HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Volume
II, Chapter 9B5, page 365—389. Politics and Church.
CONTENTS
365
5.
POLITICS
AND CHURCH (From the Introduction of Compulsory Confession, 1215, to
the
French Revolution)
THE
CHURCH
I have explained on page 240
to what extent in this brief survey I regard Politics and Church as
connected;
more profound reasons for this connection are adduced in the introduction
to the division “The Struggle.“ * Moreover, no one will, I take it,
deny
that in the development of Europe since the thirteenth century the
actually
existing relations between Church and Politics have had decisive
influence
in many very important matters, and practical politicians are unanimous
in asserting that a complete severance of the Church from the political
State — i.e., the indifference of the State in regard to
ecclesiastical
affairs — is even to-day impossible. If we examine the pertinent
arguments
of the most Conservative statesmen, we shall find them even stronger
than
those of their doctrinaire opponents. Consult, for example, Constantin
Pobedonoszev's book Problems of the Present. This well-known
Russian
statesman and supreme procurator of the Holy Synod may be regarded as a
perfect type of the reactionary; a man of liberal views will seldom
agree
with him in politics; moreover, he is a member of the Orthodox Church.
Now he expresses the opinion that the Church cannot be separated from
the
State, at any rate, not for long, simply because it would soon
inevitably
“dominate the State,“ and lead to a subversion in the theocratic sense!
This assertion by a man who is so well acquainted with Church affairs
and
is most sympathetic towards the Church, seems to me worthy of
attention.
He at the same time expresses the fear that as soon as the State
introduces
the principle of indifference
* See also Author's Introduction, vol. i. p.
lxxx.
366 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
towards the
Church,
“the priest will invade the family and take the place of the father.“
Pobedonoszev,
therefore, ascribes such enormous political importance to the Church,
that
as an experienced statesman he fears for the State, and as an orthodox
Christian for religion, should the Church get a free rein. That may
give
Liberals something to think about! It may in the meantime justify my
standpoint,
though I proceed from quite different premisses, and have quite
different
objects in view from those of the adviser of the Autocrat of all the
Russias.
I intend, in fact, as this section, like the rest, must necessarily be
brief, to direct my attention almost exclusively to the part played by
the Church in Politics during the last six hundred years, for it is in
this way that I expect to show what still lives on among us as a fatal
legacy of former times. What has been already mentioned does not
require
repetition, and it would be equally superfluous to summarise what every
one learns at school. * Here a new field beckons to us, and we have
before
us the prospect of deep insight into the innermost workshop of
world-shaping
Politics. In other respects, of course, Politics are a mere matter of
accommodating
and adapting, and the past has little interest for the present; but
here
we see the permanent motives, and learn why only certain accommodations
were successful, while others were not.
MARTIN
LUTHER
The Reformation is the centre of the political development in Europe
between
1200 and 1800; its significance in politics resembles that of the
introduction
of compul-
* See in the preceding section, p.
352, the remarks about monarchical absolutism being a means of
attaining
national independence and of winning back freedom; also the remarks on
p.
330 f. and the whole of
chap. viii.
367 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
sory Confession
in religion. By the Confession (not only of great, publicly
acknowledged
and atoned sins, as formerly, but of daily misdeeds, secretly confided
to the priest) the Roman religion had two tendencies forced upon her,
both
of which removed her ever further from the Gospel of Christ — the
tendency
to a more and more absolute priestly hierarchy, and the tendency to an
ever greater weakening of the inner religious aspect; scarcely fifty
years
had passed since the Vatican synod of 1215, when the doctrine was
preached
that the sacrament of atonement required not repentance (contritio)
but only fear of hell (attritio). Religion was henceforth
altogether
externalised, the individual was unconditionally handed over to the
priest.
Obligatory Confession means the complete sacrifice of the personality.
The conscience of earnest men all over Europe rose in revolt against
this.
But it was only the reforming activity of Luther that transformed the
religious
ferment, which had been seething throughout Christendom for centuries,
* into a political power, and the reason was that he fused the numerous
religious questions into one Church question. It was only in this way
that
a decisive step towards freedom could be taken. Luther is above all a
political
hero; we must recognise this in order to judge him fairly and to
understand
his pre-eminent position in the history of Europe. Hence those
remarkable,
significant words: “Well, my dear princes and lords, you are in a great
hurry to get rid of me, a poor solitary man, by death; and when that
has
been accomplished, you will have won. But if you had ears to hear, I
would
tell you something strange. What if Luther's life were worth so much
before
God that, if he were not alive, not one of you would be sure of his
life
or authority, and that his death would be a misfortune to you all?“
What
political acumen! For subsequent history frequently proved that princes
who
* See p. 95 f.
368 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
did not absolutely
submit to Rome were not sure of their lives; the others, however,
according
to Roman doctrine did not possess independent authority and never could
possess it, as I have irrefutably proved in chap. viii., not only on
the
basis of numerous Papal bulls, but also as an inevitable conclusion
from
the imperialistic, theocratic premisses. * Now if we supplement the
passage
quoted by numerous others, where Luther emphasises the independence of
the “secular government“ and separates it completely from the hierarchy
of a divinely appointed individual, where he desires to see “Spiritual
law swept away from the first letter to the very last,“ the essentially
political and national character of his Reformation is clear to all. In
another passage he says: “Christ does not make princes or nobles,
burgomasters
or judges;
* I know of no more impressive document concerning the assassination of
princes directed by Rome than the complaint of Francis Bacon (in 1613
or
1614) against William Talbot, an Irish lawyer, who had indeed been
ready
to take the oath of allegiance, but declared, in reference to an
eventual
obligation to murder the excommunicated King, that he submitted in
this,
as in all other “matters of faith,“ to the resolutions of the Roman
Church.
Lord Bacon then gives a concise description of the murder of Henry III.
and Henry IV. of France and of the various attempts to assassinate
Queen
Elizabeth and James I. This brief contemporary account breathes that
atmosphere
of assassination, which, for three centuries, from throne to peasant's
cottage, was to encompass the aspirations of the rising Teutonic world.
If Bacon had lived later, he would have had plenty of opportunity to
complete
his account; Cromwell especially, who had made himself the
representative
of Protestantism in all Europe, was in daily, hourly danger. Whenever a
misguided proletarian of the present day attempts to assassinate a
monarch,
the whole civilised world breaks out in exclamations of indignation,
and
all such criminal attempts are commonly put down as consequences of
defection
from the Church; formerly it was a different story, monks were the
murderers
of Kings and God had directed their hand. Pope Sixtus V., on hearing of
the murder by the Dominican Clement, joyfully exclaimed in the
consistorium:
“Che 'l successo della morte del re di Francia si ha da
conoscer dal voler
espresso
del signor Dio, e che perciò si doveva confidar che
continuarebbe
al haver quel regno nella sua prottetione“ (Ranke:
Päpste,
9th ed., ii, 113). The fact that Thomas Aquinas
had
considered murder of tyrants one of the “godless means“ was naturally
not
applied here, for it was a question not of tyrants but of heretics (who
are proscribed, see p. 174)
or too free-thinking Catholics, like Henry IV.
369 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
that duty he lays
upon reason; reason deals with external things, where there must be
authorities.“
* That is surely the very opposite of the Roman doctrine, according to
which every secular position, as prince or serf, every profession, as
teacher
or doctor, is to be regarded as an ecclesiastical office (see p.
165),
in which above all the monarch rules in the name of God — not of
reason.
We may well exclaim with Shakespeare: “Politics, O thou heretic!“ This
political ideal is completed by the constant emphasising of the German
nation in contrast to the “Papists.“ It is to the “Nobility of the
German
nation“ that the German peasant's son addresses himself, and that in
order
to rouse them against the alien, not on account of this or that subtle
dogma, but in the interest of national independence and of the freedom
of the individual. “Let not the Pope and his followers claim to have
done
great service to the German nation by the gift of this Roman Empire.
First,
because they have conferred no advantage on us thereby but have abused
our simplicity; secondly, because the Pope has sought not to give us
the
Imperial Sovereignty, but to arrogate it to himself, in order to
subjugate
all our power, freedom, property, bodies and souls, and through us (had
God not prevented it) the whole world.“ † Luther is the first man who
is
perfectly conscious of the importance of the struggle between
imperialism
and nationalism; others had only a vague idea of it, and either, like
the
educated citizens of most German cities, had confined its application
to
the religious sphere, had felt and acted as Germans, without, however,
seeing the necessity of revolt in ecclesiastical and political matters;
or, on the other hand, had indulged in fantastic daring schemes, like
* Von weltlicher Obrigkeit.
† Sendschreiben an den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation.
An assertion which an unbiased witness, Montesquieu, later confirms:
„Si
les Jésuites étaient venus avant Luther et Calvin, ils
auraient
été les maîtres du monde“ (Pensées diverses).
370 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
Sickingen and
Hutten, the latter of whom made it his clear endeavour “to break the
Roman
tyranny and put an end to the foreign disease“; but they did not
comprehend
what broad foundations must be laid if war was to be declared with any
prospect of success against so strong a citadel as Rome. * Luther,
however,
while calling upon princes, nobles, citizens and people to prepare for
the strife, does not remain satisfied with the merely negative work of
revolt from Rome; he also gives the Germans a language common to all
and
uniting them all, and lays hold of the two points in the purely
political
organisation which determined the success of nationalism, namely, the
Church
and the School.
Subsequent history has proved how impossible it is to keep a Church
half-national,
that is, independent of Rome and yet not decisively severed from the
Roman
community. France, Spain, and Austria refused to sign the resolution of
the Council of Trent, and France especially, so long as it possessed
kings,
fought vigorously for the special rights of the Gallic Church and
priesthood;
but gradually the most rigid Roman doctrine gained more and
* In order to comprehend how universal the religious revolt from Rome
was
in Germany a considerable time before Luther, the reader should consult
the works of Ludwig Keller and especially the smallest of those known
to
me, entitled Die Anfänge der Reformation und die Ketzerschulen
(published among the works issued by the Comenius Society). We get an
idea
of the prevailing sentiment throughout all Germany in Luther's time
from
the unprejudiced and famous legate Alexander, who, writing on February
8, 1521, from Worms, informed the Pope that nine-tenths of the Germans
were for Luther, while the remaining tenth, though not exactly in
favour
of Luther, yet cried out, Down with the Roman Court! Alexander often
emphasises
the fact that almost all the German clergy were against Rome and for
the
Reformation. (See the Depeschen vom Wormser Reichstage, 1521,
published by Kalkoff.) Zwingli accurately described the part played by
Luther amid the universal revolt when he wrote to him: “There have been
not a few men before you who recognised the sum and essence of
evangelical
religion as well as you. But from all Israel no one ventured to join
battle,
because they feared that mighty Goliath who stood threateningly in all
the weight of his armour and strength.“
371 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
more ground, and
to-day these three countries would be glad to receive, as a gift of
grace,
the no longer up-to-date but yet comparatively free standpoint of the
Council
of Trent. And as far as Luther's school-reforms are concerned — which
he
sought to carry through with all the strength that a solitary giant has
at his disposal — the best proof of his political sagacity is the fact
that the Jesuits immediately followed in his footsteps, founded schools
and wrote school-books with exactly the same titles and the same
arrangement
as those of Luther. * Freedom of conscience is a splendid achievement,
as long as it forms the basis of genuine religion; but the modern
assumption
that every Church can harmonise with every system of politics is
madness.
In the artificial organisation of society the Church forms the inmost
wheel,
that is, an essential part of the political mechanism. This wheel may,
of course, have more or less importance in the whole mechanism, but its
structure and activity are bound to exercise influence upon the whole.
And who can study the history of Europe from the year 1500 to the year
1900 and refuse to admit that the Roman Church has manifestly exercised
a powerful influence upon the political history of nations? Look first
at the nations which (in virtue of the numbers and pre-eminence of
Catholics)
belong to the Roman Church, and then at the so-called “Protestant“
nations!
Opinion may vary regarding
* Nowhere can we feel the warm heart-throb of the Teuton better than
when
Luther begins to speak of education. He tells the Nobles that, if they
seriously desire a Reformation, they should above all effect “a
thorough
reformation of the Universities.“ In his Sendschreiben an die
Bürgermeister
und Ratsherren aller Städte in deutschen Landen he writes in
reference
to schools, “If we gave one Gulden to oppose the Turks, here it were
proper,
even though they were at our throats, to give 100 Gulden, if but one
boy
might therewith be educated,“ ... and he urges every citizen henceforth
to give all the money, that he has hitherto thrown away on Masses,
vigils,
annual holidays, begging monks, pilgrimages and “all such rubbish,“ to
the school, “to educate the poor children — which would be such a
splendid
investment.“
372 POLITICS
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them; but who
will deny the influence of the Church? Many a reader may offer the
objection
that this is due to difference of race, and I myself have laid so much
stress on the physical structure as the basis of the moral personality,
that I should be the last to question the justice of this view; * but
nothing
is more dangerous than the attempt to construct history from a single
principle;
nature is infinitely complex; what we call race is within certain
limits
a plastic phenomenon, and, just as the physical can affect the
intellectual,
so too the intellectual may influence the physical. Let us suppose, for
example, that the religious reform, which for a time surged so high
among
the Spanish nobility of Gothic descent, had found in a daring, fiery
prince,
a man capable — though it were with fire and sword — of freeing the
nation
from Rome (whether he belonged to the followers of Luther, Zwingli,
Calvin,
or any other sect is absolutely and manifestly of no moment, the only
important
matter is the complete severance from Rome); does any one believe that
Spain, saturated as its population may be with Iberian and Chaotic
elements,
would stand to-day where it does stand? Certainly no one believes that,
no one at least who, like myself, has looked upon these noble, brave
men,
these beautiful, high-spirited women, and has seen with his own eyes
how
this hapless nation is enslaved and gagged by its Church —
“priest-ridden“
as we say — how the clergy nip every individual spontaneous effort in
the
bud, encourage crass ignorance — and systematically foster childish,
degrading
superstition and idolatry. And it is not the faith, not the acceptance
of this or that dogma, that exercises this influence, but the Church as
a political organisation, as we clearly see in those freer lands where
the Roman Church has to compete with other Churches, and where it
adopts
forms which are calculated to satisfy men who stand at the highest
stage
of culture. It is
* See vol. i. p. 320,
vol. ii. p. 50, &c.
373 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
still more
manifest
from the fact that the Lutheran, as also the other Protestant systems
of
dogma — purely as such — possess no great importance. The weak point in
Luther was his theology; * if it had been his strong point, neither he
nor his Church would have been of any use for the political work which
he accomplished. Rome is a political system; it had to be opposed by
another
political system; otherwise there would only have been a continuance of
the old struggle, which had gone on for fifteen hundred years, between
orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Heinrich von Treitschke may call Calvinism
“the
best Protestantism“ if he pleases; † Calvin was, of course, the real,
purely
religious Church reformer and the man of inexorable logic; for nothing
follows more clearly from the consistently argued doctrine of
predestination
than the insignificance of ecclesiastical acts and the invalidity of
priestly
claims; but we see that this doctrine of Calvin was much too purely
theological
to shake the Roman world; moreover it was too exclusively
rationalistic.
Luther, the German patriot and politician, went differently to work. No
dogmatic subtleties filled his brain; they were of secondary moment;
first
came the nation: “For my Germans I was born, them I will serve!“ His
patriotism
was absolute, his learning limited, for in the latter he never quite
threw
off the monkish cowl. One of the most authoritative theologians of the
nineteenth century, Paul de Lagarde,
says of Luther's theology: “In the
Lutheran system of dogma we see the Catholic scholastic structure
standing
untouched before us with the exception of a few loci, which
have
been broken away and replaced by an addition which is united to the old
by mortar only, but
* Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, Grundriss, 2nd ed. p. 376) writes:
“Luther presented his Church with a Christology which for scholastic
inconsistency
far surpassed the Thomistic.“
† Historische und politische Aufsätze, 5th ed. ii.
410.
374 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
unlike it in
style“;
* and the famous authority on dogma, Adolf Harnack, who is no Catholic
either, confirms this judgment when he calls the Lutheran Church
doctrine
(at least in its further development) “a miserable duplicate of the
Catholic
Church.“ † This is meant as a reproach on the part of these Protestant
authorities; but we, looking at the matter from the purely political
standpoint,
cannot possibly accept it as such; for we see that this essential
character
of the Lutheran reform was a condition of its political success.
Nothing
could be done without the princes. Who would seriously assert that the
princes who favoured reform were actuated by religious enthusiasm? We
could
certainly reckon on fewer than the fingers of one hand those of whom
such
an assertion could be made. It was political interests and political
ambition,
supported by the awakening of the spirit of national independence, that
settled the matter. Yet all these men, as also the nations, had grown
up
in the Roman Church, and it still exercised a strong spell over their
minds.
By offering merely a “duplicate“ of the Roman Church, Luther
concentrated
the prevailing excitement upon the political side of the question,
without
disturbing consciences more than was necessary. The hymn beginning
- Ein' feste
Burg ist
unser Gott
ends with the line:
- Das Reich
muss
uns
doch bleiben.
That was the right
keynote to strike. And it is quite false to say, as Lagarde does, that
“everything remained as it was.“ The separation from Rome, for which
Luther
contended with passionate impetuosity all his life, was the greatest
political
upheaval that could pos-
* Über das Verhältnis des deutschen Staates zu
Theologie,
Kirche und Religion.
† Dogmengeschichte, para. 81.
375 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
sibly have taken
place. Through it Luther has become the turning-point in the history of
the world. For no matter how pitiful the further course of the
Reformation
was in many respects to be — when greedy, bigoted princes “of
unexampled
incapacity,“ as Treitschke says, destroyed with fire and sword the
spirit
of Germany which had at last awakened, and handed the country over to
the
care of the Basques and their children — Luther's achievement was not
lost,
for the simple reason that it had a firm political foundation. It is
ridiculous
to count the so-called “Lutherans“ and estimate Luther's influence
thereby
— the influence of a hero who emancipated the whole world, and to whom
the Catholic of to-day is as much indebted as every other person for
the
fact that he is a free man. *
That Luther was more of a politician than a theologian naturally does
not
preclude the fact that the living power which he revealed flowed from a
deep inner source, namely, his religion, which we must not confuse with
his Church. But the discussion of this point is out of place in this
section;
here it suffices to say that Luther's fervent patriotism was a part of
his religion. But one thing more is noteworthy, namely, that so soon as
the Reformation revealed itself as a revolt against Rome, the religious
ferment, which had kept men's minds in constant fever for centuries,
ceased
almost suddenly. Religious wars are waged, but Catholics (like
Richelieu)
calmly league themselves with Protestants against other Catholics.
Huguenots,
it is true,
* Concerning Luther's act of liberation which benefited the whole world
— even the strictly Catholic States — Treitschke says (Politik
i.
333): “Since the great liberating act of Luther the old doctrine of the
superiority of Church over State is for ever done away with, and that
not
only in Protestant countries. Of course it is hard to convince a
Spaniard
that he owes the independence of the crown to Martin Luther. Luther
expressed
the great thought that the State is in itself a moral system, without
requiring
to lend its protecting arm to the Church; this is his greatest
political
service.“
376 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
wrestle with
Gallicans
for predominance, Papists and Anglicans zealously behead one another —
but everywhere it is political considerations that occupy the
foreground.
The Protestant no longer learns the whole of the four Gospels by heart;
new interests now claim his thought; not even the pious Herder can be
called
orthodox in the Church sense, he had listened too faithfully to the
voice
of nations and of nature; and the Jesuit, as confessor of monarchs and
converter of nations, shuts both eyes to all dogmatic heterodoxies, if
he can but promote Rome's interests. We see how the mighty impulse that
emanated from Luther drives men away from ecclesiastical religion; they
do not, of course, all take the same, but totally divergent,
directions;
the tendency, however — as we can see even in the nineteenth century —
is increasing indifference, an indifference which first affects the
non-Roman
Churches, as being the weakest. This, too, is a fact of Church history
which is most important for our understanding of the seventeenth,
eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, for it belongs to the few things which do not
(as Mephistopheles says of politics) always begin at the beginning
again,
but follow a definite course. People say and complain, and some exult,
that this means a defection from religion. I do not believe it. That
would
only be so if the traditional Christian Church were the quintessence of
religion, and I hope I have clearly and irrefutably proved that that is
not the case (see chap. vii.).
Before that assertion could be valid, we should also have to make the
extraordinary
assumption that a Shakespeare, a Leonardo da Vinci, a Goethe, had had
no
religion: this point I shall touch upon again. Nevertheless this
development
means without doubt a decrease of ecclesiastical influence on the
general
political constitution of society; this tendency is apparent even in
the
sixteenth century (in men like Erasmus and More) and has been growing
ever
since. It is one of the most
377 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
characteristic
features in the physiognomy of the new world which is arising; at the
same
time it is a genuinely Teutonic and in fact old Indo-European feature.
I had not the slightest intention of even sketching the political
history
of six centuries on twenty pages, the one thing that seemed to me
absolutely
necessary was to put in a perfectly clear light the fact that the
Reformation
was a political act and indeed the most decisive of all political acts.
It gave back their freedom to the Teutonic nations. No commentary is
needed:
the importance of this fact for a comprehension of past, present and
future
is self-evident. But there is one event which I should not like to pass
over in this connection, the French Revolution.
THE
FRENCH
REVOLUTION
It is one of the
most
astonishing errors of the human judgment to regard this catastrophe as
the morning of a new day, a turning-point in history. The Revolution
was
inevitable simply because the Reformation had not been able to succeed
in France. France was still too rich in pure Teutonic blood silently to
fall into decay like Spain, too poor in itself to free itself
completely
from the fatal embrace of the theocratic empire. The wars of the
Huguenots
have from the first this fatal feature, that the Protestants contend
not
only against Rome but also against the Kingship and oppose the latter's
endeavours
to create a national unity, so that we see the paradoxical spectacle of
the Huguenots in league with the ultramontane Spaniards and their
opponent,
Cardinal Richelieu, in alliance with the protagonist of Protestantism,
Gustavus Adolphus. But experience has proved that everywhere, even in
Catholic
countries, a strong Kingship is the most powerful bulwark against Roman
378 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
politics; moreover it is (as we have
seen in the previous section) the surest way to attain to great
individual
freedom on the basis of firmly established conditions. Thus the cause
of
the Huguenots stood upon tottering feet. They were in a still worse
position
when they finally surrendered, and — giving up all political
aspirations
— remained a purely religious sect; for then they were annihilated and
scattered. The number of the exiles (leaving the murdered out of
account)
is estimated at more than a million. Consider what a power might in the
intervening two centuries have grown out of that million of human
beings!
And they were the best in the land. Wherever they settled in new
abodes,
they brought with them industry, culture, wealth, moral strength, great
intellectual achievements. France has never recovered from this loss of
the choicest of its population. Thenceforth it fell a prey to the Chaos
of Peoples, and soon afterwards to the Jews. To-day it is a well-known
fact that the destruction and exile of the Protestants was not the work
of the King, but of the Jesuits; La Chaise is the real author and
executor
of the anti-Huguenot movement. The French were formerly no more
inclined
to intolerance than other Teutons; their great legal authority, Jean
Bodin,
one of the founders of the modern State, had, though a Catholic
himself,
in the sixteenth century demanded absolute religious tolerance and the
rejection of all Roman interference. Meantime, however, the nationless
Jesuit — the “corpse“ in the hands of his superiors (vol. i. p.
575) — had wormed his way to the throne; with the cruelty,
certainty
and stupidity of a beast he destroyed the noblest in the land. And
after
La Chaise was dead and the Huguenots annihilated, came another Jesuit,
Le Fellier, who succeeded in getting the licentious King, who had been
brought up in the crassest ignorance by his Jesuit teachers, so
thoroughly
under his power by the fear of hell, that his order could
379 POLITICS
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now proceed to the next struggle in
Rome's interest, namely, to the destruction of all genuine, even
Catholic
religion; this was the struggle against the orthodox but independent
Catholic
clergy of France. The main object in this case was to destroy the
national
independence of the Gallican Church which the most pious Kings of the
early
ages had asserted, and at the same time the last traces of that
profoundly
spiritual mystic faith which had always struck such deep roots in the
Catholic
Church, and now in Janssen and his followers threatened to grow into a
far-reaching moral power. This object too was attained. Whoever desires
to inform himself of the real Origines de la France contemporaine
can do so, even without reading Taine's comprehensive work; he only
requires
to study carefully the famous Papal bull Unigenitus (1713), in
which
not only numerous doctrines of Augustine, but also the fundamental
teaching
of the Apostle Paul, are condemned as “heretical“; he may then take up
any handbook of history and see how this bull, designed especially
against
France, was enforced. It is a struggle of narrow-minded fanaticism,
allied
to absolutely unscrupulous political ambition, against all the learning
and virtue which the French Catholic clergy still possessed. The most
worthy
prelates were dismissed and reduced to misery; others, as also many
theologians
of the Sorbonne, were simply thrown into the Bastille and so silenced;
others again were weak, they yielded to political pressure and threats,
or were bought with gold and benefices. * Yet the struggle lasted long.
In a pathetic protest the most courageous of the bishops demanded a
universal
*
From
the earliest times these were the favourite tactics of Rome.
Alexander's
letter to the Curia of April 27. 1521, gives an authentic account of
the
attempts to bribe Luther. In the same place we can see how the
enthusiasm
of Eck and others was kept warm by presents of money, benefices
&c.,
and how carefully they were enjoined to be “absolutely silent“ on the
matter (May 15. 1521).
380 POLITICS
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concilium against a bull, which, as
they said, “destroyed the firmest foundations of Christian ethics,
indeed
the first and greatest commandment of the love of God“; the Cardinal de
Noailles did the same, also the University of Paris and the Sorbonne —
in fact, all Frenchmen who were capable of thinking for themselves and
were seriously inclined to religion. * But the same thing happened then
as happened after the Vatican Council in the nineteenth century: the
oppressive
power of universalism prevailed; the noblest of men, one after the
other,
sacrificed their personality and truthfulness at this altar. Genuine
Catholicism
was rooted out as Protestantism had been. Thus the time was ripe for
the
Revolution; for otherwise there was nothing left for France but — as
already
suggested — Spanish decline. But this gifted people had still too much
vigour for that, so it rose in rebellion with the proverbial rage of
the
long-suffering Teuton, but devoid of all moral background and without
one
single really great man. “A great work was never accomplished by such
little
men,“ Carlyle exclaims in reference to the French Revolution. † And let
no one offer the objection that I overlook the economic conditions;
these
are well known, and I do estimate their importance highly; but history
offers no example of a mighty rebellion brought about solely by
economic
conditions; man can bear almost any degree of misery, and the more
wretched
he is, the weaker he becomes; hence, the great economic upheavals, with
the bitter hardships involved (see p. 355),
have always, in spite of a few rebellions, taken a comparatively
peaceful
course, because some accustomed themselves gradually to new,
unfavourable
circumstances, others to new claims.
* Cf.
Döllinger und Reusch: Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in
der
römisch-katholischen Kirche I. Div. i. chap. v. § 7.
Cardinal
de Noailles always describes the Jesuits straight away as “the
protagonists
of depraved morals.“
† Critical
Essays (Mirabeau).
381 POLITICS
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History too, proves the fact: it was
neither the poor oppressed peasant nor the proletariat that caused the
French Revolution, but the middle classes of the citizens, some of the
nobles, and an important section of the still nationally inclined
clergy,
and these were stirred and spurred on by the intellectual elite of the
nation. The explosive in the case of the French Revolution was “grey
brain-matter.“
It is most essential, if we wish to understand such a movement, to keep
our eyes riveted upon the innermost wheel of the political machine,
that
wheel which connects the individual's inner being with the Community.
In
decisive moments everything depends on this connection. It may be a
matter
of indifference whether we call ourselves Catholics or Protestants or
what
not; but it matters a great deal whether on the morning of battle the
soldiers
sing Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott or lascivious opera songs:
that
was seen in 1870. Now, when the Revolution broke out, the Frenchman had
been robbed of religion, and he felt so clearly what was lacking that
he
sought with pathetic haste and inexperience to build it up on every
side.
The assemblée nationale holds its sessions sous les
auspices
de l'Étre suprême; the goddess of reason in flesh and
blood — a Jesuit idea, by the way — was raised upon the altar; the déclaration
des droits de l'homme is a religious confession: woe to him who
does
not accept it! Still more clearly do we see the religious character of
these endeavours in the most influential and impassioned spirit among
those
who paved the way for the Revolution — in Jean Jacques Rousseau, the
idol
of Robespierre, a man whose mind was full of longing for religion. *
But
in all these things such ignorances of
*
The
words which he puts in the mouth of Héloïse are beautiful
and
specially applicable to the French of that time: “Peut-être
vaudrait-il
mieux n'avoir point de religion du tout que d'en avoir une
extérieure
et maniérée, qui sans toucher le coeur rassure la
conscience“
(Part III. Letter xviii.).
382 POLITICS
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human nature and such superficiality
of thought are revealed that we seem to see children or madmen at work.
By what confusion of historical judgment could the whole nineteenth
century
remain under the delusion — and let itself be profoundly influenced
thereby
— that the French by their “Great Revolution“ had kindled a torch for
mankind?
The Revolution is the catastrophe of a tragedy, which had lasted for
two
hundred years; the first act closed with the murder of Henry IV., the
second,
with the rescinding of the Edict of Nantes, while the third begins with
the bull Unigenitus and ends with the inevitable catastrophe.
The
Revolution is not the dawn of a new day, but the beginning of the end.
And though a great deal was accomplished, the fact cannot be overlooked
that this was to a large extent the work of the Constituante,
in
which the Marquis de Lafayette, the Comte de Mirabeau, the Abbé
Comte Sieyès, the learned astronomer Bailly — all men of
influence
through their culture and social position — played the leading part; to
some extent also it was the work of Napoleon. Thanks to the Revolution
this remarkable man found nothing left but the work of the Constituante
and the political plans of men like Mirabeau and Lafayette, otherwise tabula
rasa; this situation he exploited as only a brilliant, absolutely
unprincipled
genius, and (if the truth must be told) short-sighted despot, could. *
The real Revolution — le peuple souverain — did nothing at all
but
destroy. Even the Constituante was under the
*
When
speaking of Napoleon's genius as a statesman, we must never forget
(among
other things) that it was he who finally reduced the Gallican Church to
ruins, thus irretrievably delivering over the great majority of the
French
to Rome and destroying every possibility of a genuine national Church.
He it was also who enthroned the Jews. This man — devoid of all
understanding
for historical truth and necessity, the impersonation of wicked caprice
— is a destroyer, not a creator, at best a codifier, not an inventor;
he
is a minion of the Chaos, the proper complement to Ignatius of Loyola,
a new personification of the anti-Teutonic spirit.
383 POLITICS
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sway of the new God that France was
to present to the world, the God of phrase. Look at the famous droits
de l'homme — against which the great Mirabeau thundered in vain,
finally
exclaiming: “At least do not call them rights; say simply: in the
public
interest it has been determined...“ — they are, however, still regarded
by serious French politicians as the dawn of freedom. At the very
beginning
we find the words: “L'oubli ou le mépris des droits de
l'homme
sont l'unique cause des malheurs publics.“ It is impossible to
think
more superficially or to judge more falsely. It was not the rights, but
the duties of men that the French had forgotten or despised, and so
brought
about the national catastrophe. That is manifest enough from my
previous
remarks and is confirmed step by step in the further course of the
Revolution.
This solemn proclamation is based, therefore, from the very outset, on
an untruth. We know what Sieyès cried out in the assembly, “You
wish to possess freedom and you do not even know how to be just!“ The
rest
of the proclamation is essentially a transcription by Lafayette of the
Declaration of Independence of the Anglo-Saxons settled in America, and
this Declaration, too, is little more than a word for word copy of the
English “Agreement of the People“ of the year 1647. We can understand
why
so clever a man as Adolphe Thiers in his History of the Revolution
hurries over this declaration of the rights of humanity, remarking
merely
that “it is a pity time was wasted on such pseudo-philosophical
commonplaces.“
* But the matter cannot be regarded so lightly, for the sad
predominance
which this riding to death of abstract principles of “freedom of
humanity“
acquired over statesmanlike insight into the needs and possibilities of
a definite people at a definite moment, continued to spread like an
infectious
disease. Let us hope the day may come when every
*
Chap.
iii.
384 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
sensible person will know the proper
place for such things as the Déclaration, namely, the
waste-paper
basket.
Rome, the
Reformation,
the Revolution, these are three elements which still influence
politics,
and so had to be discussed here. Nations, like individuals, sometimes
reach
a parting of the ways, where they must decide whether it is to be right
or left. This was in the sixteenth century the case with all European
nations
(with the exception of Russia and the Slavs who had fallen under
Turkish
sway); the subsequent fate of these nations, even to the present and
for
the future, is determined in the most essential points by the choice
then
made. France at a later time wished completely to retrace her steps,
but
she had to pay dearer for the Revolution than Germany for her frightful
Thirty Years War, and the Revolution could never give her back what she
failed to acquire at the Reformation. The Teutons in the narrower sense
of the word — the Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Dutch, Scandinavians — in
whose
veins much purer blood still flows, have, as we see, grown stronger and
stronger since that turning-point in history and this justifies us in
concluding
that Luther's policy was the right one. *
THE
ANGLO-SAXONS
In this connection
I ought specially to call attention to the scattering of the
Anglo-Saxons
over the world as perhaps the most important phenomenon in modern
politics;
but it is only in the course of the nineteenth
*
Such
a view is not to be obscured by sectarian narrowness: this is proved by
the fact that the Bavarians — who are still Catholic and lovers of
freedom
— at the Electoral Assembly of the year 1640 not only sided with the
Protestants
in all important questions, but even, when the latter, represented by
characterless
princes, dropped their claims, asserted them again and contended for
them
in opposition to the faithless Habsburgs and cunning prelates (cf.
Heinrich Brockhaus, Der Kurfürstentag zu Nürnberg,
1883,
pp. 264 f., 243, 121 f.).
385 POLITICS
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century that this
fact has begun to reveal its almost incalculable importance, so that
here
I may content myself with general allusions, all other considerations
being
left to a later occasion. One point strikes us at once, that this
extraordinary
expansion of a small but strong people is likewise rooted in the
Reformation.
Nowhere is the political character of the Reformation so manifest as in
England; here there were no dogmatic strifes at all; even from the
thirteenth
century the whole people knew that it did not wish to belong to Rome; *
the King — influenced by very worldly considerations — had only to cut
the connection, and the separation was at once complete. It was only at
a later time that some dogmas, which the English had never really
adopted,
were expressly rescinded: some few ceremonies too, especially the cult
of the Virgin, which at all times had been repulsive to the people,
were
done away with. For that reason, after the Reformation, everything had
remained as it had been, and yet all was fundamentally new. The
expansive
power of the nation, which Rome had held in check, immediately began to
assert itself, and hand in hand with this — and all the more rapidly,
as
it was to form the basis of that further development — came the
building
up of a strong, liberal constitution. The great work was attacked
simultaneously
from all sides; the sixteenth century, however, was chiefly devoted to
carrying out the work of the Reformation (in which the formation of
powerful
Nonconformist sects played a leading part), the seventeenth to the
stubborn
struggle for freedom, the eighteenth to the acquirement of colonial
possessions.
Shakespeare has correctly foreshadowed the whole process in the last
scene
of his Henry VIII.: the first thing is a sincere recognition of
God (the Reformation) then greatness
* In the year 1231 proclamations were scattered over the whole country,
fixed to walls, carried from house to house: “Rather die than be ruined
by Rome!“ What innate political wisdom!
386
POLITICS
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will no longer
be determined by descent, but by walking in the paths of honour
(freedom
resulting from strict performance of duty); the men thus strengthened
shall
then emigrate, to found “new nations.“ The great poet lived to witness
the prosperity of the first colony, Virginia, and in The Tempest
he has celebrated the wonders of the West Indian Islands — the new
world
which began to reveal itself to the eyes of men, with its unknown
plants
and undreamt-of animals. Four years after his death the glorious
Puritans
had undertaken with still greater energy the world of colonisation;
after
untold hardships they founded New England, not from lust of gold, but,
as their solemn proclamation testifies, “from love to God,“ and because
they desired “a dignified Church service tinged by no Papism.“ Within
fifteen
years, twenty thousand English colonials, mostly from the middle
classes,
had settled there. Then Cromwell appeared, the real founder of the
British
Navy and hence of the British Empire. * Clearly recognising what was
necessary,
he boldly attacked the Spanish colossus, took from it Jamaica, and was
making preparations to conquer Brazil, when death robbed his country of
his services. Then for a time the movement came to a standstill: the
struggle
against the reactionary ambitions of Catholically inclined princes once
more demanded all men's energies; in England, as elsewhere, the Jesuits
were at work; they supplied Charles II. with mistresses and gold;
Coleman,
the soul of this conspiracy against the English nation, wrote at that
time,
“by the complete destruction of pestilent heterodoxy in England ... the
Protestant religion in all Europe will receive its death-blow.“ † It
was
only about the year 1700, when
* Seeley: The Expansion of England, 1895, p. 146.
† Green: History
of the English people, vi. p. 293.
Capital has been made of the fact that some perjurers and forgers
misled
the whole country by the discovery of a pretended, trumped-up plot of
the
Jesuits, but this does not disprove the fact of there having been a
great
387 POLITICS
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William of Orange
had banished the treacherous Stuarts and finally laid the foundations
of
the constitutional State — when the law had been passed that henceforth
no Catholic could occupy the English throne (either as Consort or as
Queen)
— that the Anglo-Saxon work of expansion began anew, and it was
supported
by numerous German Lutherans and reformed churchmen, who were fleeing
from
persecution, as also by Moravian brethren. Soon (about 1730) there
lived
in the flourishing colonies of England more than a million human
beings,
almost all Protestants and genuine Teutons, upon whom the hard struggle
for existence exercised the same influence as strict artificial
selection.
Thus there arose a great new nation, which violently severed its
connection
with the Mother Country at the close of the century, a new anti-Roman
power
of the first rank. * But this separation in no degree weakened the
expansive
power of the Anglo-Saxons, who were joined as before by numerous
Scandinavians
and Germans. Scarcely had the United States severed their connection
when
(1788) the first colonists landed in Australia, and South Africa was
wrested
from the industrious but not very energetic Dutch. These were the
beginnings
of a world-empire which has grown enormously in the nineteenth century.
And not only in the founding of such “new nations,“ as they floated
before
Shakespeare's mind, but also in the less important task of ruling alien
peoples (India), one fact has invariably
international
conspiracy, which was directed from Paris, a fact which has been
established
beyond doubt by numerous diplomatic documents and authentic Jesuit
correspondence.
* On September 3, 1783, the treaty was signed by which Old England
relinquished
its claims to New England. It is well known to what an extent “some few
heroes and man of mark“ were the heart and soul of this undertaking
also;
though the new nation to begin with did not choose a King, it honoured
the personality of its founder by adopting as national emblem the stars
and stripes, the old coat of arms which had been conferred on the
Washingtons
by English Kings. (This coat of arms can still be seen on the
tombstones
of the Washingtons in the church of Little Trinity, in London.)
388 POLITICS
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proved itself,
that such things could be permanently, gloriously and fully achieved
only
by Teutons and only by Protestants. The huge South American continent
remains
quite outside of our politics and our culture; nowhere have the
Conquistadors
created a new nation; the last Spanish colonies are to-day saving
themselves
from ruin by going over to other nations. France has never succeeded in
founding a colony, except in Canada, which, however, first flourished
after
England's intervention. * Real power of expansion is found only among
Anglo-Saxons,
Germans and Scandinavians; even the related Dutch have shown in South
Africa
more perseverance than power of expansion; the Russian expansion is
purely
political, the French purely commercial, other countries (with the
exception
of some few parts of Italy) reveal none at all.
If men did not lose their way and go astray by over-attention to the
incalculable
details of history, they would long ago have been clear regarding the
decisive
importance of two things in politics, namely, race and religion. They
would
also know that the political conformation of society — especially the
conformation
of that innermost wheel, the Church — reveals the most secret powers of
a race and of its religion, and thus becomes the greatest promoter of
civilisation
and culture, or, on the other hand, that it can altogether ruin a
people
by impeding the development of its capacities and favouring the growth
of its most perilous tendencies. That Luther recognised this fact
testifies
to his pre-eminent greatness and explains the importance of the part
which
he played in the political organisation of the world. Goethe regarded
it
as the first and foremost historical duty of the Germans “to break the
Roman Empire
* How matters would have stood but for this intervention is seen from
the
fact that the Catholic priests there had already carried their point
with
regard to the “prohibition against the printing of books“ and that a
“heretic“
was strictly forbidden to live in the land!
389 POLITICS
AND CHURCH
and raise up a
new world.“ * But for the Wittenberg nightingale this would scarcely
have
been achieved. Truly, when those who share Luther's political views (no
matter what they think of his theology) look at the map of the world
to-day,
they have every reason to sing with him:
- Nehmen sie
den
Leib,
- Gut, Ehr,
Kind
und
Weib:
- Lass
fahren
dahin,
- Sie
haben's
kein Gewinn;
- Das Reich
muss
uns
doch bleiben! †
* November 1813, Conversation with Luden.
† Though they take from us body, wealth, honour, wife and child: let it
pass, it profiteth them not: the Kingdom must surely remain to us.
Last update: April
5th, 2004
