Ritual and Toleration in Sixteenth Century Europe
The idea of religious pluralism and civil toleration, and by
extension the modern idea of freedom of conscience and expression, were
first formulated in sixteenth century Germany and France against a
backdrop of the principle "cujus regio, ejus religio", i.e., the principle
that the sovereign determined the religious beliefs of his or her
subjects. These ideas of toleration and freedom of expression were in
part a reaction to the terrible religious persecutions and wars which
accompanied the application of that principle. In Renaissance Europe
neither the Catholic Church nor the new Protestant churches entertained
the idea that some religious confession other than their own could be
allowed to exist in civil society. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists
were certain of their monopoly of truth about God, and of the rituals
necessary to honour Him. Since this truth concerned the very will of God,
they were equally certain that to tolerate any religious opinions, or any
rituals, other than their own, would be an unspeakable blasphemy deserving
the unforgiving wrath of God. The least that they could do here on earth
to protect God's dignity was put to the rebellious blasphemers to
death.
Depreciation of ritual in Luther and Calvin
It is true that the Protestant reformers Luther and Calvin had
initiated a certain critique and relativisation of ritual -- opposing
justification by faith to the objective efficacy of the Catholic
sacramental system, and suppressing images in Calvinist worship -- but in
both cases they replaced the Roman ritual with their own. In both cases
they also replaced Catholic orthodoxy with their own, and tolerated no
theological dissent in countries that adopted their reforms.
Martin Luther
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Let us examine more closely those elements of the theology of Luther and
Calvin which in the first instance suggested a depreciation of the value
of ritual. The centre of Martin Luther's thought, the concept to which
all other aspects of his teaching are related, is his doctrine of
justification. From the outset of his reforming enterprise Luther
insisted that human persons could not render themselves just in the eyes
of God through their own good works. Salvation is a free gift offered
to each person by God in spite of and not because of her or his actions.
This central Lutheran idea was naturally incompatible with the medieval
Catholic view that ritual was inherently efficacious, that the ritual
acts of the Church bestowed divine grace upon the faithful in the
carrying out of the ritual itself, that they functioned, to use the
technical Latin term, "ex opere operato". In Catholicism the ritual was
a human action that mediated between God and the sinner, and made
possible the sinner's reconciliation to God by making present and
effective the work of Christ. The mass, for example, was not a mere
commemorative symbol of Christ's sacrifice, it was this
sacrifice, made real and present to the believer. But for Luther this
was impossible: no ritual or any other human action could in itself
convey divine grace and reconcile God to the human person. It is the
divine promise or word that brings grace, and this promise has no
intrinsic need to be linked to an external sign or ritual. In his
treatise on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, where in 1520
Luther attacked the Catholic sacramental and sacerdotal system, he
declared: "a [person] may have and use a word or testament without a
sign or sacrament... Thus I am able daily, indeed hourly, to have the
mass; for as often as I wish I can set the words of Christ before
me."
Calvin, the other great Protestant thinker of the century, held
similar views concerning the sacraments as signs of God's promise, and
Calvinist worship was de-ritualised, i.e., the role of the physical signs
and gestures was reduced, even more than the worship of Lutherans. At
Geneva the Lord's Supper was simplified and celebrated only four times a
year, and church services were above all verbal: they consisted almost
exclusively of talking, for the most part by the preacher. In addition
statues and other images were removed from Calvinist churches, and in the
civil strife between French Calvinists and Catholics in the last half of
the century it was not uncommon for Huguenots to smash the images in
Catholic churches.
In the case of Protestantism we observe then a partial
de-ritualization, with a shift of emphasis in their ritual gatherings away
from the physical and the gestual towards the verbal. However the new
word-dominated forms of ritual were quickly institutionalised, while at
the same time Protestant theology, although in its origins a doctrine
precisely of protest, became a new codified and normative orthodoxy in
those European states where it was adopted. Although Luther had stressed
the spiritual rather than the ritual and institutional aspects of
sacramental theology, he also came to argue that the Church was to be
found where one could see the preaching of the word of God, baptism, and
the eucharist (Von dem Bapstum zum Rome, 1520). Writing in 1525
Luther's
emphasis shifts from his earlier minimisation of the role of ritual and
he now affirms that God "deals with us... first outwardly, then
inwardly,...
in such a way that the external means of grace necessarily precede"
(Against the Heavenly Prophets). In practice this meant that the
Lutheran
Church maintained the essential external apparatus of the Church: creeds,
ecclesiastical discipline, professional ministry, buildings for worship,
and of course ritual induction into the belief-community and regular
gatherings of the faithful for the celebration of the liturgy. The new
Protestant institutions, the new orthodoxy and the new ritual were no less
uncompromising than the old, and thousands of Anabaptists, Catholics and
other dissenters were drowned and burnt for their beliefs in the states
where Lutheranism, Calvinism or Anglicanism replaced Roman
Catholicism.
Origins of toleration
There were only a few Catholics and Protestants who on an individual
basis expressed doubts about the legitimacy and efficacy of religious
persecution, and some branches of the Anabaptist movement rejected all
forms of violence and persecution. However a coherent theory of civil
toleration and freedom of conscience was developed only outside of
institutional Christianity. It appeared in the writings of that small
group of European thinkers who, synthesising strands of mysticism,
humanism and rationalism, moved beyond the project of the Protestant
reformers and came to reject ecclesiastical religion altogether. Indeed
they completely redefined the meaning of traditional doctrinal language in
terms of internalised spiritual experience and externalised ethics. These
thinkers have been called Spiritualists in Reformation historiography
since the late nineteenth century. The two Spiritualists who contributed
most to the question of toleration were the more mystically-inclined
German Sebastian Franck, a disillusioned ex-Lutheran pastor, and
the more rationally-inclined Frenchman, Sebastian Castellio, a former
close collaborator of Calvin and director of the college in Geneva who
had also become quickly disillusioned with the course of the Protestant
reformation.
It is easy to see how the Spiritualists' ethicisation and
spiritualisation of doctrine and their rejection of ecclesiastical
institutions are linked to the concepts of toleration and freedom of
conscience. If doctrines are no longer statements about metaphysical
realities and historical events, if they are no longer objective facts but
rather the subjective and symbolic expressions of individual inner
spiritual experience and outward moral conduct, there is no reason to
compel assent to the verbal formulation of such doctrines by the members
of a civil society. In this understanding of religious doctrines and
practices, what counts is not the words or gestures, which are only signs,
but experience and moral behaviour. Indeed the signs, like those of a
language, are ultimately arbitrary and sometimes interchangeable with
another set of equally valid signs.
Sebastian Franck
 |
A polemic against ritual was an inherent element of Franck's and
Castellio's theorisation of religious toleration. Throughout
Sebastian Franck's numerous writings on historical, geographical,
philosophical and theological topics there runs a common thread, namely
a consistent, philosophical dichotomy between the inner and the outer,
the spiritual and the physical, the real and the apparent. Dogma, and
thus dogmatism and intolerance, have this in common with ritual: they
are outward, superficial, deceptive; neither dogma nor ritual can embody
the reality of spiritual experience, which is inward and invisible.
The "inner", the "outer", and toleration in Sebastian Franck
The inner/outer dichotomy in Franck's thought characterises human nature
itself. The outer world is the domain of Satan, the symbol of the power
of evil, and the outward human person belongs to this outer world. The
inner human person, on the other hand, is for Franck, as he or she is
for the medieval Rhineland mystics like Tauler and Eckhart, a spark of
the divine nature, or, to use another metaphor, the inner word of God.
The ritual of the different churches is tied to what Franck habitually
calls the "elements" of the outer world, while the reality which the
ritual is claimed to embody can be found within the spirit of the inner
person. This internalisation of ritual is found at first in Franck's
Epistle to Campanus of 1531, where he takes up the idea Luther
had suggested eleven years earlier in the Babylonian Captivity of the
Church but carries it much further. Luther had suggested that the
essence of the sacrament was God's word, not the physical sign; Franck
completely separates God's word from the sign and places it deep within
the spirit of the human person. The partial de-ritualisation of the
Protestants has become a total de-ritualisation in the thought of the
Spiritualist.
Two other antitheses important in the work of Franck are that of the
Holy Spirit and Satan or Antichrist, and that of New Testament and Old
Testament. For Franck, just as the outer human or Adam has fallen, so
has the outer or institutional Church. All the outer, visible
ceremonies or rituals have been delivered over to the Antichrist. The
Holy Spirit -- which is not for Franck a distinct "person" of the
Trinity as in traditional theology, but rather God's mode of operating
in relation to each human being -- this Holy Spirit now baptises and
nourishes the believer with the eucharstic body and blood of Christ, and
does so without any external agent or medium.
The antithesis New Testament/Old Testament is also important for our
topic. In Franck's system ceremony and ritual are characteristic of the
Old Testament, which since Christ has been replaced by the New. The
outward constitution of the People of God in the Old Testament was for
Franck a temporary concession made by God to the Israelites in
anticipation of the coming of Christ. Under the old order the people of
Israel had seen the rituals of the pagans, and desired to have their
own. God allowed this as a provisional measure, just as parents allow
their children to play with toys before they become adults. But with
God's revelation in Christ humanity becomes precisely adult, and
although in its infancy the Church also had its toys, these are not at
all essential to the New Covenant. On the contrary, the New Testament,
or the new relationship between God and humanity, is in its essence
spiritual. Ancient Israel was constituted as a visible people with its
particular rituals; the Church, or the New Israel, is by contrast an
invisible spiritual assembly, and the rituals of ancient Israel were
mere figures or or signs of the priesthood, prayer, baptism and
eucharist that in the New Covenant are real, that is to say entirely
inward and spiritual (Paradoxa, 44v-48r). Christians, unlike the
Israelites of antiquity, have been freed from the elements of the world,
and are the masters rather than the slaves of external things. In this
regard Franck refers to Jesus' reply to the woman of Samaria in chapter
four of the Gospel of John, where he is quoted as saying: "Neither on
this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father... True
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth... God is
spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth"
(4:21-24).
A ritual-free invisible church
We can see here, with Franck's correlation of the purely spiritual
nature of God to a purely spiritual form of worship, that his doctrine of
God is also important for his rejection of ritual and for his idea of
toleration. Like other Christian mystics, the God of Franck is the God of
the via negativa, i.e., an utterly transcendent, unknowable and ineffable
mystery about whom, ultimately, nothing can be said concerning what He is.
Human language can only express what He is not. Among other things God is
not and cannot be confined to space and time; therefore it is, according
to Franck, against the very nature of God to be bound in ritual acts to
the elements of this world (To Campanus). One of God's negative
attributes is his impartiality, in the literal sense: God by his nature
cannot be associated with any party, group or nation. Therefore no
religion or church can claim that God is theirs, or that God has entrusted
to them alone the truth. This aspect of Franck's thought is both
individualistic and universalistic, because on the one hand he affirms
that every individual human person has been created in the image of God
and has the word of God within himself or herself, and on the other hand
that God's chosen people is the whole of humanity and not any particular
group within it.
The universality of Franck's true, invisible, ritual-free spiritual
church is one aspect of the notion of tolerance in his thought. He
frequently refers to the spiritual church as the "ecclesia dispersa",
the people of God dispersed among the pagans and all the peoples of the
world. Whatever formal beliefs people might have, whatever external
rituals they might observe, do not constitute true religion; but
everywhere in the world, among all nations, God baptises with the spirit
everyone who obeys the inner Word, regardless of their outward religion
(To Campanus). "There have always been," he writes, "Christians
among the pagans... who do not know if there has ever been or if there
ever will be a Christ" (Paradoxa, 129r).
Precisely because God does not bind his grace to the external ritual of
any church, we are called upon to be impartial as He is, and not to
judge any person because of her or his formal religion. Although no
institutional church is the real, spiritual church, membership in such a
body does not preclude one's being a real Christian. Franck therefore
affirms that Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians and Muslims are all
his brothers, even if he shares the opinions of none of them (Das
verbuthschiert...Buch, 427v). God permits false opinions to have
free reign, Franck argues, because the truth can be recognised only when
it is put to the test in an ongoing struggle with falsehood
(Chronica III, 236r)
Castellio: Ritual differences a source of intolerance
Sebastian Franck therefore condemned without reservation the horrible
religious persecutions carried out by Catholics and Protestants alike in
the name of orthodoxy, and, especially in his historical and
geographical writings, he became a prominent if exceptional advocate of
religious toleration and freedom of expression in the 1530's. Two
decades later the French humanist Sébastien Castellion or Sebastian
Castellio translated the chapter of Franck's Chronicle dealing
with persecution and intolerance and published it in his famous treatise
of 1554, De Haereticis or Concerning Heretics. This book
was Castellio's response to Calvin's seizure and execution at the stake
in Geneva of a visiting Spanish scientist and philosopher Michael
Servetus, who had made himself notorious in theological circles by
openly rejecting the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. The De
Haereticis was an anthology of texts that could be used in defence
of the idea of toleration, the most important ones having been written
by Castellio himself under pseudonyms.
Sebastian Castellio
|
In the De Haereticis Castellio deplores the ritual differences
that have become sources of hatred and persecution, but which in
themselves are insignificant. He cites, for instance, the person who
receives communion in both kinds, or another person who will not baptise
his child before the age of adolescence (Dedication, Bainton, p. 124).
Castellio emphasizes the contradiction between the persecution of such
people of the peaceful nature of Christ himself.
In 1555 Castellio published another, longer and more detailed treatise
on toleration entitled De Haereticis non puniendis (On not
Punishing Heretics). Here we find a view of ritual that is
virtually identical to Sebastian Franck's. Castellio attacks Calvin and
his followers for "being impeded by the visible and carnal and arrested
by the visible tokens." He explicitly defines baptism by the Spirit and
communion with the flesh and blood of Christ as being synonymous with
putting off the old person of sin and putting on the new, regenerate
person. The true sacraments are thus the fruits of love, which
Castellio contrasts with "the exterior sermons and sacraments" of the
Calvinists (Engl. tr. in Bainton, Studies, p. 176-7).
In developing his theory of the freedom of conscience Castellio
targets the very idea that it is possible to know with certitude what is
religious truth and what are the proper ceremonies. Castellio's reasoning
on this matter is simple: if religious truth and the meaning of the Bible
were clear, there would be no disagreement about them. Since however it
is on these questions precisely that there is so much controversy, it is
obvious that dogmas and many passages of Scripture are too obscure for
their meaning and truth to be established with certainty. There is
therefore no factual objectivity in any statement claiming the authority
of revelation.
Obscurity of dogma
Castellio writes that religious doctrines "are given obscurely and often
in enigmas and inscrutable questions which have been in dispute for more
than a thousand years without any agreement ever being reached, or
without the possibility that it can be reached even now, unless this
were to be through love." "Yet for this reason," he adds, "the earth is
filled with innocent blood." (Dédicace de la Bible à Edouard VI,
1551, in Lecler and Valkhoff, p. 105). In his later work De arte
dubitandi (On the Art of Doubting), of 1562, the French
humanist enunciates this principle: where there is consensus, one may
believe, where there is not, one must doubt.
Like Sebastian Franck, Castellio replaces both the external,
institutional guarantee of truth and the ritual vehicles of grace by the
internal, spiritual working of the divine word within the human person.
However Castellio takes an important step in the direction of modern
rationalism by identifying this inward word with "reason". "Reason," he
writes in the De arte dubitandi, "existed before Scripture and
ceremonies... and will exist after Scripture and ceremonies... Reason is
a kind of eternal word of God, far older and more certain than
Scriptures and ceremonies. For reason is, as it were, an inner speech
or word that always speaks the truth." (De arte dubitandi, pp.
65-66). Castellio sees freedom of conscience as a fundamental corollary
of the autonomy of human reason. It is through reason itself that the
Scriptures must be interpreted, and it is reason that takes the place of
the ceremonies and ritual of traditional religion.
Sebastian Franck and Sebastian Castellio are among the most important
contributors in early modern Europe to the emergent notions of human
rights. The origins of the principles of freedom of conscience and
toleration are firmly rooted in the problematic caused by the break-up of
Christendom the sixteenth century, and these principles were thus in the
first instance developed in terms that are different from the terms in
which they would be cast today. The language is Christian, and in the
case of Sebastian Franck even mystical, but in the nascent rationalism of
Sebastian Castellio there are hints of a more modern way of
conceptualising them.
French Enlightenment
At the outset the principle of toleration was associated with a polemic
against ritual in a way that might seem surprising to us today. This
polemic however remained a part of the arguments for tolerance down
through the eighteenth century, particularly in the French
Enlightenment. Montesquieu, in his pleas for freedom and toleration,
impressed the readers of his Persian Letters (46) with the
parable of a man who did not know how to please God: some told him he
should pray standing, others sitting, still others kneeling. Some wanted
him to wash in cold water, others wanted to have part of his skin
excised. He was told that eating a rabbit would offend God, because it
was an unclean animal, or because it had not been strangled, or because
it was not a fish, or because his father's soul might be in the rabbit.
The confused man decided that there was only one way to please God: to
live as a good citizen in his society, and a good father in his
family.
James MacLean,
Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Other essays by James MacLean