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7_Sorrows
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civilizations and cultures advance. the Church has changed. there have been 2 world wars. i don’t see any reason to believe that Jews would still be living in ghettos.
What would the world be like if the Reformation never occurred, and every Protestant Church was Catholic?
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Kaninchen
Guest
The Roman ghetto was enforced until the Italian army took Rome in 1870 and the Papal States were abolished, so Papal policy - some Popes more antipathetic/some Popes more sympathetic - only fundamentally changed in the sense that they were unable to do anything about it and that’s how far that particular aspect of civilization/cultural advancement had managed to arrive at at that point.
A counterpoint to arguments about ‘how lovely the world would be if the Reformation hadn’t happened’ is to look at places where it didn’t, like Spain and Italy.
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7_Sorrows
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i have to admit that i do not know much about the Roman ghetto. i am more familiar with the ghettos that were in eastern europe.
i realize that some Popes were not as sympathetic as others.
well Spain had the Spanish Civil War and Franco and Italy had Mussolini.
things were not great for the Jews in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in russia and parts of europe and that is why so many came to the United States.
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Contarini
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“Revisionist” scholars, in the sense in which the term’s used by historians, would be the ones who argue that these things were “not as bad as they have been made out to be.” I suspect that you’re using the term the other way round–many non-historians think that “revisionist” is a slur meaning something like “a historian who tries to argue that things were other than they really were.” A revisionist is someone who tries to “revise” accepted understandings of history. A revisionist may be right or wrong–usually revisionists contribute greatly to our understanding of the past, even if they go way too far in the opposite direction from the traditional one.
Henry Kamen, for instance, is an excellent “revisionist” historian of the Inquisition.
I think one mistake people make in answering this question is assuming that if the Reformation hadn’t happened the Catholic Church as it emerged from the Reformation would simply have been the only game in town. The post-Reformation Catholic Church was itself a product of the events of the Reformation era. One can understand why pious, traditional Catholics might forget this–it’s easy, and understandable, to skate over the complexities of historical development in one’s conviction that the essence remains unchanged. But what’s odd is that Protestants and secularists also seem to assume that if it hadn’t been for the Reformation we’d all be living under Tridentine Catholicism.
I tend to agree with Erasmus–the conservative backlash that became Tridentine Catholicism should be blamed (for those of us who have problems with it) on the Reformation.
If no Reformation, what would have happened? There’s no way to tell. The Reformation resulted from a very complex set of cultural, religious, economic, and social factors. One can imagine it turning out differently–but something was going to happen. What the world would look like now would depend on what happened instead of the particular set of events we call the “Reformation.”
From my perspective, it would have been nice if something like Vatican II had happened in the sixteenth century. That’s anachronistic, but not entirely so–some of the reforms were things that people had been pushing for ever since the Reformation era, and that ranges from specifics like more vernacular in the liturgy to general principles like a great emphasis on the Bible and the Fathers over against scholasticism.
Edwin
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Contarini
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It did happen in Italy–in a particularly gentle and Catholic form–and was squashed by the “Counter-Reformation.”
Spain is a better argument, but even there, government policy was very much aware of the Reformation even if most people in Spain were untouched by it. Furthermore, the particular harshness of Spanish Catholicism was shaped by the Reconquista.
Northern European and Italian “Catholicisms” were very different, and might have gone on being very different.
In a sense, the Reformation made all of Catholic Europe “Spanish.”
Edwin
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minion
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Thanks, will do, I’ll try to remind myself to keep generalizations (in either extreme) in check.
Didn’t the Enlightenment/Revolutionary era eventually result in the Holocaust though?
Theoretically the series of events is…
- Reformation (and Martin Luther was definitely anti-Semitic…he wrote a book "On the Jews and Their Lies).
- Religious Wars
- Enlightenment (not sure, but didn’t Marx have undertones of anti-semitism in his writings?)
- Secularization of governments
- Eugenics movement
- Gradual secularization of Nazis, eventually leading to persecution of religious establishments
- Holocaust (Nazi-instituted eugenics essentially)
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Kaninchen
Guest
I expect that the ‘key’ would have been how Catholicism would have developed in France. Hapsburg-Valois/Bourbon rivalry would have happened/continued whether there was a Reformation or not so the French would just have had to work on the particularism of the German princes in another way.
Had the French lost then Spanish control of the Italian States would have been unchallenged, ensuring a ‘Spanish’ Papacy and a ‘Spanish’ Catholicism. In other words, an absence of Reformation would have made all of Catholic Europe “Spanish”.
How long that could have lasted without an explosion of some sort is another question.
Meanwhile, I’d still be living in a ghetto - or in Turkey or wherever.
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minion
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What I mean by “Revisionist” history is definitely meant in a negative connotation - it is history that has been distorted. It can be by accident due to fictional literature, eventually becoming accepted as true, or deliberate to fulfill some political agenda (ex. see the Myth of the Flath Earth).
I’m not sure if you’re defending the idea of what revisionist historians do, but if so, I definitely disagree. For example, the movie “The Messenger” which is a “biography” :doh2: about Joan of Arc that could fit your definition, but is full of blatant lies (to suit the director’s “understanding” of history). However, for mainstream audiences who watched it, like Roger Ebert, the chance of taking it at face value is high, and the public perception of Joan of Arc is changed.
I simply want the truth, the facts, as close as I can get to it anyway. Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut
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Kaninchen
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I don’t want to talk here about anti-Semitism - it developed in a particular era of European history with quite a number of antecedents and streams of thought including ideas and developments within both Protestantism and Catholicism.
There were no ‘Wars of Religion’, they were wars about power, territory and money, people used religious language because that was the language they had available.
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Contarini
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This is a claim often made–nearly as often as the even more erroneous claim that “religion is the biggest cause of wars.”
What are your reasons for making this claim? How on earth would you go about eliminating religion as a motivating factor?
Edwin
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AngryAtheist8
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I am guessing no Enlightenment, or Industrial Revolution, since the competition between the Protestant and Catholic nations of Europe was a big factor in those periods of history (at the very least the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution would have occurred very differently).
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AngryAtheist8
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Like life saving medicine or communication technologies such as the one that you’re using right now
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AngryAtheist8
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Probably not.
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TheAtheist
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Very true - although perhaps not always in the sense we’d might think of it.
A perfect example would be the 2nd French Empire under Napoleon III ~ some of the bureaucrats and civil servants were patting themselves on the back for their ability to treat the Jewish people as citizens of the Empire…despite their perceived “racial defects” and the bureaucracy’s deeply rooted anti-semitic opinions.
ie: “I am such a Good Republican/Citizen because I can treat the Jews fairly…even if they are a bunch of _________.”
So Kaninchen to the Ghetto. And i’d probably be unfortunately dead.
…or in Venice.
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Kaninchen
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I remember listening to a Swedish historian talking about Gustav Adolf’s intervention in the Thirty/Fifty Years War. On the face of it a pretty good example of ‘principled’ intervention - until you find that he was being given a giant ‘bung’ by the French (involving grain market transactions).
Obviously, one can’t deny that there were some ‘religious’ motivations but, I’d suggest, that they were more to do with what we would now call ‘propaganda’ and aids to recruitment than a driving force. Wars were very expensive operations and realpolitik motivations very apparent. Were the Protestant German Princes fighting about religion, for example, or was religion a very good means of establishing their power relative to the Empire?
The Reformation came along at a very useful time.
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AngryAtheist8
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Yes (at least from a practical point of view).
The Catholic Church had that kind of power pack then.
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Contarini
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Yes, but with all due respect, that’s an uninformed use of the word. It assumes that somehow we “already” have infallible, complete knowledge of history, and then there are these nasty “revisionists” who distort things.
In fact we have paradigms for understanding history, which are from time to time challenged by “revisionists.” Sometimes the challenges hold up on further, careful inquiry, sometimes they don’t–often something in between is accepted and becomes the new paradigm.
Russell, who debunked the “flat earth” myth most thoroughly and effectively, was a revisionist in so doing–in the sense in which historians use the term.
Obviously you can use words any way you choose–lots of people use the word the way you do. But your usage results in a misunderstanding of what historians mean when they use the term, and more seriously it perpetuates a naive understanding of how historical inquiry works.
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So you disagree with Kamen and Russell and others who have challenged accepted historical paradigms in ways that favor Catholicism?
You think that whatever the mainstream of historians think is always right and should always be accepted uncritically?
Right. And for that you need revisionists–otherwise you will be stuck with an “accepted” paradigm that in many cases (as in the two we’ve mentioned–or for that matter the Crusades) is shaped by Enlightenment anti-Catholicism (since you desire the truth, you shouldn’t want to be stuck with paradigms that favor Catholicism if they aren’t supported by the evidence, but in fact as often as not the revisionist account makes Catholicism look better, given the dominance of the early stages of the development of modern historical scholarship by secular/Protestant attitudes).
Edwin
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AngryAtheist8
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Yes, Christendom never had much affection for Jews.
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Kaninchen
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I think we have to be careful in talking about ‘anti-Semitism’ as opposed to old-fashioned ‘Jew-hatred’ - some of the magic ingredients were pretty primitive at that time, conspiracy theory had yet to be fully developed, for example.
Ah, La Serenissima.…or in Venice.
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Contarini
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Right. But the 30 Years’ War, even in the “traditional” paradigm, is the transition point between the wars of religion and the wars of the early modern secular state. The French participation pretty clearly wasn’t religious, since the French government was Catholic but intervened on the side of the Protestants. You’re right that Gustavus Adolphus has been built up in the past as a great Protestant hero, but that the reality was more complicated.
But on what basis do you suggest this? You seem to assume that if there were other factors, then the religious factors don’t count.
I think this is a very seductive assumption to modern people, because both secular people (who think religion trivial) and deeply religious people (who think it good and pure, at least in its “correct” form) have reasons to believe it. But it doesn’t fit the reality of the early modern period.
The typical modern assumption is that if you have any kind of self-centered motive, you don’t really have a "religious’ motive. But that doesn’t make sense. If you believe that the omnipotent God is on your side and supports your religion, why (unless you have a robust theology of the Cross) wouldn’t that God make it profitable for you to defend His cause? There’s no conflict between sincerely believing you are on God’s side and sincerely believing that fighting for God will make you rich and powerful. One isn’t necessarily more “real” than the other.
Both. Why on earth would it be an either/or?
And in fact on a number of occasions people did things for religion that were bad realpolitik. The Protestant princes were at a disadvantage fighting the Empire in the Schmalkaldic War of the 1540s–they fought because they thought they would be unfaithful to God if they didn’t. The guy who really was primarily motivated by realpolitik, Maurice of Saxony, switched sides and supported the Emperor. Elector John Frederick didn’t do the same thing because he really believed he’d be abandoning the cause of Christ if he did. At least, that’s the most reasonable explanation of his actions that I can see.
Edwin
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