admitted that he was foolish to rule out the city-dwelling burghers from his Protestant revolution years before (although such was primarily Thomas Müntzer’s doing), as they similarly earned their living through labors of their own and were the most poised to truly upset the political monopoly held by the nobility and the Church. According to Karlstadt, there was only one acceptable hierarchy: that of fathers, the masters of the household, whom Karlstadt called “lords by the natural order.”
A propaganda woodcut showing a modest, pious Brethren "gebetshäus" on the left, and an extravagant Catholic church on the right filled with parishioners carrying ornate trinkets
To Karlstadt, a life of celibacy was pure, needless waste, and waste, to the thrifty followers of Karlstadt, was a grave sin. While Vinter and Meyer believed it was necessary for top-down conversion of a society to occur under the auspices of the highest secular powers, Karlstadt believed that such was only necessary within the structure of the nuclear family - which, in turn, would bring about the conversion of society at large. As long as Christian men maintained their moral code and respected one another, their families would be safe to follow suit (Karlstadt acknowledged, however, that such a natural order could only persist amongst Christian families). Working primarily in Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, and Lauenburg (with his followers spreading his teachings to the northern Low Countries and the coastal cities of France and the British Isles) and occasionally crossing back over to Norway when imperial authorities came looking for him, Karlstadt succeeded in establishing thriving communities of autonomy and thrift-minded burghers who, instead of attending mass, met in modest “gebetshäuser” (prayer houses) without a designated minister, where they took turns reading the Scriptures, spoke freely, and often voted on communal initiatives. These communities also flooded their native cities with pamphlets and fliers, and quickly began to out-compete their Catholic brethren through their coordinated pooling of resources and indefatigable work ethic. The first of these communities, the “Brüder des Wortes” (“Brethren of the Word,” referred to simply as the “Brethren” in the English speaking world), was founded by Karlstadt in Bremen in 1527, and would be joined in the years to come by similar movements such as the Seamen’s Kirk in the ports of Edinburgh, Inverness, Aberdeen, and Perth, the Broeders Kerk in the northern Low Countries, and hamlets of “Naturherren” in rural Lower Saxony and Hesse. [1]
- Baltiske Fællesskab -
Meanwhile, after the death of Bogislaw X, his sons Georg and Barnim ruled the duchy of Pomerania in common. In order to consolidate the situation, Georg opted to submit his younger brother Barnim’s candidacy for headmaster of the Teutonic Ordensstaat - its former headmaster, Duke Frederick of Saxony, having died in 1524. Some of the knights were keen on electing another Saxon, while others wished to appoint a German from a region less riven by Protestantism, but the majority were confident in the Catholicism of the two Pomeranian brothers and liked the idea of an ally in such a close position. Barnim was thus elected at the young age of 23. However, this arrangement became much more complicated with two unexpected deaths: those of Georg and his 15 year old son Philip in 1530. Barnim, suddenly required to take up a position of secular power, began negotiating with his knights to rule Pomerania as regent until a suitable successor could be found, while also secretly reaching an agreement with Christian III of Denmark to marry his sister, Dorothea, and to form a military alliance between their two realms in exchange for Barnim’s conversion to Vinteran Protestantism and free reign for Danish trade within Pomerania and Prussia.
Johannes Bugenhagen, an old friend of Luther and Karlstadt from his days at Wittenberg, had found David Vinter’s approach the most appealing in the confusion following the Bauernkrieg. While Vinteran Protestantism had heretofore been tied specifically to the Danish realm, Vinter himself never became a bishop in the Danske Kirke and did not consider his message to be restricted to any one polity. As such, Vinter and Bugenhagen coordinated the creation of “church orders” (singular “Kirchenordnung”) - that is, Protestant state churches that adhered to their particular state’s laws and customs but remained in communion with one another. Having returned to his homeland of Pomerania in 1528, Bugenhagen thus began to form a Kirchenordnung for the duchy. After duke Georg I’s death in 1530 (who had opposed Protestantism), Bugenhagen was supported by his successor, Barnim XI, and was eventually made the superintendent of the Pomeranian and Prussian churches in 1536.
What members remained of the Teutonic Knights were either eager to shed their vows of celibacy and secularize the Order’s holdings, or were crushed in rebellion by Barnim’s large complement of Pomeranian and Danish troops. Sigismund I, the king of Poland, was more than happy to see the perfidious Teutonic Order - so long at odds with his kingdom - receive such a devastating blow, but the reality of the situation set in quickly: now, instead of the troublesome knights occupying Prussia (their authority and military capabilities declining), Prussia had been linked to Pomerania practically overnight to form a state that straddled Polish Pomerelia and that now professed an anti-Catholic creed. The closeness of Pomerania-Prussia to Denmark itself was worrisome enough.
The Baltic, c. 1536
(Red: Denmark, Green: Pomerania-Prussia, Pink: Poland, Purple: the Livonian Order)
The sudden union of Pomerania and Prussia, dissolution of an old and venerable crusading order, and formation of a new power bloc professing Protestantism that was capable of dominating the Baltic all threw Northern Europe into disarray. Both Johann Frederick I, the elector of Saxony, and Joachim Nestor I, elector of Brandenburg, denounced this chain of events and Christian III in particular for not following tradition and maintaining a policy of dynastic marriages between the three states, while Henry V, duke of Mecklenburg and himself related matrilineally to Barnim, chose to align more closely with Denmark and
"Pommern-Preußen." A coalition was in the works between Poland, Saxony, and Brandenburg (with the encouragement also of Philip I, the Holy Roman Emperor), but it came to nothing following the death of the most powerful member, Sigismund I, in 1532, which left Poland with a 12 year old monarch, Sigismund II.
- Eine Nation, Eine Kirche -
Hardline Protestantism would return to the heart of Germany in the form of a certain Johann Albrecht Meyer - a lecturer from Göttingen who was a former student at Wittenberg and reader of Karlstadt and Vinter - who took up an angle very similar to that of Vinter: that the hierarchy of kings and princes over the peasantry and of the presbyters over their flock are both God-ordained, but such a hierarchy has been corrupted by the development of ultramontane Papal Christianity, which forces the priesthood into a cruel, effeminizing life of celibacy, adheres too literally to many passages of Scripture and too symbolically to others, and subverts the natural political order by elevating the clergy to a position of equal temporal authority to that of Europe’s secular leadership. Meyer’s theology paired nicely with an intense emotional buildup developing amongst the German people that craved both peace and national self-determination - fueled by the threat of the Turks to the East and the French to the west, by the political disunity and feuding culture of the Holy Roman Empire, and by the frustration felt towards a Papacy that seemed to care little for their religious problems while remaining content to staff their sees with similarly disinterested foreigners and funnel their tithes back to Rome. From Luther to Karlstadt to Meyer and Bugenhagen, Protestantism became more and more of an issue of German nationalism. For the princes of the Empire, it also became a means of fighting back against a complete Hapsburg ascendancy. Beginning in 1529, Meyer became a court favorite of Ernst I, the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and another alumnus of Wittenberg, and of Johann III, the duke of Kleves, before finishing his two seminal works, “On the Sacramental Order of a Christian Nation” (“Auf dem sakramentalen Orden einer christlichen Nation”) and “On the Kingdom of the Germans” (“Auf das Reich der Deutschen”), published respectively in 1530 and 1532, in which he outlines both the fundamentals of his theology and his ideal restructuring of the Holy Roman Empire. In essence, Meyer advocated for an Empire that still elected its head, but through a “College of Princes” - comprised of the highest echelon of the German nobility who retained their hereditary succession as maintenance of their blood-connection to their land - and a “College of Bishops” - comprised of the leaders of the assembly of German bishops.
Johann Albrecht Meyer von Göttingen
More theologically speaking, Meyer believed that the Papacy and the traditional Church order were unnecessary due to their supra-national position, that man was justified solely through faith (but exemplified said faith through outward works) and thus did not need the sacrament of reconciliation as a mediation between him and his God, and that the sacraments were symbolic exercises meant to remind the faithful of Christ’s life and sacrifice and bind the community together - meaning Holy Communion was to be a communal meal, and that priestly celibacy and monasticism were invalid on account of their sterility and reclusivity. Meyer, safe from the imperial ban in his sponsor’s courts, was free to be proactive in organizing a union of many disparate Protestant movements in the Empire. Brought together in a “German Evangelical Union,” Meyer and his princely supporters were able to coordinate a relative cohesion in Protestantism, holding synods to smooth out theological disputes with the principle of such debates being: “In the core of the gospel - unity; in the periphery - freedom.”(“Im Kern des Evangeliums - Einheit; in der Peripherie - Freiheit.”) [2]
Meyer's “On the Kingdom of the Germans”
The death of Martin Luther in 1538 brought further polarization between traditional Catholicism and the Protestant movements. Luther had been hesitant to break with the Church or denounce the Papacy due to his hope that a great council might be called and his teachings heeded. However, his disappointment with the Fifth Lateran Council left him indecisive, and by the time of his death he had neither moved to break with Rome nor to concede to it. Following his death, the followers of Luther gradually separated into three camps: 1) that of the German Evangelical Union, the association with which was led by Johannes Agricola and which chose the path of mainline Protestantism and was itself a combination “princes’ churches” (“fürstenkirchen,” the church orders established in the realms of individual princes and administered by them) and of the independent Reformed Evangelical Church; 2) the Reformed Lutheran Congregation, first led by Christoph Scheurl, Justus Jonas, and Philip Schwartzerdt, which was a group that maintained its distance from radical and mainline Protestantism and asserted that it was a reform movement still within the old Church; and 3) those that reassociated with mainline Catholicism, primarily led by Johann von Eck and Johann Crotus.
Meyer’s revival and redefinition of mainline Protestantism would be taken up by a great number of colleagues: Johannes Brenz brought mainline Protestantism to Württemberg in Southern Germany; Stephan Agricola was active in both Hesse and Thuringia; Martin Bucer and Kaspar Heyd preached in Alsace and the Palatinate; and the far-ranging Andreas Osiander carried Meyeran theology to Franconia, Saxony, Prussia, and Scandinavia. Likewise, those in the vein of Karlstadt, such as the Frenchmen Guillaume Farel and Antoine Froment or the Englishmen Robert Barnes and Thomas Bilney, found success in their homelands, leading to the early development of radical Protestant communities in Lorraine and East Anglia.
- "Dios es Español" -
Amidst the rapid re-organization of the protestant movement, the Church was struggling to initiate much needed reforms. The Fifth Lateran Council had been to set to proceed as early as 1510, but intrigue in Central Italy (such as the exile of the Medici) and the Third Italian War of 1508-1516, and the death of Pope Julius II in 1515 had complicated matters. Fearing the French army near Florence, the Papal conclave was similarly put off until mid-1516, and ultimately resulted in the election of Cardinal Raffaele Riario (probably influenced by Florence’s new podestà Cesare Borgia, due to Riario’s distaste for the Medici) as Pope Sixtus V. Riario, a patron of the arts (having invited Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci to Rome during his Cardinalate), was more or less indifferent to Church affairs, and - despite the very troubling emergence of Protestantism and the calamitous Bauernkrieg in the Holy Roman Empire - could not be convinced to convene an ecumenical council until 1522 (and then only partly due to a Hapsburg army headed by the young heir Charles pressuring the Vatican into speeding things up). Beginning in late 1522 and closing in early 1525, the Fifth Lateran Council concluded, amongst many other things, that:
- General councils could only be convoked with the approval of the Holy Father.
- General councils must remain subordinate in their authority to the Holy Father.
- Before being ordained, priests must be certified by their bishop as competent preachers, upright in personal morals, and sufficiently well-versed in theological matters.
- Holy war against the Turks was to be pursued with urgency.
- Vernacular translations of the Scriptures were permitted, but only under the close supervision of a Papal representative deemed impeccably orthodox in his exegesis and fluent in the relevant languages. These translations were then to be reviewed by the local bishop as well, and were to be kept solely in his possession.
- Most importantly, all grants of indulgences involving any fees or material recompense were to be formally suspended.
Some years before the death of Sixtus V in 1524, Miguel and Philip I had secretly agreed to push for Philip’s preferred papabile, the Dutchman Adrian of Utrecht, and then push for Miguel’s candidate after. However, the combined influence of both the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Spain was not sufficient to break the pro-Italian coalition painstakingly built up in the Sacred College by Julius II, and Adrian was passed over in favor of Alessandro Farnese, the bishop of Parma, who would take the name Paul III (the Medici candidate, Giulio, archbishop of Benevento, was similarly passed over due to the Medici family’s increasingly close ties to the viceroy of Naples, the infante Fernando).
After the death of Miguel and the failure of Philip I to get his pope, the agreement between the Hapsburgs and the Avís-Trastámaras was implicitly still set to proceed, but the papacy of Paul III only strengthened the pro-Italian elements of the Papacy, especially in the face of what was seen as incessant meddling in Italian politics by French, German, and Spanish alike. The defeat of the French in the Third Italian War and the lack of any significant, aggressive Spanish activity in Italy since the First Italian War meant that the attitude of the Curia became more anti-Imperial than anti French or anti-Spanish. While neither Miguel nor his chosen papabile, Alonso III Fonseca, the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela (which would be a significant propaganda victory for a united Spain) would outlive Paul III, with Spain bearing the full brunt of the Turkish advance, a Spanish candidate for the papacy became much more likely. While Charles V pushed vigorously for the nomination of William de Croÿ (nephew of the more well known, same named former tutor of Charles), the bishop of of newly formed diocese of Mechelen, the year 1536 saw a certain Ignatius of Loyola granted the see of St. Peter (Charles IX of France’s preferred candidates would also be ignored on account of his inaction towards the growing number of Protestants in his realm).
Born Ignazio Loiolakoa in 1491, Ignatius (who kept his name as Pope) was a Basque who, in his youth, aspired towards an accomplished career on the field of battle. Like so many others with similar goals in the Iberian peninsula, Ignatius volunteered as a lay brother in the Órdenes Militantes to serve in North Africa. However, when sailing for Tlemcen in 1521, the galley bearing Ignatius was shipwrecked, and the young soldier soon found himself the prisoner and slave of Muslim corsairs,[3] who put him to work as an oarsmen. Changing hands multiple times over the years (even ending up on the flagship of Oruç Reis at one point), Ignatius was finally freed in a Spanish raid in 1524. Having never had so much as drawn his sword, Ignatius returned home - his body gaunt, his dreams shattered, and his spirit broken. After weeks recuperating, Ignatius experienced a profound spiritual crisis, causing him to renounce a life of bloodshed and personal gain, and instead enter the priesthood and join the Mercedarians. As a Mercedarian, Ignatius greatly impressed all he met through his untiring diligence in the business of ransoming and rescuing Christian prisoners and slaves, and inspired them likewise through his intense focus in meditation. By 1532, Ignatius had been made the archbishop of Valencia, and had even served a stint as auxiliary bishop of Zaragoza.
Ignatius embodied the fruit of the many ecclesiastical reforms carried out by Miguel and the Catholic Monarchs. Ignatius emphasized a rigorous denial of self and constantly stressed the need for both a more exhaustive priestly education and a consistent, nigh-omnipresent engagement with the common people. These attitudes brought Ignatius closely in line with Pope Paul III, who more or less deemed Ignatius his preferred successor. The death of Paul III in 1536 was certainly too early to make the accession of Ignatius a certainty, but Ignatius soon found himself the object of Spanish ambition. Even with its nebulous interactions with the Papal States in recent times, Spain possessed a considerable amount of leverage in the Holy See. Besides expressing no interest in further expansion or military activity in Italy (beyond ensuring the stability of Genoa), the Spanish had just repulsed an Ottoman invasion of Italy and concluded the first phase of multi-generational crusade in North Africa, not to mention Miguel had poured a considerable amount of American gold and silver into the construction and decoration of innumerable churches and cathedrals in his realms, and there was plenty left over for Juan Pelayo to fill the pockets of any dissenting cardinals.
The election of Ignatius scandalized a good number of cardinals - Ignatius had, after, only been an ordained priest for 13 years - and there would be many reactionary elements in the Curia and the Sacred College that would heavily oppose Ignatius throughout his papacy, but, ultimately, the vast majority of Ignatius’ reforms would succeed. Almost immediately, Ignatius sounded the call for another ecumenical council -- this time to more conclusively address the issue of Protestantism - and, with the Holy Roman Empire headed by the iron-willed and ultra-orthodox Charles V since his father’s death in 1531, there was no room for further delay. The Second Council of Basel commenced in 1538, and - given the outbreak of hostilities between most of Western Europe’s major powers in the early 1540s - would not conclude without interruption until late 1546. The council's major points - apart from reaffirming the pronouncements of the Fifth Lateran Council, were as follows:
- The doctrines of the Real Presence and Transubstantiation (as well as of the other sacraments) were reinforced - Jesus Christ was both physically and spiritually manifest in the forms of the bread and wine that constitute the Eucharist.
- The veneration of the Virgin Mary, saints, and relics were all strongly affirmed - but their subordination to the Holy Trinity was also, of course, stressed.
- The baptism of infants was declared valid and, in most cases, absolutely necessary.
- Iconography and other religious displays of art were both permissible and encouraged, and iconoclasm was deemed a misguided, if not diabolical perversion of religious fervor and pious austerity.
- Justification comes through faith, but, as written by St. James, “faith without works is dead.”
- Scripture alone was not sufficient for self-referential interpretation - Scripture and tradition had to be used in tandem.
- The Holy See was established by Christ and placed in the care of St. Peter and his successors, and thereby enjoyed a position of leadership in the universal Church as the Vicariate of Christ.
- A great number of clerical abuses were addressed: guidelines were finely laid out detailing, in part, the morality of priests and religious, limitations on both benefices and censures, a minimal level of education required for priestly ordination and for elevation to an episcopate, and a prohibition on dueling and the pursuit of personal grievances.
- The works of Johann Albrecht Meyer, David Vinter, Andreas Karlstadt, and many like-minded were formally denounced, and anyone who professed their teachings was excommunicated via latae sententiae.
- The right of appeal of priests and bishops to the Vatican was restricted to strictly ecclesial matters - secular charges were to be processed by secular courts.
- Translation of Scripture or personal ownership of a bible were not intrinsically ill-intentioned, and therefore the dissemination of vernacular bibles was to be allowed so long as its translation had received an imprimatur from a local bishop in good standing (Ignatius granted Juan Pelayo a special dispensation before the conclusion of the council to freely permit the printing of vernacular bibles in the kingdoms of Spain, with the only condition being that every copy printed bear the imprimatur of both the local bishop and of the Holy Office of the Inquisition).
- Significantly, Church councils could be called and assembled without Papal approval, but could not be considered binding in any way without the Pope's attendance and approval. [4]
The Second Council of Basel in session
Besides completing a major Church council, Ignatius' papacy also saw the formation of numerous, effective religious orders. Apart from the Gregorians of Bernardino de Sahagún (approved in 1548), Ignatius also gave his blessing to an order that had begun to function in Northern Italy during the papacy of Paul III. Official named the Congregation of the Apostolic Life, the Oratorians (colloquially named after their personal chapels) were given papal approval by Ignatius in 1541 and soon did their part to fill a noticeable gap in 16th century Catholicism - especially in nascent Catholic communities. The mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans could preach well enough, baptizing on occasion some thousands in a single day, and the Gregorians were instrumental in making the Gospel and the traditions of the Church accessible to a multitude of almost diametrically opposed cultures, but there was something missing. The conversions, when they did come, were almost always imperfect; old habits die hard, and religious habits are the most resilient. The lack of everyday engagement from Catholicism apart from baptism, mass, and the occasional anointing of the sick or marriage had engendered in many Catholic communities - whether newly converted or centuries old - a confusion as to just what Catholicism was all about.
If the Church truly intended to be the most important facet of its flock’s everyday lives, it would have to meet them there. What was needed was greater involvement, and the Oratorians brought just that: unlike other orders, the Oratorians’ whole mission was to fully immerse themselves in the public, quotidian world. Organized into houses with multiple resident priests and brothers, the Oratorians arranged their rooms around a common oratory and preferred to establish themselves in urban centers or other areas of higher population density. When not performing mass (usually at numerous different churches), the Oratorians would go out and mingle with the common people, conversing with them on all matters, public or private, often hearing confessions on street corners (fountains were often favored, due to the noise). Adult men were also invited to attend lectures and sermons, pray the hours, or seek advice at the oratory, and were given the option of joining the Oratorians’ lay organization, the Confraternity of the Apostolic Life. Known as “Apostólicos” in the Hispanosphere, the Oratorians worked wonders for the newly-Christianized in Spain’s many colonies; providing them with constant, easily understandable spiritual care, and virtually leaving no room for their old pre-Christian religious habits to be maintained or remain relevant. Amidst a Church hierarchy that had come to be seen by many everyday Catholic as cold and distant in its parochial life and extravagant - if not lascivious - in its personal morality, the Oratorians brought with them a simple, down to earth sense of spiritual brotherhood and devotional joy.
An Oratorian assisting a beggar
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[1] Andreas Karlstadt has thus ascended past the brief moment of significance he had in OTL, with some interesting consequences. Through him, some of the ideals of the Peasants' War have survived, although they've been adapted and formulated to be more palatable to a wider audience. Karlstadter Protestantism (practiced by the "Brethren" churches) doesn't really have a direct OTL counterpart. It's an amalgam of different strains of Reformation: in essence, it's communal Lutheranism with an extra emphasis on the "priesthood of all believers," combined with a quasi-Zwinglian, "symbolicized" understanding of the Eucharist, a Presbyterian-esque system of regional "synods" that form a sort of ecumenical body uniting the Brethren churches, and an Anabaptist approach to baptism (although this would only become the dominant practice later on). The Brethren are thus sort of like Calvinists concerning which communities they appeal to and concerning their dominance of Radical Protestantism.
[2] Meyer is a fictional, a lecturer from Göttingen turned Protestant reformer who has filled the vacuum in leadership left by Martin Luther. Luther did not disappear from the scene, but he was never denounced as harshly or as quickly by the Papacy or the Emperor as in OTL, so he never formally broke with Rome. Consequently, the Protestant movement had a lot of revolutionary thrust initially that Luther wasn't able to keep up with (his rejection of the Bauernkrieg being one example of this), and now moderate "Mainline" Protestantism has mostly moved past him with Meyer - who has a much more definitive, anti-papal formula of reform - taking his place. Meyeran Protestantism is therefore mostly identical to OTL's Lutheranism, with a few minor exceptions. Meyer himself is supposed to be a brilliant theologian and a tireless, headstrong organizer, but is unable to overcome his German supremacist leanings and bullheaded nature and, as a result, alienates other Protestant groups even faster than Luther did IOTL.
[3] Pope Ignatius was a slave, and will not be the last pontiff ITTL to share a similar past. You can probably imagine how this is going to shape the Papacy's attitude towards slavery in the near future.
[4] This is going to be important when it comes to reforming churches at a local level. Bishops are essentially conceded the right to enforce certain regulations without having to always make an appeal to Rome, or worry about their subordinates appealing to Rome in protest.