Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom 9780300245493

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Endowed with Freedom
2. A Christian Society
3. The Two Swords: Reformation in Germany
4. Custodians of Both Tables: Switzerland
5. Two Religions in One City: France
6. Freedom of Worship: The Netherlands
7. Sturdy Piety: Catholics in England
8. Seeking Faith’s Pure Shrine: English Separatists
9. Liberty Necessary unto Human Nature
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix: Thomas Jefferson and Tertullian
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Index of Biblical Citations

Citation preview

liberty in the things of god

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LIBERTY IN THE THINGS OF GOD The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom RO B E RT L O U I S W I L K E N

New Haven and London

Copyright © 2019 by Robert Louis Wilken. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Janson type by IDS Infotech Ltd., Chandigarh, India. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962291 ISBN 978-0-300-22663-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

To Thomas F. Farr and Timothy Samuel Shah

Keep the truth which thou hast found; men do not stand In so ill case that God hath with his hand Signed kings’ blank charters to kill whom they hate, Nor are they vicars, but hangmen to fate. Fool and wretch, wilt thou let thy Soul be tied To man’s laws, by which she shall not be tried At the last day? . . . So perish souls, which more chuse men’s unjust Power from God claimed, than God himself to trust. — john donne, “ Sat i r e I I I ”

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1.

Endowed with Freedom

2.

A Christian Society

3.

The Two Swords: Reformation in Germany

4.

Custodians of Both Tables: Switzerland

5.

Two Religions in One City: France

6.

Freedom of Worship: The Netherlands

7.

Sturdy Piety: Catholics in England

8.

Seeking Faith’s Pure Shrine: English Separatists

9.

Liberty Necessary unto Human Nature

7

24 45

63

80 99

118

155

Conclusion 180 Epilogue 184 Appendix: Thomas Jefferson and Tertullian Notes 193 Bibliography 219 Index 227 Index of Biblical Citations 235

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Acknowledgments

when i began to work on this book, I was fortunate to become associated with the Religious Freedom Project of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center. The company of scholars associated with the center was an ongoing source of ideas and criticism, and I am deeply grateful to them. In particular I wish to thank Thomas Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, and Timothy Samuel Shah, senior advisor, to whom this book is dedicated. I am grateful to a number of friends who read the manuscript in various stages of its composition and gave invaluable criticism: Douglas Farrow, Matthew Franck, Stanley Hauerwas, Russell Hittinger, Thomas Noble, R. R. Reno, Timothy Shah, and Augustine Thompson. Others who have offered criticism and advice are Stephen Angell, Irena Backus, Timothy David Barnes, Richard Bishop, Marcia Colish, Marc di Girolami, Harold Drake, Andrew J. Fagal, Timothy George, Bruce Gordon, Brad S. Gregory, David Bentley Hart, Paul Hartog, Alan D. Hertzke, Byron Johnson, Thomas Kidd, W. J. Torrance Kirby, Anthony N. S. Lane, Ian Christopher Levy, David Little, Paul Marshall, Peter Onuf, Ryan Patrico, Trent Pomplun, Jack Robertson, Paul Robinson, Michael Root, John Roth, Ann-Stephane Schaefer, Rebecca Shah, John Slotemaker, John Stagg, Matthias E. Storme, Roger Trigg, Carl Trueman, Adrian Weimer, Jason Whitt, David Wilhite, John Witte Jr., and

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Acknowledgments

Robin Darling Young. Julia Yost provided editorial help in the final stages, and Robin DuBlanc expertly copyedited the manuscript. I am grateful to the staff of the Interlibrary Services of Alderman Library of the University of Virginia for help in locating old books as well as providing digital access to modern books and articles. Finally, I thank Jennifer Banks, my editor at Yale University Press. She has been unfailingly supportive and has made valuable suggestions about directions the book might take. It has been a pleasure to work with her.

Introduction

R

eligious freedom rests on a simple truth: religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and for that reason cannot be coerced by external force. This truth was stated for the first time by Tertullian of Carthage, a Christian writer who lived in North Africa in the early third century. Tertullian said: “It is only just and a privilege inherent in human nature that every person should be able to worship according to his own convictions; the religious practice of one person neither harms nor helps another. It is not part of religion to coerce religious practice, for it is by choice not coercion that we should be led to religion.” Religious freedom is often thought to be the work of the Enlightenment. In the sixteenth century, so the story goes, when the Reformation took hold in Europe, confessional differences led to the suppression and persecution of Christians by Christians. As the decades passed religious convictions hardened, and Protestant and Catholic armies faced one another on the field of battle. A half century of bloody conflict, the so-called wars of religion, was set in motion. But by the middle of the seventeenth century men with greater wisdom and less religious fervor came on the scene, and the fanaticism of religious believers gave way to the cool reason of the philosophers. Armed with notions of the superiority of reason over faith, skeptical of received truth, and distrustful of religious claims and institutions, these enlightened thinkers forged a new set 1

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Introduction

of ideas about toleration and religious freedom. Through their efforts the modern idea of liberty of conscience was born. This account portrays Christianity as inescapably intolerant and religion as prone to violence. Only with the decline of religious faith did religious freedom gain a foothold in the emerging secular states of Europe. As long as Christian beliefs were the spiritual and intellectual inspiration of society, toleration of those who believed differently made little headway. In recent years some historians have begun to modify the dominant narrative, but they move within too narrow an historical swath that does not include the broad sweep of Christian thinking reaching back to the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, and medieval teachers. “We must retrieve these ancient sources,” writes John Witte, a scholar of human rights and religious freedom, “and reconstruct them for our day.”1 This book is a modest effort to contribute to that enterprise. To understand how religious freedom came to be cherished as a fundamental human right, the story must begin long before the Enlightenment and the development of modern political ideas and institutions. Its origins are not political but religious, and its history is a tale of inwardness, of spiritual freedom, and of obeisance aimed upward. To see things in historical perspective, I begin with Christian writers who lived during the years the new religion was first making its way in the Roman Empire. They did not forge a doctrine of religious freedom, and for centuries their thinking was only a quiet murmur heard by few. In dealing with dissidents and minorities in their midst, Christians seldom acted on the basis of the principles set forth by their early teachers: they acted with violence against Jews in the Rhineland at the time of the First Crusade; they executed heretics, for example, Jan Hus, the Czech reformer, in 1415; they forced the conversion of Muslims in sixteenth-century Spain. Nevertheless, writings defending the freedom and dignity of human beings were not forgotten and laid a foundation on which later generations could build. As the inheritance of the past was buffeted “by the rough torrent of occasion,” the Reformation of the sixteenth century, a doctrine of religious liberty began to take shape.2 During the Reformation and in the seventeenth century, Christian thinkers had access to the writings of the Church Fathers newly edited by humanistic scholars. The works of Tertullian, for

Introduction

3

example, were published in Basel in 1521 by Beatus Rhenanus of Schlettstadt. Advocates of religious freedom discovered that arguments used by the Church Fathers against Roman authorities could be refashioned to address Christian persecution of Christians in their day. In his treatise Whether Heretics Should Be Persecuted, Sebastian Castellio, writing in response to the execution of Michael Servetus in Geneva, quoted at length a passage from Lactantius, a fourth-century Christian writer: “There is no room for force and violence because religion cannot be compelled. Let words be used rather than blows, that the decision may be free.” By the beginning of the seventeenth century, collections of earlier Christian texts on religious coercion were available and were regularly cited by defenders of religious freedom. The significance of certain traditional ideas, however, was discerned only as new events unfolded. Conscience is a good example. A Franciscan sister in Nuremberg, Germany, Caritas Pirckheimer, wrote A Journal of the Reformation Years, 1524—1528, recounting the travails of her convent as the Reformation was being introduced in the city. In resisting the demands of the city council, Pirckheimer (and other members of her community) forcefully stated that the Protestant reforms were against their consciences. Reformers, she said, loudly proclaimed the freedom of the Gospel but would not grant them the freedom to act according to their consciences. Her journal shows that liberty of conscience was an inheritance from medieval Christianity. In her view and in that of other writers, it did not mean a right of private judgment but the freedom to keep faith with the Church’s teachings and practices. Freedom was found in obedience to God. A few years after Pirckheimer wrote her diary, a prominent citizen in Nuremberg challenged the imposition of reform by the local magistrates—that is, by secular authorities. In his tract Whether Secular Government Has the Right to Wield the Sword in Matters of Faith, George Froelich offered a vigorous defense of the right of new religious associations—he was thinking of Anabaptist societies—to confess their distinctive beliefs, to gather for worship, and to win converts. Fearful that Froelich’s book would jeopardize the reform, the Nuremberg magistrates enlisted several theologians to refute his ideas. In using the term sword Froelich was one of the first to

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Introduction

employ the medieval doctrine of the two powers (or two swords) to address the religious struggles of the sixteenth century. The secular sword, he wrote, “is of no use in forcing people to adhere to this or that faith” because belief rests on choice, not coercion. In recognizing that civil authorities had to find a way to accommodate minority religious communities in a society bound together by one religion, Froelich was prescient. Over the next several generations the doctrine of the two swords, or “two realms” in John Calvin’s formulation, was made to fit different political and religious environments. It became a recurring fixture in debates on religious freedom. In France, as the country became divided by the presence of “two religions” (Catholicism and Calvinism), Michel de l’HÔpital, chancellor of France, proposed that the government cease regulating religious affairs. The French had long honored the medieval maxim Une foi, une loi, un roi (One faith, one law, one king), but in a speech before the Estates General, l’HÔpital said it was not his task as chancellor to make judgments about religious matters; the political assembly should be concerned about “maintaining the republic,” not “maintaining religion.” A century later, in his Letter concerning Toleration, John Locke held that it “is above all necessary to distinguish exactly the Business of Civil Government from that of Religion, and to settle the just Bounds that lie between the one and the other.” This book is an effort to bring together intellectual developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on religious freedom with the inheritance received from early and medieval Christianity. To that end the historical account will circle around three themes: first, that religious belief is an inner conviction accountable to God alone and resistant to compulsion; second, that conscience is a form of spiritual knowledge that carries an obligation to act; third, that human society is governed by two powers. “Render unto Caesar the things that are of Caesar and to God the things that are of God,” said Jesus of Nazareth. In his day these words had reference to the Roman emperor and to the one God. As the saying passed through time and the emperor became a Christian its meaning changed, but the divide between temporal rule and spiritual authority was never forgotten. In early modern Europe it became a bulwark supporting liberty of conscience.

Introduction

5

There is a subsidiary motif first adumbrated in the early Church that came to full expression only in the sixteenth century with the emergence of what Reformation historians call “confessionalization,” organized religious communities with distinct doctrinal, liturgical, and spiritual systems. Religion is seldom an individual matter. Without unique rites and ceremonies as well as organized fellowships, religious faith cannot flourish. As a sixteenth-century Dutch writer put it: “How is it possible to grant liberty of conscience without exercise of religion?” Advocates of religious freedom defended the rights of religious communities to practice their faith publicly as well as the liberty of the individual conscience. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ideas first launched in earlier centuries were taken up, modified, expanded, and adapted as the reformations unfolded. Memory is indispensable to Christian intellectual life, and nowhere was this more evident than in debates over religious freedom. Familiarity with earlier writers had a steadying effect on the judgments of religious and political thinkers, allowing them to see the conflicts of their own times with eyes trained by the wisdom of the past. Although the term origins appears in the title of this book, I seek to discern not roots but the ways the meditations of the past were fitted to the affairs of a later day. As the title indicates, this is a book about religious freedom, not toleration. Toleration is forbearance of that which is not approved, a political policy of restraint toward those whose beliefs and practices are objectionable. I wish to show how Christian thinkers came to consider religious freedom, or liberty of conscience, a natural right that belongs to all human beings, not an accommodation granted by ruling authorities. Significantly, as the idea that religious believers should be guaranteed the right to practice their faith gained traction, some thinkers drew the conclusion that this right belonged not only to Christian dissenters but to all, including Jews and Muslims. This book does not offer a complete history of the rise of religious freedom in the West. It is an historical essay based on my reading of the sources and my judgments as to which thinkers and ideas best represent key lines of development. It aims to show that religious freedom took form through the intellectual labors of men and women of faith who sought the liberty to love and serve God

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Introduction

faithfully in the public square. John Plamenatz, the political philosopher, got things right when he wrote that liberty of conscience arose “among people who had been taught for centuries that nothing was more important than to have the right beliefs. . . . This was, no doubt, the source of fanaticism and persecution, but it was also, I suggest, the source of a new conception of freedom. Liberty of conscience was born, not of indifference, not of skepticism, not of mere open-mindedness, but of faith.”3

chapter one

Endowed with Freedom

Fear God. Honor the Emperor. —f i r s t l e t t e r o f p e t e r

in the ancient world and in the cities of the Roman Empire, religion was an affair of the community as a whole. Through public rituals and private ceremonies, the ordinary and extraordinary events of communal life were set within a sacred and cosmic frame that bound people together in a single civic and religious community. The statues that stood on city streets and the coins people used to buy and sell were vehicles of religious sentiment. On some coins the image of the emperor appears on the obverse and on the reverse liturgical instruments used for offerings and sacrifices. On others the emperor stands beside an altar offering incense. Some bore the legend vota publica, public prayer, or a female figure, her hands uplifted in a gesture of devotion. No form of social life was wholly secular. The most prominent religious building in Rome was the temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and Minerva, which stood on the Capitoline Hill, the present-day Campidoglio. In the last days of the civil war in AD 68–69, the temple was burned to the ground and Tacitus, the Roman historian, called its destruction “the most lamentable and appalling disaster in the whole history of 7

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the Roman commonwealth.”1 Before it was rebuilt the whole area was marked off by a line of fillets and garlands, soldiers bearing boughs of olive trees, and Vestal Virgins with boy and girl attendants entered the precincts. After the ground was sprinkled with water drawn from springs and rivers, the praetor, a distinguished civic official, and the pontifex, the chief priest, purified the area by the sacrifice of pigs, sheep, and oxen, offering prayers to the gods who guarded over the empire. The praetor, along with priests, members of the Senate, and a large number of the people, dragged the foundation stone into place and cast offerings of gold and silver into the ground. The rebuilding of the Capitol was at once a religious and a civic occasion: religious in that it was an act of piety toward the gods, civic in that it was a public event presided over by government officials as well as priests. Because religion was so much a part of the fabric of their lives, the Romans were suspicious of foreign cults. Nonconformity was an affront to Roman ways and was thought to threaten the order and peace of the city. The city, as Virgil put it in the Aeneid, was “a walled home of our own,” where the “our” carried moral and spiritual weight.2 In the third century BC the cult of Bacchus had spread to southern Italy, gaining many adherents. According to the historian Livy, the staid Romans were scandalized by stories of orgiastic rites taking place in secluded areas in the countryside. What prompted official action against them, however, was that they were well organized in small cells under the control of effective leaders independent of civic authorities.3 With the growth of the city of Rome and the expansion of its rule around the Mediterranean Sea, the Romans came face-to-face with people who worshipped alien gods: Asclepius, the god of healing; Cybele, the Great Mother from Asia Minor; Isis, the Egyptian goddess; Mithras, a Persian deity. When foreigners settled in cities within the empire, they carried their gods with them. An inscription from Puteoli (modern Puzzeoli), a city in southern Italy on the Gulf of Naples, announced that the god Helios Saraptenos had arrived from Syria on a ship in AD 79 and was worshipped by Syrian immigrants. As the number of foreign deities mounted, Roman officials oversaw their worship, in some cases Romanizing their rituals and making them part of the religious calendar.

Endowed with Freedom

9

By the first century Jews were living in many cities of the empire, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean, where they formed communities with singular customs—for instance, observing the Sabbath, worshipping an unseen God, and abstaining from pork (a custom that baffled the Romans). The Jews, according to Tacitus, were a “people prone to superstition and the enemy of true religion.”4 Their practices, wrote Cicero, are at variance with “the institutions of our ancestors. . . . Each city has its own peculiar religion and we have ours.”5 The Romans did, however, find ways to accommodate the Jews. The Jewish historian Josephus preserves documents spelling out privileges extended to Jewish communities by the magistrates of the cities in which they lived. In Ephesus in western Asia Minor, for example, the town council issued a decree that allowed the Jews to observe the Sabbath, to come together on “stated days,” and “to do all those things which are in accordance with their own laws.” No Jew, it ruled, was to be fined for doing so.6 Similar decrees in other cities make clear that these are privileges granted to the Jews who lived in the city; there is no suggestion that sufferance rested on a general theory of toleration.

The Coming of Christianity The rise of Christianity presented the Romans with a new challenge. Unlike the Jews, the Christians were not an ancient people, they claimed no land or city as their own, and they believed in one transcendent God who welcomed all peoples, “Jew and Greek,” as the New Testament has it (Galatians 3:28). The Jews had a long and venerable history and had lived for generations in some cities in the eastern Mediterranean. By contrast, Christian communities had begun to appear in Roman cities only in the latter decades of the first century. When first mentioned by Roman writers they were called a “superstition”—that is, a degraded and alien cult. The term stuck. Other foreign cults were syncretistic and readily adopted the Roman gods while venerating their own. Not so the Christians; they steadfastly shunned Roman rituals. The ancient “acts of the martyrs” give us contemporaneous accounts of Christian refusal to participate in the religious ceremonies

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of the cities in which they lived. In the late second century in Scillium in present-day Tunisia, a group of Christians was arraigned before the proconsul Saturninus in his chambers. They were asked to swear by the “genius of our Lord the emperor.” When they refused, Saturninus said he had no patience for people who maligned our sacred rites: “We too are a religious people.” Why will Christians not worship our gods? In another account, that of the martyrdom of Apollonius, a wealthy Roman Christian, the governor exhorts him: “I urge you to change your mind, and to worship and venerate the gods all of us worship and venerate, and so to continue to live in our midst.”7 In plain English, he meant: if you want to live here, do what the rest of us do. Otherwise you will be arrested and punished. The “stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy” of Christians was reason enough for punishment, said Pliny, governor of Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century.8 Christians protested that Roman officials treated them unjustly and wrote “apologies” addressed to the emperor or to Roman officials defending Christianity. Among the early Christian apologists none was more ardent in spirit and lucid in argument than Tertullian, a convert to Christianity in Roman Carthage (near presentday Tunis) and the first Christian to write in Latin. Tertullian was born in AD 150–160 of pagan parents—his father was a provincial centurion—and as a boy he enjoyed a superior education in Latin grammar and rhetoric. Later he may have studied law, and he was well schooled in philosophy and history. He became a Christian in the last decade of the second century, and soon put his literary talents to work on behalf of his new religion. A masterful Latin stylist who effortlessly commanded the tools of a skilled rhetorician, Tertullian wrote a vigorous Latin prose spiced with vivid images and arresting phrases. Among his most famous are “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” His writings are never dull. Though he wrote learned theological works, he is most at home dealing with the moral dimensions of Christian life in a Roman city in North Africa: public games and shows, military service, marriage, modesty, constancy under persecution, the courage of the martyrs. An impetuous man, he nevertheless wrote the first treatise on patience in Christian history.

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One of his earliest and most substantive treatises, the Apology was an incisive analysis of Roman policy toward Christians. Tertullian had seen persecution at first hand and may have been present at the execution of two young women—Perpetua, a nursing mother, and her pregnant slave Felicity—in the amphitheater in Carthage early in the third century.9 Tertullian’s Apology is not, however, an occasional work. It is a well-crafted response to the charge that Christians deserved punishment, not for any wrong they had done but simply because they bore the name “Christian.” Some said, “It is not lawful for you to exist,” and others, “You do not worship the gods and do not offer sacrifice”; yet others claimed that Christians practiced secret rites.10 The principal charge against Christians was that they did not follow Roman ways. “We are not considered true Romans because we do not worship the gods of the Romans,” writes Tertullian.11 But why must everyone pray in the same way? “Let one man worship God, another Jupiter. Let one lift up hands of supplication to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides.12 Let one count the clouds as he prays, another the panels on the ceiling. Let one consecrate himself to God, another to a goat.”13 Then Tertullian drives home his point: “See that you do not end up fostering irreligion by taking away freedom of religion [libertas religionis] and forbid free choice with respect to divine matters, so that I am not allowed to worship what I wish, but am forced to worship what I do not wish. Not even a human being would like to be honored unwillingly.”14 Tertullian is the first in the history of Western civilization to use the phrase “freedom of religion.” When one cuts through the irony (worshipping goats and clouds), his strategy is transparent: expose the banality of conventional piety. Religion consists of more than dutiful gestures and solemn rituals; it arises from inner conviction. Intention gives authority to religious devotion; feigned observance makes a mockery of piety. Persecution fosters not genuine devotion but irreligion. By using the term freedom Tertullian advances the truth that human beings are moral agents able to act on the basis of their beliefs. A self-governing domain exists within the human breast free of external curbs; its space must be respected. It is unjust “to force freemen to offer sacrifice against their will; divine service requires a willing mind.” If someone does not believe in the gods,

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Tertullian adds, let him turn his back on them. Religion is not a plaything; without firm resolve, acts of devotion are nugatory.15 Tertullian’s argument centers on the nature of religious belief, whereas for the Romans the point of friction was practice, not belief. They had no interest in what Christians held in their hearts—they cared about what Christians did (or did not do) publicly. Tertullian knew that Roman authorities were suspicious of Christians as a seditious group. Christians are charged with “treason,” he writes, though no one has ever found Christians among rebels such as Albinus or Niger or Cassius.16 Why, he asks, is the Christian association classed among “illegal factions”? They do no wrong, yet they are treated as a willful and fractious party. It is understandable that the authorities do not want society “divided into parties,” but “affairs of state are foreign to us.”17 If the Christians are not a faction or a party, asks Tertullian, what are we? What are the “distinctive marks of our association”? We are a “body [corpus] knit together by a common confession [conscientiae], discipline and hope.” When we meet together, we offer prayers to God for the emperor and all in authority, and for the public good. In our gatherings, we read sacred writings that nourish our faith and exhort one another to live virtuously. Men of maturity and probity preside over our affairs. We place our gifts in a common chest to help those in need. We celebrate a common meal in which we lift up hands of praise and supplication to God. Why, then, are we considered a “faction”? We should rather be called “a senate of God.”18 The language of this passage deserves close attention. Tertullian uses an array of terms—club, party, faction, association, body—to depict the Christian community. By the time he wrote his Apology, the number of Christians was growing in the cities of the Roman Empire. They lived side by side with others, shopped at the same butchers and greengrocers, ate the same food, wore the same attire, had similar habits. They shunned neither the forum nor the baths nor the inns; they even, says Tertullian, “fight alongside you.”19 But, and here was the rub, Christians belonged to a fellowship distinct from the society. When others gathered for civic and religious ceremonies, the absence of Christians was palpable. The phrase “freedom of religion” enters the vocabulary of the West with reference to the privileges of a community, not to the

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beliefs of individuals. This is a point of some importance. Tertullian was defending the rights of Christians to assemble for worship, to organize, to choose leaders, to care for one another, even to have their own burial places for their dead. “Don’t let the Christians have burial grounds for the Christians,” said their neighbors.20 In its earliest use the phrase refers to the freedom of the community of Christians to have its own protected space and follow its distinctive way of life. Even at this early stage in the history of Christianity, Christian leaders were conscious that the Church was not an aggregate of individuals but a corporate body that existed within— but also independent of—the body politic.

No Coercion in Religion A decade after Tertullian wrote the Apology, Christians in Carthage were again visited by persecution. During the reign of the emperor Caracalla, Scapula, the proconsul of Africa, ordered that the Christians in Carthage be suppressed. In response Tertullian wrote a short tract addressed directly to the Roman governor. In this work, as in the Apology, Tertullian defended the community of Christians— this “association,” as he calls it—and countered the “rage” against Christian practices with moral and philosophical arguments. We worship one God whose existence is known by all from nature and we do not understand why you will not allow Christians to worship God as they wish. “It is only just and a privilege inherent in human nature that every person should be able to worship according to his own convictions; the religious practice of one person neither harms nor helps another. It is not part of religion to coerce religious practice, for it is by choice not coercion that we should be led to religion.”21 The gods do not desire offerings from the unwilling. When one sacrifices an animal, the offering cannot be simply the roasting of a heifer or a sheep; sacrifice presumes inner assent. If the tongue does not sing the melody of the heart, the ritual is vacuous. It is gratuitous to compel people to engage in acts of religious devotion against their beliefs. Tertullian gives philosophical depth to his argument by the use of two phrases: humanum ius (human right) and naturalis potestas (natural power). These terms are difficult to render in contemporary English,

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and in my translation I avoid loading the passage with meanings that arose in later times. The Latin term ius can be rendered “right,” but in third-century Rome “right” did not carry the sense it does in contemporary English: that is, the natural right of an individual safeguarded by the state. In Roman law the term ius designated right order—a father’s authority over his children, a householder over his slaves, or the management of property, inheritance, kinship. Infrequently it referred to the right of an association, for example, of firemen or merchants, to meet. A public official charged with enforcing the law had a “right” to appoint other officials and to punish wrongdoers. But in Roman law ius was not used to designate the right of a citizen over against the state.22 In the same way naturalis potestas (natural power), if translated literally, could lead to misunderstanding. Its core meaning is the ability to do something: the skill of a craftsman or the power vested in political authority. It could also designate the power over one’s actions, that is, freedom of choice. In Cicero’s words, “Freedom is the power of living as one wishes.”23 When “power” is modified with “natural” and paired with “human right,” it is tempting to think that Tertullian is speaking about “natural right.” But the concept of natural right arises only in the late Middle Ages and during the Reformation, and it is unlikely that Tertullian meant what we understand by the phrase. By “natural” he simply means that the power of choice is innate, an endowment given at birth. Although Tertullian had been trained in the law and for a time may have practiced law, he is not making a legal claim on Roman authorities. His case is moral and theological. Early on, Christian thinkers had defended freedom of choice as essential to the moral life. Without the ability to choose, an agent cannot be responsible for his acts. So for example, Origen of Alexandria, Tertullian’s contemporary, said that it is laid down in the Church’s teaching that every rational soul has the freedom to choose.”24 In support of this teaching Christian thinkers appealed to scriptural texts, for example, from Deuteronomy, “I have set before you this day good and evil, choose the good” (30:15); or the words of the prophet Isaiah: “If you are willing and obey me you shall eat the good of the land” (Isaiah 1:19–20). In Greek the term for freedom of choice was literally “that which is within one’s own power,” so that when Tertullian

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says that one should be able to practice the religion one wishes, he means the freedom to act on the basis of one’s reasoned judgment. Tertullian, however, has more in mind than a conventional philosophical argument for freedom of choice. In using the adjectives human and natural, he draws on the biblical teaching that human beings are created in the image of God. The key text is Genesis 1:26–27. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created him.” Tertullian takes this to mean that human beings are possessed of reason and animated with divine life. “Man was created by God as free, with power to choose and power to act. . . . There is no clearer indication in him of God’s image and similitude than this, the outward expression of God’s own dignity.” As God’s creatures, made in his image, human beings are “endowed with free choice and power [potestas]”; they are masters of their actions.25 Because Tertullian’s apologies were written to outsiders, he does not quote the Scriptures, but it is clear from his other writings that his defense of freedom in religious matters rests on the biblical understanding of the human person. In the year Tertullian wrote his tract to Scapula, he also penned a sharp critique of the worship of “idols” in Roman festivals and religious celebrations. In this treatise, written for Christians, he freely cites biblical passages, notably the famous saying of Jesus, “Render to God the things that are God’s and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). By pointing to the image of the emperor on the coin, says Tertullian, Jesus taught that we owe taxes to Caesar. But the “image of God,” which is not found on a coin, is imprinted on human beings. This image means that you should offer your money to Caesar, but “to God yourself.” Because human beings are made in the image of God. it is within their power to resist paying homage to gods who are not gods.26 For Tertullian dual loyalty, to God and to the ruling authorities, was “an apostolic precept.” Christians are to obey the “magistrates, princes and powers,” while keeping themselves separate from the worship of false gods. He has in mind the words of Paul: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13:1). Paul urges obedience to the higher powers, such as

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paying “tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom is due.” But, says Tertullian, human beings “belong to God alone.” As Peter wrote: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him. . . . Fear God. Honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:13– 17). The emperor is to be honored, but only in his own sphere, not when he assumes honors due only to God.27 Tertullian adduces the familiar story of Daniel and three Jewish youths, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who, according to the biblical account, were taken in exile under Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon in the sixth century BC (Daniel 3). They were obedient to the king in all things, but they refused to bow down before his image: to venerate the king beyond the “measure of human honor,” that is, as “godlike,” is idolatry. As long as obedience did not compromise their religion, they willingly submitted to Nebuchadnezzar.28 This dual obedience would be played out in different ways in the course of Christian history, but it was a woman, Donata, one of the martyrs in Scillium at the end of the second century, who first raised its banner before public officials. When the Christians were told to desist from their foolishness, Donata said, “Pay honor to Caesar as Caesar, but it is God we fear,” citing 1 Peter.29 Other Christians had written apologies in defense of Christianity to the Romans, but Tertullian had a keener sense of the spiritual ground on which Christians stood. Like others, he contended for the truth of Christianity and against the injustice of persecution. But in highlighting the freedom and dignity of human beings, he broke new ground. The unique constellation of ideas in his apologetic works is without precedent in the ancient world, and it would have a long afterlife in Western civilization. It was a breakthrough, writes Peter Garnsey, an historian of ancient Rome, that “only a Christian could make.”30

Conscience, the Soul’s Testimony The term conscience enters the vocabulary of Christians in the writings of the apostle Paul.31 In a famous passage in the letter to the Romans, Paul says that even though the Gentiles do not have the Jewish law there is a law written in their hearts, and “their

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conscience bears witness” to what they have done, “accusing them or perhaps excusing them” (Romans 2:15). In the ancient world “conscience” was a form of knowledge (con-scientia), best translated as “consciousness” or “recollection.” It signified the awareness that one’s acts carry moral significance and can be judged by others, hence the addition of con to scientia; conscience is “knowledge with.” Used primarily retrospectively, the term was weighted toward knowing and judging past actions. A “good conscience,” wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca, welcomes the crowd because there is no need to hide what one has done, whereas a “bad conscience, even when one is alone, is disturbed and troubled.” If your deeds are honorable, let everyone know them but if they are base, then even if they are not known to others, your conscience bears witness to them.32 Defending himself to the Christians of Corinth, Paul says his “boast is this, the testimony of [my] conscience,” that I have behaved toward you with “holiness and godly sincerity” (2 Corinthians 1:12). But Paul does not simply echo ancient usage. In the passage from Romans, the knowledge borne by conscience is not only a judge of past actions; it also looks forward and carries an obligation to act. “The Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves.” Conscience constrains them to do what is “written on their hearts” (Romans 2:14–15). For Paul conscience is a guide to discern what one should do, not only a way of judging what one did. In Corinth a dispute had arisen regarding whether Christians should eat meat that had been roasted in a ritual sacrifice and then let out for sale in the market. If such meat is offered to you at a dinner party, writes Paul, let your “conscience” be your guide as to what you should do. For a person’s “liberty” should not be “determined by another man’s conscience,” that is, by another man’s judgment as to what is right or wrong (1 Corinthians 10:29). Origen of Alexandria, the first major Christian commentator on the Bible, understood clearly that for Paul the term conscience had a dual role, the knowledge and judgment of past actions and tutor of future deeds. He called it a “natural moral sense” inscribed on the heart. “The testimony of the conscience” judges what one has done, he writes, but also serves as a “pedagogue to the soul, a

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guide and companion, as it were, to admonish it to do what is better or to correct and convict it of faults.”33 Because of its role as pedagogue, conscience must be free. It cannot be subject to outward restraints. This is particularly true in religious matters. In his Apology Tertullian uses the term conscience to explain why Christians cannot participate in Roman religious rites. We resolutely refuse to offer sacrifices, he writes, because of “our conscience,” that is, the knowledge we possess: the Roman gods are not gods. Some think that we have lost our senses because we could simply offer sacrifices and walk away with our convictions intact. They are baffled by our “obstinancy” in holding to what we believe. But it is unjust to compel men who are free; a person cannot be forced to give honor to the gods. By right one should be free to say, “I want none of Jupiter’s favors.”34 In a fascinating short essay, The Testimony of the Soul, Tertullian calls conscience the “knowledge of the soul,” an inner certainty that comes not from oneself but from God. Such knowledge is not learned from a teacher, it is innate; its source is “the teacher of the teacher.”35 Because conscience is “within oneself,” it cannot be ruled by others. Tertullian recognized that for Christians, the soul’s knowledge is also “formed” by the “scriptures of God.”36 What counts, however, is that its ultimate source is God. The testimony of conscience is not about being true to oneself, but about obedience to the voice of God. So he exhorts Christians: bear your testimony “with complete freedom [tota libertate].”

Only Words, Not Blows Tertullian was the most trenchant writer to defend the freedom of Christians to practice their beliefs in Roman society. But there were others, most notably Lactantius, another Latin writer, who lived a century later.37 Like Tertullian, Lactantius was an accomplished Latin stylist whose prose would be admired and imitated by Christian authors in later centuries. His writings, said Jerome, are a “river of Ciceronian eloquence.”38 Lactantius gained a reputation as a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, and at the end of the third century he was appointed to a chair of Latin oratory in the Greek-speaking city of Nicomedia in Bithynia in northwestern

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Asia Minor, the eastern seat of the Roman emperor. He moved in the company of leading intellectuals in the city, some of whom were zealous defenders of Roman religion, yet he decided to be received into the Church. It was an unpromising time and place to cast one’s lot with the Christians; the emperor Diocletian was about to embark on an empire-wide persecution. Aware of what was to come, Lactantius left Nicomedia and moved to Trier where Constantine, the caesar of the West, asked him to tutor his son Crispus. During his stay in Trier, Lactantius wrote a major work, Divine Institutes, a defense and exposition of Christian teaching modeled on the “institutes,” books on Roman law. As was customary in antiquity, it is likely that he read the book aloud before the court with Constantine present. By the end of the third century the number of Christians in the empire was growing rapidly, and they mingled with their fellow citizens in every area of life: in commerce, in the schools, in the army, and in government. Yet most resisted participating in public religious celebrations. By scorning ancient religious traditions, they severed the bond between civic and religious life. The philosopher Porphyry, a contemporary of Lactantius, denounced Christians because they “had abandoned the customs of our fathers, which sustain every people and city, and are impious and atheistic.”39 For Porphyry there could be no dual loyalty; there was one sovereignty, and religious devotion and civic duty were complementary. Lactantius’s Divine Institutes was in part a response to philosophers like Porphyry who had written critiques of Christianity.40 Others had censured Christians for their “pertinacious obstinancy” because they would not return to the “worship of the gods.”41 Lactantius had, however, seen the effects of Diocletian’s persecution at first hand: Christians whose eyes had been popped out of their sockets, their arms or legs hacked off, their noses slit. He witnessed the destruction of a Christian church building in Nicomedia. He also knew well the intellectual rationale for persecution, and that is what occupies him in the Divine Institutes. The work is a long and unhurried discussion of the Romans gods, the errors of the philosophers, the relation between wisdom and religious devotion, justice, true worship, and the virtuous life. In the middle of the book

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Lactantius takes up the theme adumbrated by Tertullian, that religious convictions can only be espoused willingly. The principal issue, says Lactantius, is that the Romans will “not allow God to be worshipped by others.” By that he means that they will not allow Christians to worship God as they wish. Instead, they use whatever means they can to compel them to observe their “public rites.” If one asks for reasons why they demand this of us, they only appeal to the “judgments of their ancestors.” But this, says Lactantius, is contrary to the “law of humanity and divine justice.” Instead of trying to persuade us by arguments, or even appealing, as we do, to “divine testimonies,” they rely on violence. But, writes Lactantius, “religion cannot be imposed by force [religio cogi non potest].” The will can be moved to act “only by words, not by blows.”42 Lactantius realized the futility of trying to convince the Romans that they could halt the growth of Christianity by persecution. “Laws are able to punish offences,” he wrote, “but they are unable to punish the conscience.”43 So he chose to show the deficiencies of Roman religion and the pointlessness of persecuting people whose religion is a matter of inner conviction. Roman religion consisted primarily of ritual acts that ask “nothing from within, nothing of one’s own.” It is “worship with the fingertips.” Religion is, however, only secondarily about ritual acts; its seat is the “soul” and it seeks a “mind turned to God, a pure breast and a virtuous life.” Without faith religion does not exist. The Romans believe that their rituals must be defended. But by what means? Can a person be forced or cajoled into worshipping God? If the mind is not persuaded, religious acts are a mockery of God. In a nice flourish, Lactantius wrote that the hearts of men can be won not by “killing” but by “dying.” Only persuasion can lead free men to God. Tertullian had made the argument that religious faith could not be coerced. Lactantius, writing a hundred years later, restated Tertullian’s fundamental point. But by the early fourth century Christians were more numerous and the cultured despisers had a clearer sense of the distinctive features of Christianity. Lactantius took this as an opportunity to present subtly, but unmistakably, a biblical understanding of religious faith. He sprinkles his critique of Roman religion with words from the Bible—faith, love, fear, truth—though as an

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apologist he makes no appeal to the Christian Scriptures. Yet the biblical basis of his thinking lies below the surface. To cite but one example: when Lactantius says that “God sees the secret places of the heart,” he is using the language of Psalm 44, God “knows the secrets of the heart” (Psalm 44:21). But he does not identify his source.44 For Lactantius religion is a firm inner adherence to God. He was not unique in this. But he was singular among early Christian apologists in giving the nature of religious faith a prominent role in his defense of Christian devotion in the face of persecution. In doing so he may have had Christian readers in mind. The early apologies, ostensibly addressed to the cultured despisers of Christianity, were also directed to Christians. Lactantius makes explicit what was implicit in Tertullian: only in giving of ourselves do we revere God. Lactantius was a man of letters, not a theologian or philosopher, and he is considered a minor figure in the history of Christian thought. But he displayed a clear-headed understanding of the authority of religious faith. His thinking on the incompatibility of religion and coercion would endure.45

The Protocols of Milan Diocletian’s persecution went on for several years, but it could not be sustained. Christians were too numerous, their communities too cohesive, and their leaders too adroit to be done in by the sword. By forcing a choice between Rome and Christ, the emperor badly misjudged the doughtiness and resiliency of the Church. In 306 Diocletian abdicated and handed over authority to Galerius. In 311, near death from a crippling illness, Galerius issued a proclamation ending the persecution. Its aim, he declared, had been “to bring all things into harmony with the ancient laws and public order of the Romans, and to provide that even the Christians who had left the religion of their fathers should come back to reason.” But persecution had brought only hardship and suffering, with the result that Christians “neither paid the reverence and awe due to the gods nor worshipped the God of the Christians.” Therefore, Galerius had decided to grant “sufferance” that Christians may hold their gatherings, provided they did nothing contrary to good

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order. He also asked Christians to pray “to their God” for “our safety and that of the state [res publica]” so that from every side the commonweal may be kept unharmed.46 Galerius’s edict was a departure from Roman practice. It was an acknowledgment that Roman authorities were unable to stamp out Christianity and a public admission that they must allow what they disapproved of. The term he uses is indulgentia, an act of accommodation or clemency by a superior toward his subjects. It is less an official policy of toleration than a political calculation—the authorities were doing what they had to do when they could not do as they wished. Galerius died a few months later and Maxentius, who had married Galerius’s daughter, claimed for himself the title of augustus with hegemony over Italy and North Africa, challenging Constantine. To assert lordship over the western empire Constantine would have to defeat him. So he mustered his army, headed southeast, crossed the Alps, and marched toward Rome, where Maxentius and his army were awaiting him. In 313 at the famous battle of the Milvian Bridge that carried the great road from northern Italy across the Tiber into Rome, Constantine won a decisive victory over his rival. With Maxentius’s defeat, Constantine became augustus of the West as Licinius was augustus of the East. Constantine moved quickly to persuade his co-emperor Licinius that a new religious policy was needed. In the winter of 313 he went to Milan to celebrate the marriage of his half sister Constantia to Licinius. While in Milan, the two emperors took the occasion to discuss matters of state and came to an agreement concerning the practice of religion. During the summer, Licinius sent letters to provincial governors in the East granting Christians rights they already had in the West and restoring their property. The letter has been called the Edict of Milan, but the term is a misnomer. It was a letter, not an edict, and it was posted from cities in the East, notably Nicomedia, the residence of the emperor, not from Milan. Like other official correspondence, it was written in the name of both emperors, though its inspiration came from Constantine and its ideas from Lactantius. The contrast between the edict of Galerius and the “protocols of Milan” is conspicuous. For one thing, the letter deals not with

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Christians only, but with all people. “No cult or religion will be impaired by us.” For another, the letter steps beyond forbearance to grant “freedom” to “all men to follow whatever religion each one wishes.” The novel use of the term libertas suggests that the emperors were thinking of something more than toleration. Each person, they write, must be free to “give his mind to the observances of the Christian religion or to that religion which he felt was most fitting to himself.”47 The letter implicitly states that freedom to practice the religion one wishes is a matter of principle, not sufferance of something offensive. Another feature of the letter stands out. After the general statement about freedom to practice one’s religion, the emperors made clear that with respect to the Christians they also have in mind not simply individuals but the freedom of the Church, the body (corpus) of Christians. The Christians are known, they write, to have places “in which they had the habit of assembling” and where they own property. For that reason Licinius and Constantine state that the places where they gather “belong by right to their body [ius corporis],” that is, to the “churches not to individuals.”48 This statement is no less novel than the general policy on freedom in religious matters, for it suggests that the emperors sensed, if only dimly, that a new form of religion existed in their midst, having its own corporate life independent of the state. It is a truth Christians would always honor, even when the line between the spiritual and the temporal was so fine as to seem nonexistent. How the letter of Constantine and Licinius was received by the provincial governors to whom it was sent is not known. No doubt some shook their heads in bewilderment as to what the emperors were talking about. Their language was without parallel in the Roman world. The protocols of Milan were, however, soon overtaken by events, and accounts of Constantine’s reign written later in the fourth century do not mention the letter of Licinius and Constantine. Though its impact on official religious policy was short-lived, the ideas it contained, carried by the slow stream of history, would live on.

chapter two

A Christian Society

To believe depends on the will. —t h o m a s a q u i n a s

after the peace of the Church in the early fourth century, the defense of the rights of Christians to practice their faith fell into desuetude. No longer did Christians face Roman proconsuls who asked, “Why do you not worship the gods all of us worship?” Now the emperor himself worshipped the Christian God, and those who confessed Christ were free to gather for worship, teach publicly in the cities, and carry on their affairs. It has been said that toleration is a “loser’s creed,” and that judgment is borne out by the change in Christians’ behavior during the reign of Constantine.1 It is not that Christians under Constantine abandoned the view that religious belief could not be coerced. But it was one thing to assert that while enduring persecution, quite another when holding the reins of power. Tertullian’s use of the term freedom of religion should not be taken to mean that in the early centuries Christian thinkers fashioned a doctrine of religious freedom. That was beyond their ken. Though he used the words “right” (ius) and “natural” to argue that Christians be allowed to practice their religion, his point was that 24

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coercion in religious matters violates the freedom of human beings, not that it was a right protected by the law. It is possible, writes Brian Tierney, that Christian teaching on the “inherent value of each individual person could be reformulated as a doctrine of subjective natural rights,” but through Christian history that “possibility was not realized.”2 Only after many centuries and under quite different historical circumstances—the Reformation of the sixteenth century—would freedom of conscience be deemed a natural right. In the intervening centuries a new world came into being. The most significant development was the establishment of a Christian civilization in the Mediterranean basin following the conversion of Constantine and the spread of Christian institutions and culture to the peoples of northern Europe. Now it was Christian authorities who had to deal with religious dissent within their societies, most notably the presence of Jewish communities, and also “heretics,” Christians who did not confess orthodox doctrine as defined by the Church’s creeds. Ideas that had first been set forth in defense of Christians persecuted by the Romans had to be rethought and interpreted for Christians who were oppressing others. To that end some medieval thinkers affirmed the ancient view that religious faith could not be coerced; others expanded and deepened the understanding of conscience; yet others addressed a new issue, the conflict between religious and temporal authority in Christian societies. These are large topics, and I deal with them only sketchily. My aim is to provide some background to understand the debates that arose at the time of the Reformation.

All Peoples Shall Practice One Religion At the beginning of the fourth century, Rome was a pagan city filled with temples to the Roman gods. After the battle of the Milvian Bridge, which marked the beginning of Constantine’s reign as emperor, Constantine made a triumphal procession in a four-horse chariot through the city to the Roman Forum, as was customary after a military victory. When he arrived at the Forum, he broke with ancient tradition and did not ascend the Capitol to offer the customary sacrifices to the gods. His was a bold and conspicuous

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gesture whose symbolism was unmistakable, and within a few months a Christian church was being constructed in Rome. In the past, emperors had built temples to the gods, but Constantine provided funds to erect to the one God a basilica in which a new kind of sacrifice would be offered, the “unbloody” sacrifice of the Eucharist. Known today as the Lateran Basilica, this first Christian church in Rome was a majestic and opulent structure that accommodated three thousand people. Ostensibly the building was the work of a private religious association, but in truth it was a public structure for worship and assembly, and its grandeur was a harbinger of the future role of Christianity in the empire. Christians, with the encouragement and support of the emperor, were beginning to create a new culture on the foundations laid by the ancient Romans. In the marking of time and the making of laws, in mosaics adorning the walls of churches and in psalms sung in Christian worship, Christianity was giving Roman cities a new face. In 321, Sunday, the day of the week on which Christians gathered to celebrate the Eucharist, was officially declared a day of rest.3 Modern notions of the separation of church and state were foreign to men and women in ancient times, Christians included. Religion was the mortar that bound society together, and Constantine’s conversion signaled the emergence of a new political and religious project inspired by Christianity. He displayed his support for the Church not only in the building of churches but also in the provision of funds for the copying of the Scriptures and the convening of a council of bishops, the famous Council of Nicaea, to settle a doctrinal dispute. In one case he ordered that a pagan temple be razed to make space for the building of a Christian church, and in another he forbad governors in several provinces to participate in public sacrifices.4 Official policy was not neutral about religion. There is, however, little evidence of a general policy to impede traditional forms of worship. Still, the landscape was changing as the Church was transformed from a voluntary association into a public institution. Citizens who followed ancient ways were labeled “idolators” and their rites “abominations,” and Constantine urged them to acknowledge the one supreme God and confess Christ as Savior. But

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he left them free to follow the religion of their choice, and said that those who “still delight in error” should have “the same degree of peace and tranquility which they have who do believe.” Let no one be molested, for “it is one thing voluntarily to undertake the contest for immortality, another to compel others to do so from the fear of punishment.”5 Thus, the principle that religious choice should be free was not abandoned during Constantine’s reign, though the alliance between the Christian Church and the Roman state modified religious sentiments and eventually influenced the laws. There is a tendency in the human mind to assign normative authority to the existing state of affairs. Christian clergy became exempt from compulsory public service, paying taxes, and military service, and official rescripts made clear that this exemption applied only to “orthodox” clergy, not to heretics. Groups that did not hold to the “true religion” were denied the right to build churches, nor could their clergy hold offices in the imperial administration. Later in the century heresy became a “public crime.”6 How energetically these laws were—or could be—enforced is unclear. Heretical bishops, those who did not accept the decrees on the doctrine of the Trinity defined by the Council of Nicaea in 325, were a potent force throughout the fourth century. In some cities they were able to displace orthodox bishops and gain control of churches. Constantine’s successors were seldom resolute in holding to orthodox doctrine. Toward the end of the fourth century, however, Emperor Theodosius I issued a decree addressed to his subjects. “It is our will,” writes the emperor, “that all peoples who are ruled by the administration of our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans” and is today professed by Damasus the bishop of Rome and Peter, bishop of Alexandria. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, “let us believe the one deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity.” The places of those who hold to “heretical teachings” shall not receive the name of “churches,” and they “commit sacrilege” by violating the sanctity of divine law. In spite of Theodosius’s proclamation, some clung to the old ways, and various forms of pagan rites persisted well into the fifth century, though sacrificial rituals were banned. It is well to remember

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that Christians continued to write apologies in defense of the Christian faith. Augustine’s great work The City of God, written in the early fifth century, carried the subtitle Contra Paganos, “against the pagans.” Other prominent bishops—Cyril of Alexandria in Egypt and Theodoret of Cyrrhus in Syria—also wrote apologies to the cultured despisers of the new religion. But the future lay with Christianity, and by the sixth century, when Justinian became emperor, the transition from the Rome of Caesar Augustus to a Christian Roman Empire was complete.

Changing Status of Jews One body of religious believers, however, steadfastly maintained their independence: the Jews. Though their city, Jerusalem, had been destroyed by the Romans in the first century, and the building of the Church of the Resurrection—known today as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—in the fourth century transformed Jerusalem into a Christian city, the Jews adjusted to life under Christian rule and imaginatively adapted their ancient traditions to a world without the temple. Indeed, so vibrant were the Jewish communities that some Christians were drawn to the synagogue, keeping the Sabbath on Saturday and joining the celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday. This was especially the case in cities in the eastern Mediterranean, greater Syria (including Palestine), and Egypt. In Antioch John Chrysostom preached eight sermons in fall 386 against Judaizing Christians because, as he puts it in the first sermon, in autumn the Jewish festivals “follow one another in succession.”7 Nevertheless, under Christian rule the standing of Jews in society was eroding. One sign was terminology. In official documents their religion was called a “superstition,” that is, a nonChristian religion, whereas Christianity was called a “religion.”8 There is much irony here. When Christianity first came to the attention of Roman authorities in the early second century, it was called a “superstition,” that is, a degraded cult alien to Roman ways. Now Christians used the same term to disparage the Jews. In official documents Jews were called feral, nefarious, impious, and perverse.

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Derogatory language was soon matched by laws designed to hinder the growth of the Jewish religion. Jews were prohibited from converting Christians, and Jews who harassed Jewish converts to Christianity were subject to harsh penalties. Jews were allowed to keep Christian slaves only on the condition that the slaves could hold to their “own [Christian] religion.” Jewish masters were forbidden to circumcise their Christian slaves. In the early fifth century Emperor Theodosius II forbad the Jewish patriarch Gamaliel VI from building new synagogues and ordered him to destroy synagogues in thinly populated places. Some synagogues were burned and turned into churches. On the one hand, “the sect of the Jews [was] prohibited by no law,” and official policy recognized their freedom to practice their religion. Imperial rescripts reproved zealous Christians who despoiled and destroyed Jewish synagogues.9 On the other hand, popular sentiment and imperial legislation were nudging the Jews to the margins of society and compromising their legal standing. There is no evidence of efforts in the early centuries to compel Jews to be baptized. But in the fifth century the remains of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, were found in a tomb outside the city of Jerusalem. The story of his martyrdom, told in the book of Acts (6:8–8:1), was well known. Stephen, a newly elected deacon, was thought to have uttered blasphemous words against Moses and God. Brought before the Jewish council, he addressed its members in a long speech that enraged his accusers, after which he was taken outside and stoned by the people. In the fifth century, after the discovery of his remains, two Spanish priests gained possession of several relics with the intention of bringing them to Spain. On the way home they stopped in Minorca, an island in the western Mediterranean. The arrival of the relics provoked an outburst of enthusiasm that led to the burning of the Jewish synagogue and the forcible baptism of a large number of Jews.10 Though this incident is singular, it reflects attitudes toward Jews that prevailed in the Christian world. In Spain, not far from Minorca, the laws concerning the Jews were particularly harsh, perhaps because on the Iberian peninsula the Jewish population was relatively large. Christian rulers thought their “superstitious prevarication” a threat to Christians and issued

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laws aimed at removing Jewish “infidelity” from the Visigothic kingdom. Intermarriage between Jews and Christians was banned, and Jews were forbidden to hold public office, testify in court against Christians, or build new synagogues. King Reccared (586– 601), with the collusion of Catholic bishops, actively pressured Jews to accept Christian baptism. And at the Sixth Council of Toledo King Chintilla made clear his desire to create a kingdom united by the Christian religion.11 But in other regions Christian bishops defended the rights of the Jews. In a city in Sicily, for example, the local bishop had prohibited the Jews from celebrating their festivals. When this news made its way to Rome, Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) reprimanded the bishop. Those who are not Christians, writes Gregory, should not be forced to believe; the way to faith is through “persuasion.” Gregory opposed the forced baptism of Jews. “I consider the intention worthy of praise,” he wrote to the bishops of Arles and Marseilles, “and grant that it comes from the love of our Lord.” But “anyone brought to the font of Baptism, not by the sweetness of preaching, but by compulsion, will return to his former superstition and die in a worse state because he had been reborn. My brother, may you stir up such men by frequent preaching so that they may desire to change their life more by the sweetness of their teacher.”12 In his effort to instruct other bishops, Gregory appealed to the ancient truth that religion cannot be coerced. The only tool is persuasion. But he lived in a society whose boundaries were defined by religion. Though he recognized that the Jews had a place, Gregory did not want Christians to be influenced by Jewish practices. Christians should not, he said, be tempted to observe the Jewish custom of not working on the Sabbath. He prohibited Jewish ownership of Christian slaves lest the Christian religion be tainted by association with Jewish customs. And he was displeased that in one city the synagogue was so close to the church that Christians could hear Jewish singing as they prayed. He advised the bishop to find another place for the Jews to gather. Gregory’s magnanimity had its limits.13

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Compel Them to Come In Besides Jews and heretics, Christian leaders had to deal with the presence in their cities of schismatic Christian communities. The most famous case is that of Augustine and the Donatists, a rigorist group that had separated itself from the Catholic Church over the ordination of a bishop who had handed over the Scriptures to Roman authorities during a time of persecution. The Donatists had gained many adherents in North Africa, especially among people who lived outside the cities in towns and villages and considered themselves the true Church, the society of the pure. In Hippo, where Augustine was bishop, there was a large Donatist church, and their opposition to the Catholics made social life burdensome for Augustine and his people. As was his custom when faced with a theological challenge, he called in his secretary and dictated several hefty tomes against the Donatists in the hopes of restoring Catholic unity. But persuasion proved futile, and some of the more radical Donatists assaulted Catholic bishops. In one case a band of Donatists attacked the bishop of Bagai (a town in present-day Algeria) at the altar, hacked him with a machete, and dragged him to the edge of town, where they left him for dead. Augustine reluctantly concluded that only force would constrain the Donatists. “Originally my opinion was that no one should be forced to the unity of Christ, but that we should act with words, fight with arguments, and conquer by reason.”14 However, when in 405 the Roman governor in Carthage posted a rescript branding the Donatists “heretics” and declaring their churches illegal, Augustine discovered that coercion worked. Augustine turned to the Scriptures seeking a justification for coercion and found it in the parable of the wedding feast in the Gospel of Luke. In the parable, those who have been invited give excuses as to why they cannot come. In response the master says to his servants: “Whomever you find, compel them to come in” (Luke 14:23). Augustine’s use of this text has reverberated down the centuries, for it seems contrary to the truth that religious faith cannot be compelled. This is not the place to debate Augustine’s handling of the Donatists; what is significant is that a prominent bishop

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offered a theological rationale for repressive measures by the state against a schismatic group. As late as the eighteenth century Augustine’s interpretation of “compel them to come in” would be used to justify coercion in dealing with religious dissidents.15 In his preaching and teaching, however, Augustine had a different view of coercion. Take his exposition of the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). The Latin term for draw, traho, means “to drag” or “to haul,” that is, to pull someone unwillingly, not draw gently or attract. Does Jesus then mean, asks Augustine, that we are “dragged to Christ”? If so, would that mean we “believe unwillingly” because force is applied, not come to faith by a “stirring of the will”? But that cannot be. “Someone can enter a church against his will, approach the altar against his will, receive the sacrament against his will; but he cannot believe unless he wants to.” Listen to the words of the apostle: “With the heart one believes unto justice.” And what comes next? “With the mouth one makes a confession unto salvation” (Romans 10:10). One cannot know whether someone who confesses his faith publicly is a believer; if he is not a believer, he is not confessing his faith. To confess “is to say what you have in your heart,” but if you have one thing in your heart and say something else, you are just talking, not confessing.16 This truth, that faith could not be coerced, lodged itself deep in the Christian mind. In 738 Charles Martel crossed the Rhine and laid waste the lands of the Saxons. Later in the century Charlemagne subdued the Saxons beyond the Elbe River and compelled Widikund the Saxon leader to be baptized. After his victory Charlemagne inaugurated an organized effort to force the Saxon people to submit to Christian discipline, to the point of making refusal to be baptized a capital offense. The historian Richard Fletcher observed that the Saxon Capitulary, the document authorizing the forced Christianization of the Saxons, “stands as a blueprint for the comprehensive and ruthless Christianization of a conquered society.”17 But Charlemagne could not act with impunity; his trusted advisor, the learned Englishman Alcuin, a member of Charlemagne’s court, vigorously protested the imposition of Christianity on the conquered peoples. In a letter written to Charlemagne as he was

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about to begin a campaign against the Avars, a semi-nomadic people living along the Danube, Alcuin instructed Charlemagne that people cannot be brought to faith by force. “Faith arises from the will, not from compulsion,” wrote Alcuin. “You can persuade a man to believe, but you cannot force him. You may even be able to force him to be baptized, but this will not instill the faith within him.”18 Alcuin’s letter is remarkable, not only for his boldness in standing up to the king but because he assumes that Charlemagne will understand—if not heed—what he says. What the Saxons need, continues Alcuin, are preachers, not soldiers, men who can feed them the milk of “sweet teaching,” so that they will not, like infants, vomit out what has been forced on them. The rite of baptism confers no benefit if it is not accompanied by faith.

Two Sovereignties The new Christian empire inherited its laws and political institutions from ancient Rome. But Christians also looked to the Bible, most notably to the political institutions of ancient Israel depicted in the historical books of the Old Testament—for instance, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. When Solomon became king, the priest Zadok anointed him with oil, after which trumpets were blown and the people cried out: “Long live King Solomon” (1 Kings 1:39). In early medieval Europe Christians adopted this practice and anointed the emperor with holy oil at his coronation, conferring a quasi-priestly mystique on his person. As head of the Christian people the emperor exercised commanding authority in religious as well as temporal matters. Charlemagne patterned his rule on that of the ancient Israelite king Josiah, who had reformed and centralized religious authority in Israel. As Josiah read out to the people the ancient “book of the law” (2 Kings 13:1–4), so Charles read out the laws of the Church to the bishops, priests, and deacons. Alcuin even had the habit of addressing letters to Charlemagne “To the King David.” But Christian Europe was not Rome, nor was it ancient Israel. Most significantly, the clergy received their office neither from the emperor nor from a king. They were consecrated by bishops who stood in a line of succession reaching back to the apostles and to

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Christ. Christians acknowledge two sovereignties, one temporal and the other spiritual, a second public domain, as a monk put it during the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40), son of Charlemagne.19 Jesus expressed this dualism most memorably when challenged by a group of Pharisees: “Teacher, we know that you are true and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” Jesus said to them: “Bring me a coin and let me look at it.” When they handed him the coin he asked: “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” To which Jesus replied: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:13–17). Jesus was of course speaking about a pagan Caesar, but with the conversion of Constantine, obedience to Caesar and obedience to God began to merge. Already in the fourth century Constantine’s successors intervened in the affairs of the Church. In the great controversy over the doctrine of the Trinity several emperors ordered bishops of major sees into exile because they opposed the imperial will. Some submitted, but others resisted. In a famous case, when Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the late fourth century, was told he had to hand over one of the churches in the city to the Arians (heterodox Christians), he replied: “A bishop cannot give up the temple of God.” Told that the disposal of religious buildings was within the rights of the emperor, Ambrose replied: “The things of God are not subject to the authority of the emperor.”20 The classic statement of the conflict between political and religious authority in Christian society was delivered at the end of the fifth century in a dispute between Gelasius, bishop of Rome, and Anastasius, emperor of the Christian Roman Empire in Constantinople. Their differences came to a head when Anastasius actively supported critics of the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), a major gathering of Christian bishops whose decrees on the person of Christ were vigorously defended by the popes. Gelasius took the unprecedented step of writing a letter directly to the emperor instructing him on the limits of his authority in religious matters. The letter would shape Christian thinking on the relation between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the Middle Ages and

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into the sixteenth century. “There are two powers,” writes Gelasius, “by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. . . . Christ . . . separated the offices of both powers according to their proper activities and their special dignities . . . so that Christian emperors would have need of bishops in order to attain eternal life and bishops would have recourse to imperial direction in the conduct of temporal affairs.”21 Christian society was governed by two rulers, the one charged with leading people to salvation, the other with maintaining order and providing conditions for the Church to carry out its mission. Each was sovereign in his own sphere, though Gelasius, as pope, believed spiritual authority was superior. The distinction between the two powers later came to be called the doctrine of the two swords. The phrase “two swords” comes from a passage in the Gospel of Luke. When Jesus sends his disciples into cities and towns to proclaim the good news, he tells them that if they do not have a sword, they must sell their mantles and buy one. Jesus is speaking metaphorically and seems to mean that his disciples should be prepared to face hostility. But the disciples took him literally and said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords,” to which Jesus replied: “It is enough” (Luke 22:35–38). Fastening on the phrase “two swords,” medieval commentators ignored the plain sense of the passage and took it to refer to the distinction between spiritual and temporal rule. As King Edgar in England wrote to Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury: “I have in my hand the sword of Constantine; you hold that of Peter.”22 Conflict between the two swords was inescapable in medieval Europe, as kings and princes built churches, endowed monasteries, named bishops and abbots, and ruled on liturgical matters. The king’s authority was symbolized in his coronation and anointing and by the practice of lay “investiture.” Originally, “investiture” referred to the ceremony in which a lord handed over land to a vassal in return for an oath of fealty. But the practice was adapted for the consecration of bishops and abbots. At the time of consecration the king or his representative handed over the symbols of episcopal office, a staff or crozier and a ring, to the new bishop. Though the bishop or abbot was consecrated in an ecclesiastical rite by other bishops, the system encouraged spiritual fealty to the local lord. In

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the Investiture Controversy, Gregory VII (1073–1085) challenged the authority of kings to invest bishops with the symbols of their office. Such investiture, he wrote, has no apostolic authority. For Gregory, lay investiture threatened the freedom of the Church and inverted the right ordering of Church and society. He sought to strip the king of spiritual authority and reduce him to the status of a layman. Formerly the emperor had been accountable directly to God; now, Gregory claimed, he was accountable to the pope. By desacralizing the office of the king, Gregory set in motion forces that would alter not only the self-understanding of the Church but also that of the state. If spiritual authority were solely in the hands of the clergy, kingship must be understood differently and a new foundation would have to be laid for political authority. That was, however, far in the future. In the medieval world the two powers were exercised within one corporate Christian society, the corpus christianum, each having its own power of jurisdiction. They did not constitute two separate realms, but were intertwined. Of course the two overlapped, and again and again emperors and kings vied with popes, each bending the axiom of the two swords to fit his ends. In time a presumption grew up in ecclesiastical circles that spiritual authority was supreme and kings and emperors must bow to the supremacy of the Church in the person of the pope. Bernard of Clairvaux went so far as to say that both swords belonged to the Church, the spiritual sword being exercised “by the Church,” the material sword “on behalf of the Church.”23 But the hierocratic interpretation of the two swords was vigorously contested again and again, by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the twelfth century and the French king Philip the Fair in the early fourteenth century, to mention two examples.24 And after the Great Schism in the late fourteenth century, with the risible spectacle of two—and for a time three—popes, it became more difficult for the pope to assert control over secular rulers. With the rise of Conciliarism, the theory that the authority of a general council was superior to that of the pope, the papacy was weakened further. And at least one thinker, Marsilius of Padua, abandoned the ancient dualism by locating sovereignty in the corporation of citizens. Nevertheless, the view that the corpus christianum was

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governed by two powers, one spiritual and the other political, was not forgotten and would be infused with a new life during the Reformation.

Inner Freedom Ten years after Gregory’s death, Pope Urban II preached a sermon before a huge gathering in Clermont, France, summoning Christians to take up arms to reclaim Jerusalem and free fellow Christians living under Muslim rule in the Holy Land. The response was tumultuous, and soon powerful knights and vigorous young men began to make their way east. But the fervor of Christians to conquer Muslims in the Middle East inflamed passions among Christians in Europe, and some turned on the Jews. Roused by visions of the end of the world when Jews would be converted to Christianity, mobs of Christians, especially in the Rhineland, had some Jews baptized forcibly and massacred others. Some bishops opposed the mobs, but they were powerless to protect the Jews. In 1120 Pope Callistus II issued a papal bull titled Sicut Iudaeis (As for the Jews) in response to the massacre of Jews in Europe. We proclaim, he wrote, that the Jews should “suffer no prejudice.” We grant them our protection and prohibit Christians from leading Jews forcibly to the baptismal font. If someone is brought to the baptism “unwillingly,” not “voluntarily,” baptism will not create genuine faith. Nor should Christians prohibit Jews from practicing their religious traditions or disturb their cemeteries. If anyone should go against this decree, he shall be subject to excommunication. What Callistus wrote had been asserted by earlier popes. In fact the title of the bull, Sicut Iudaeis, was taken from a letter of Gregory the Great to the bishop of Naples reminding him that no one should compel Jews to come to baptism “by force.” If any should come freely to the faith we welcome them, but we do not consider someone to have the “true faith of Christianity who is known to have come to Christian baptism, not voluntarily, but unwillingly.”25 Early in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) echoed the language of Sicut Iudaeis in a letter to the Jews. “We decree that no Christian shall use violence to compel the Jews to

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accept baptism.” If one has not of his own accord sought baptism, he cannot have faith, for no one can be compelled to faith. Forced baptism is not a true baptism.26 The validity of baptism—that is, baptism of an adult—turns on informed consent, on whether the person being baptized wishes to be baptized. Eventually this truth was incorporated in canon law: it is contrary to Christian faith to submit to baptism “unwillingly” and without an “inward disposition.”27 A related question was whether it was justifiable to baptize the children of Jews against the wishes of their parents. Thomas Aquinas acknowledged that in the past some Christian teachers and princes had defended the baptism of Jewish children. But this was never the “custom of the Church.”28 His reasoning was in part an appeal to natural justice: a child should be cared for by his parents in matters of the body and of the soul. But he also argued that unbelievers should not be forcibly baptized. Faith is a free act, for “believing depends on the will.29 Compulsion, enforcing the Church’s laws and regulations, has a place only in dealing with people who have accepted the faith and are subject to the Church’s jurisdiction. Following Augustine, Aquinas understood faith as knowledge with assent, an interior act of the will directed to God and hidden from the eyes of others. Human law cannot curb or direct “interior acts.” It can punish evil deeds and direct outward behavior, but human beings are unable to judge the movements of the soul. A person may be forced to do certain things without inner consent—for example, sign a contract or honor a debt—but faith requires free choice. Aquinas lived in a hierarchical society in which conflicts inevitably arose between the obligation to obey a superior and the claims of conscience. A soldier must obey his general in matters relating to war, a servant on matters related to his duties, and a monk on matters that have to do with the ordering of the common life of his religious community. But if a superior orders something “contrary to God,” it is wrong to obey. Obedience is obligatory only in those matters to which the vow of obedience extends.30 As Augustine wrote: “If the emperor commands one thing and God another you must disregard the former and obey God.” If something touches on an “internal movement of the will,” if it is a matter of

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conscience, one must obey “God alone.” Conscience is an “inner spiritual bond,” whereas the office of a superior is extrinsic, and hence the bond of conscience trumps the command of a superior. Even when there is a command of a superior to the contrary, “conscience will bind.”31 If conscience and authority are in conflict, one must obey conscience. Aquinas also explains that conscience is an act, not simply a correcting and guiding spirit that leads the soul away from evil and turns it to the good. In the early Church Origen had stressed that conscience is an obligation that leads to action, and Aquinas gives a philosophical account of conscience as an act. Conscience, he explains, is not simply thoughts about what one has done or what one should do. It designates the “application of knowledge to an individual case.” It is an act of judgment that leads to an action, knowledge with the force of a command.32 How this played out in life will be shown by several cases in the Middle Ages.

The Certainty of Conscience In the late thirteenth century Petrus Iohannis Olivi, a distinguished Franciscan theologian, got caught up in a dispute that led to charges of heresy. In 1283 Bonogratia of San Giovanni in Persiceto, minister general of the order, convened a committee of four masters and three bachelors of theology at Paris to examine Olivi’s writings. They produced a list of questionable statements and a second list of positive assertions to which he was asked to assent to prove his orthodoxy. At a hearing in Avignon, Olivi pointed out that the charges touched on his work only indirectly, and the positive statements were deliberately formulated to oppose what the committee knew were his views. If he subscribed to the teachings in the document he would be judged by the committee’s understanding of orthodox doctrine. In the end Olivi agreed to some of the statements and to others with qualification.33 After the hearing Olivi, in writings defending himself against the charges, had sharp words about the way the matter had been handled. He agreed that there was a “substance of the faith explicitly handed down to us through the Roman church” that must be accepted “with firm and explicit faith.”34 The question, however, is

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where one should turn to define this faith. The Scriptures are of course primary and must be given the highest authority. The Bible is a book to be argued from; it must be interpreted to show how particular passages are to be understood in light of the central articles of Christian faith. To discern the sense one must turn to the Church’s teachers, the saints, and the pope. The pope is of course the final authority, but Olivi pointedly observed that it was not the pope who was judging him. Olivi asked that the members of the committee show that what they demanded of him was in harmony with the Catholic faith, the Scriptures, the councils of the church, and the pope. Only then would Olivi acknowledge that his teachings were erroneous. He would respect what they said and be open to discipline, but he would not accept the claim that they were teaching the Catholic faith. To “adhere in this way to any human inventions whatsoever . . . is to venerate the words of men as if they were idols.” To which he adds: “I would knowingly obey no man against those things that are of the faith. In other things I would always obey in so far as I could as long as purity of conscience is preserved; but never against purity of conscience, for even though these matters might not affect the faith, I should lie for no man, especially in matters of doctrine.”35 As a Franciscan friar, Olivi had taken a vow of obedience to his order’s rule and to his superior. But as Aquinas showed, there are limits to the vow of obedience. If one’s superior makes demands that exceed his authority, obedience is not obligatory. Olivi was convinced that his superiors had overstepped their authority by making unreasonable and unjust demands. He must obey his conscience. His appeal to conscience was not a supplication based on a private judgment, but obedience to the voice of God revealed in the Scriptures and handed on in the Church’s tradition. Significantly, he was one of a several medieval thinkers who were instrumental in forging the language that would undergird the later understanding of “natural rights.”36 Another assertion of the certainty of conscience in medieval Christianity came from Godfrey of Fontaines, a “master” in Paris. The question arose whether a teacher should speak against his bishop if he believed the bishop to be teaching things that were

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doctrinally unsound. Godfrey recognized that such a question could not be answered in the abstract. There might be times when a bishop must restrain a master from teaching, lest he cause offense to the faithful. Further, if the matter did not have to do with salvation, it might be better for the master not to oppose the bishop openly. The spiritual health of the community should always be paramount. If, however, the matter at issue had to do with salvation, the master must speak out, especially if what had been said was contrary to Scripture. Of course it was possible that someone might mistakenly claim that a bishop was in error when in fact he was not. Godfrey argued that even if one’s conscience was erroneous, one should obey its dictates. “One sins more gravely in violating one’s conscience—even if it is in error—than acting in accord with it,” he wrote.37 The authority of conscience in medieval Christianity can be illustrated by a quite different situation. A woman in the diocese of Bourges had left a notoriously violent husband. She claimed she had left him not because of his violence, but because she had learned that she and her husband were distant relatives. Their marriage transgressed the legal prohibition of consanguinity. At issue was whether a wife, convinced there was an obstacle prohibiting her from having intercourse with her husband, could in conscience deny her husband his marital rights. If she refused to have intercourse with her legitimate husband, she broke Church law and was subject to excommunication. When the couple could not resolve the matter, they appealed to the pope, Innocent III (1198–1216). In response, Innocent wrote a letter that eventually became part of canon law. He observed that the woman believed she could not have conjugal relations with her husband without committing a “mortal sin.” Anything that is not done “from faith” is sin, wrote the pope, and “whatever is done against one’s conscience leads to hell.” Though the penalty could be severe, under no condition should the woman go against her conscience. She should rather suffer excommunication than disobey her conscience. The pope’s ruling, and the assertion that whatever goes against conscience leads to hell, was affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council during Innocent’s reign. Medieval canonists expanded the meaning to say

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that it is better to follow one’s conscience than the “determination of the Church.”38

Defending the Amerindians Before turning to the Reformation of the sixteenth century, let me give one more instance of the role of conscience in late medieval Christianity: the defense of the Amerindians in the New World by Bartolomé de Las Casas.39 In 1493, as a boy of eight, Las Casas was in Seville when Christopher Columbus returned from his travels and paraded feathered Amerindians through the streets on Palm Sunday. In 1502, Las Casas came to the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean and remained there for over a decade. He saw firsthand the brutality of Spanish rule over the native peoples. One incident was burned into his memory. Las Casas was part of a group that captured a rebel chieftain, tied him to a stake, and gave him one last chance to accept baptism. When he refused, he was burned alive. After observing this execution, Las Casas joined the Dominicans and devoted the remainder of his life to the defense of the rights of the Indians. In 1514, on the Feast of Pentecost, Las Casas preached a sermon in which he proclaimed that “Christians in good conscience could not own Indian slaves and that confession and absolution would be denied to anyone who possessed them.” It was a kind of coming out, a public confession of the wrongs that he and others had inflicted on the Amerindians. He preached against the encomienda, a system in which a Spanish colonist was granted a tract of land along with its Indian inhabitants. Las Casas himself held slaves and resolved to release them. After returning to Spain to try to persuade King Ferdinand to put an end to the injustices against the native peoples, he wrote his first defense of the rights of the Indians. At this point he was hoping that the Spaniards and the Indians could exist together. But he was soon disabused of this illusion. The colonists had no interest in abandoning their dreams of capitalizing on the wealth of the New World and exploiting its native peoples. As Las Casas armed himself against opposition by the Spanish king and clergy, he began to develop arguments in defense of the

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Indians based on Aquinas’s understanding of freedom of the will and of conscience. Compulsion, he argued, is opposed to freedom because it makes what is voluntary a matter of coercion. “It is impossible for a thing to be simply coerced or violent and voluntary.” Las Casas knew that immunity from coercion in religious matters was the ancient custom of the Church. In a debate in the city of Valladolid in Spain over the legitimacy of mass baptism of Amerindians, he puts this question to the audience: “What does the Gospel have to do with firearms?” The Church has no authority to spread the Gospel by coercion. As human beings made in the image of God, the Indians are free to accept or refuse baptism on the basis of their “natural right of freedom [naturale ius libertatis].”40 In defending the rights of the Amerindians Las Casas faced what appeared to be an inescapable moral quandary: some of the Indians practiced human sacrifice. Though he condemned human sacrifice as evil, he thought that the aim of ridding people of a barbaric custom justified neither the enslavement of the Indians nor their forced conversion to Christianity. In this case he draws on the Thomistic doctrine of the erroneous conscience.41 An erroneous conscience binds and obliges just as does a right conscience. If we abolish the ceremonies of the Indians against their will, writes Las Casas, “we would appear to be openly compelling them to embrace [the Catholic faith]—and that is forbidden.”42 The freedom to defend one’s religion, whether it be true or false, is a “natural right” possessed by all human beings; even persons in error have rights. The Indians are obligated to defend their religion and the god they claim to be a true god, just as we Christians must defend the Christian religion and our God, lest we fall into mortal sin. Las Casas believed that men cannot live without God, even a false God considered true, nor can they live without the exercise of religion in rituals and ceremonies. Religion is not simply a matter of belief; it entails devout acts. In conquering the Indians and forcing them to embrace Christianity—which would bring only a “thin adherence to the Catholic faith”—the colonizers deprived the Indians of the freedom granted all human beings, whatever their beliefs and practices. Quoting Gregory the Great, he asks: “What use is it when practices of long standing are forbidden although [forbidding them does] not lead to their conversion to the

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faith?”43 These words about the mistreatment of Jews in Christian society were taken from Gregory’s letter to Paschasius, bishop of Naples, written in the seventh century, nine hundred years earlier.44 Christians have a long memory. The debates within Spanish Catholicism in the early sixteenth century over the rights of the Amerindians were a far piece from the Reformation in western Europe. But they are a vivid reminder of the sturdiness of the biblical teaching that human beings are endowed with freedom, and the corollary that religious belief cannot be coerced. Further, the understanding of conscience first adumbrated in the early centuries and expounded more fully in the Middle Ages proved itself versatile and flexible. Medieval Christianity also bequeathed to later generations the belief that the corpus christianum was ruled by two swords, one spiritual and the other temporal. With the onset of the Reformation, the inheritance of centuries would be received by new generations and adapted to a world unimaginable to medieval Christians.

chapter three

The Two Swords Reformation in Germany

Here I stand and will not yield. —f ra n c i s c a n s i s t e r k at h ar i n a e b n e r

the reformers of the sixteenth century called for a renewal of the medieval Church, but what they wrought was not the rebirth of an earlier form of Christian faith and practice. Instead the reformations—in truth there was not one but many reformations— inaugurated a great transformation in Western civilization, with far-reaching consequences for the relation between religion and public life.1 In the decades following the public presentation of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, the institutional unity and cultural cohesion of western Christendom was breaking apart, caught between a vanishing past and an uncertain future. With the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the Elizabethan restoration in England in 1559, and the organization of Calvinist churches in France in the 1560s, the old world was fading in memory. What had begun as a theological and institutional critique of the Church paved the way for far-reaching political, social, and cultural changes, and gave rise to “confessional” communities—what later would be called 45

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“churches”—holding distinctive beliefs and practices that led in turn to the eclipse of Christendom, a society united by faith, and the emergence of Europe, a culture defined by geography. The seismic shifts within western Christendom created unprecedented social fracturing in communities all over Europe. How were kings, princes, and city magistrates to deal with religious divisions that ran down the main streets of their communities? The nonconformists were neighbors, friends, merchants, and craftsmen who had been linked by bonds of faith and love of place, but the spread of reform turned communities against themselves. In this environment, political leaders, religious thinkers, and philosophers drew on a common Christian heritage to address conflicts in rapidly changing societies. By knitting the certainties of the past to the tumultuous present they refashioned ancient ideas, which over the course of several generations were made to fit the new social and religious landscape. In the sixteenth century the fault line on religious liberty ran not between Catholics and Protestants but between those who ruled and those who were ruled. In the German-speaking cities and territories of the Holy Roman Empire, Lutheran princes and city leaders razed long-standing religious institutions and practices to put in place a new order. In the cities of Switzerland Calvinists drove out Catholic clergy and outlawed celebration of the Mass, forcing those who held to the old way to submit to the new discipline or leave. In France, where reformed communities grew from the ground up, Catholic rulers suppressed the Huguenots (Calvinists) who were adherents of the “new religion.” In the southern provinces of the Low Countries, Protestants were persecuted by Catholics; in Holland and Zeeland in the north, Calvinists prohibited Catholics from practicing their faith. In England in mid-century the Catholics were persecuted by the reformed Church of England, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century the fledgling Baptists were suppressed or driven into exile by King James I. In the chapters to follow I discuss how in different countries political and religious thinkers dealt with the presence of religious dissenters in their midst.

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Reformation in an Imperial City The Reformation first took root in cities, so it will be instructive to consider one representative city, Nuremberg in Bavaria.2 In the sixteenth century Nuremberg had a population of some twenty-five thousand people. It was one of dozens of “imperial cities,” that is, a city belonging to the Holy Roman Empire but in truth self-sufficient and free to act independently of the emperor. The supreme authority in Nuremberg was the city council, made up of forty-two men, most of whom were members of old patrician families. Another, larger council was composed of other citizens, largely commoners who, as a sixteenth-century document put it, “earn their living in respectable businesses.” This larger group elected the members of the city council and ratified its decisions. Nuremberg was under the authority of the bishop of Bamberg, but he had only nominal jurisdiction over its ruling elders. In the fifteenth century a bishop of Bamberg complained that the city council no longer recognized his spiritual authority. Prior to the Reformation, supervision of the city’s religious life had migrated from the bishop and pope to lay officials. Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) had given the council the right to propose a slate for the staffing of the churches in the city, and in 1514 the council was granted rights of patronage over the two principal churches, the Church of St. Lorenz and the Church of St. Sebald. The city magistrates had a say in who would be chosen as priests in the parish churches, and members of the council served as superintendents over the churches, monasteries, and charitable institutions. Their primary responsibility was for property, land, and finances, but the boundary between secular and religious authority was porous. Nothing could be done without approval of the council’s administrative officer. The legal basis for reform, called the ius reformandi, resided in the city council, and everyone who lived in the city was expected to hold the same faith. When reforms were being instituted in a neighboring city, Constance, the council had this to say: “Since there is one God, one faith, one baptism, and since it is necessary above all to maintain peace and unity, it is befitting to an honorable council to encourage all who live inside the walls of the city,

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whether clergy or laity, to maintain peace and unity.”3 Religious unity was thought to be essential for public order and concord. In Nuremberg, as in other cities and territories in Germany, reform ideas first took hold among humanists, citizens who were learned in the classical languages—Latin and Greek, and in some cases Hebrew. On the central marketplace of Nuremberg the home of a patrician family, the Pirckheimers, stood as a “hostel of poets and scholars.” The most famous member of the Nuremberg circle was Albrecht Dürer, the painter and engraver. Reform ideas also reached Nuremberg through the Augustinians, Luther’s religious order. In 1517 Johann Staupitz, the Augustinians’ vicar-general in Germany and Luther’s spiritual advisor, preached a series of Advent sermons on grace and works in one of Nuremberg’s churches. Other Augustinians came regularly to the city, some carrying Luther’s writings, and in 1517 Luther sent a group of theses drafted by one of his students for a disputation on justification, grace, and free will to a local jurist and humanist, Christoph Scheurl. Shortly after his Ninety-Five Theses were published, Scheurl obtained a copy and another humanist translated the work from Latin into German. In October 1518 Luther visited the city on the way to Augsburg to meet with Cardinal Cajetan. By 1520 members of some of the leading families in the city had become supporters of Luther, and Scheurl observed that the “patriciate, the multitude of the other citizens and all scholars stand on Luther’s side.”4 Among those promoting the Reformation was Hans Sachs, the heralded Meistersinger on whom Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg is based. Sachs’s song “The Nightingale of Wittenberg,” an allegory of Martin Luther, was an instant success and advanced the Reformation in the city. Awake, awake! Day draws near! In the green woods I hear the delightful nightingale singing; its song resounds through hill and valley. As people embraced the Reformation, the council began to appoint sympathizers of reform to key positions in the churches—most notably Andreas Osiander, learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,

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who preached Lutheran doctrine from the pulpit of the Church of St. Lorenz. Lutheran pamphlets circulated freely in the city, and in 1522 the city council banned a Franciscan priest from carrying out his ministry.5 By 1525 the city council had removed Nuremberg from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Bamberg and in 1528 Catholic rites were officially abolished. Liturgical changes were instituted in the local parishes. When a group of evangelical preachers appeared before the council with a request that they be allowed to celebrate the Eucharist and administer the cup as well as the host—contrary to traditional practice—the matter was referred to the bishop. He opposed the change but Osiander ignored him and began to offer the cup to the laity. He also translated the Mass and other rites, such as baptism, into German. The Protestant clergy were promptly excommunicated by the bishop, but they paid him no heed and pressed for further reforms. By the end of the decade the Reformation in Nuremberg was at full throttle, and Nuremberg became one of the first Lutheran cities to prepare its own church order, a legal document setting forth Lutheran doctrine, prescribing uniform liturgical practices for the churches in the city and in the rural communities, and establishing the office of superintendent to oversee the clergy.

A Monastic Journal As reforms were being imposed on the city, the magistrates set about closing down the monasteries. But when they came to the sisters of St. Clare, a Franciscan community of religious women with a long history in the city, the women firmly told the city fathers that they had no business interfering in their spiritual life. In 1524 the abbess of the convent, Caritas Pirckheimer, began to keep a diary that gives a firsthand account of the changes that were imposed on the sisters. Though well educated and a skilled Latinist, Pirckheimer wrote in German. She tells a gripping story of intimidation and harassment by city magistrates and reform clergy.6 One of the first actions of the council was to order the sisters to send away the Franciscan priests who had said Mass in the convent and heard their confessions. On Good Friday 1525 priests were

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forbidden to celebrate the Catholic liturgy at the convent, depriving the sisters of the sacrament. To replace the banished Franciscans the council installed new clergy sympathetic to reform. On one occasion, writes Pirckheimer, it was arranged that “Lutheran women along with Lutheran pastors” and a cantor would sing a German Mass in the church; “we all ran from the choir and did not hear it.” The sisters were particularly resentful when the council sent evangelical clergy to preach long sermons to convince them to accept Luther’s teachings. In all, they had to listen to 111 sermons! The magistrates also dispatched agents to ensure that all the sisters were present at the sermons and to see “whether or not we stuffed wool in our ears.” They were forbidden to ring bells for the hours of prayer, and one day men came in to lock the choir (seats facing each other in the chancel), making it impossible for the sisters to gather for prayer. They were ordered to stop wearing their habits and told to take apart the material, dye it a different color, and sew new clothing. The aim of these orders, writes Pirckheimer, was to “destroy our cloister and all spiritual life.” In a poignant passage she says that the convent had served God for 250 years and was now being forced to accept the “new faith.”7 As dramatic as Pirckheimer’s tale of the destruction of a convent is, still more telling is the manner in which she defends her community. Again and again she says that the sisters are being deprived of their spiritual freedom. We hope, she writes, that the “honorable City Council will not apply pressure in matters which concern our conscience” and “force us to act against our wills to confess what the authorities want us to say.” To which she adds: “We cannot find in our conscience that we should believe and hold fast to what everyone wants us to” and abandon the “faith and order of the Holy Church.” The “entire convent,” she writes, “stood up and indicated to me that they concurred with what I had said.” Do not ask us to accept a faith we do not believe in. Even the Turks do not “coerce” anyone.8 The magistrates thought that the sisters were “obstinate” to disobey the “honorable City Council.” Even when special representatives were sent to plead with the sisters, Pirckheimer was obdurate: “They knew very well that we had always obeyed them before in all temporal things. But [in] what concerned our soul, we could

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follow nothing but our own conscience.”9 She was not simply complaining to the magistrates that they had disrupted the life of her religious community; Pirckheimer was making, however succinctly, a principled argument based on the medieval distinction of powers. It was not the task of civic rulers to determine spiritual matters; the magistrates had transgressed a boundary Christians held sacred. Pirckheimer’s thinking was a portent of what was to come. One of the pleasures of reading her journal is observing how cleverly she mocked the conceit of the reformers. “It would be a terrible pitiful affair if we, in addition to the physical enclosure to which we have willingly submitted, would be imprisoned in our conscience in which the freedom of the Gospel is being preached.” Elsewhere she skillfully uses feminine wiles to disarm her tormenters. Do not be angry, she tells them, that the “sisters wept so much”—it is because of the “unreasonableness of women.” This from a woman who mounted a vigorous intellectual critique of the city council! Elsewhere she chides the council for belittling the integrity and devotion of the sisters. “You desire of me that I should direct the sisters to do things that are against my conscience. That I will not do out of fear or favor of anyone. I know my convent is very devout and honest. If I were not here by no means would they enter into something that is against their consciences.”10 Pirckheimer’s appeal to “conscience” is not merely a rhetorical ploy; it has theological heft. “No one can show us from the Holy Gospel that anyone is to be coerced or put under pressure.” Conscience was not an appeal to private judgment, but the invocation of a living intelligence formed by the Scriptures and grounded in the Church’s tradition. We cannot do “anything against the faith, against reason or against our conscience,” Pirckheimer writes. By doing so, we would bring judgment on ourselves. If we give in to the demands of the city council, we would be surrendering to coercion. God, says Pirckheimer, wishes our consciences “to be free.” In many things one should give way to legitimate authority, but “to burden one’s conscience by believing what goes against one’s conscience in order to please others goes against God and oneself.” For only God knows the “witness of our hearts.”11 It is ironic that in defending her fidelity to the old religion, Pirckheimer employs language similar to that used by Martin

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Luther to defend himself at the Diet of Worms in 1521. When asked to recant his teachings, Luther replied: “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” According to the official transcript of the proceedings Luther’s statement ended at this point, though his supporters at Wittenberg said that he had ended his speech with the words “Here I stand and cannot do otherwise.” There is no evidence that he actually said that. But one of the sisters of the Franciscan community, Katharina Ebner, did say: “Here I stand and will not yield.”12 Whether Ebner was the first to use the phrase “Here I stand” is not known. It is possible the sisters had heard of Luther’s declamation at Worms and deliberately mimicked his words in standing up to the unjust demands of the city council. Or not. The point is that the Franciscan sisters and Martin Luther shared a common understanding handed on by the medieval Church. Conscience was the voice of God, and freedom was found in obedience. Lest it be forgotten, in 1521 Luther was not a “Lutheran” but a medieval Augustinian monk, and Pirckheimer a medieval Franciscan sister. The claims of conscience had an active and prescriptive force for the reformer and for adherents of the “old religion.” Caritas Pirckheimer and the Franciscan sisters of Nuremberg were not singular. The Dominican Convent of St. John the Baptist in Kirchheim am Teck resisted the reform efforts of the Duke of Württemberg. As late as 1559 this convent was still observing its rule, and the sisters were wearing their traditional habits. When they were ordered to relocate outside of the duchy of Württemberg, a Lutheran territory, the sisters would not yield. So the duke appointed a commission to visit the convent and persuade them to reconsider. But the commission reported back to the duke that the sisters wished to remain “in their old religion.” As one sister put it: “We were all of one opinion that these reforms were against [our] consciences.” The commissioners then met with the sisters individually. They had no success. In the end, however, the sisters had to give way. Four years later they finally agreed to leave, though with great regret: “The women find it difficult to give up their order’s

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rule, practices, and ceremonies, which had been used in their convent since its founding and by the women since their youth—all of which they cannot in good conscience find unchristian.”13 The Dominican convent near Esslingen had a similar tale. This monastery traced its history to the thirteenth century, and its sisters followed a strict rule. Their only contact with the outside world was through a “speaking window,” a small opening in a wall covered by a grate. Their mission was to observe a life of prayer in a community set apart from society. When Duke Ulrich decided to introduce the reformation, the women were ordered to conform to the new religious regime. The duke sent a group of officials to the monastery to carry out his plan, but the sisters said they wanted to remain true to “the old religion, rule, order and vows.” By then the Peace of Augsburg (1555) had established princely sovereignty over religious matters: “Where there is one lord there will be one religion.” Later the axiom was shortened to Cuius regio, eius religio (Whoever rules, his will be the religion). On this principle, the duke was within his rights to dictate the religious practices of his realm. Still the sisters stood firm. Their cook, Margaretha von Reuth, said she wished “to remain faithful to that which she had already learned in the Christian Church. Until the matter had been settled by a general council, she could not in good conscience make herself receive the Lord’s Supper, although she would gladly attend sermons.” The women pleaded with the duke not to “use force to bring someone to the Christian faith or to violate their conscience, because faith should be free and is itself a gift from God.”14 But to no avail. When the testimonies of the sisters from Kirchheim am Teck and Esslingen are set beside the journal of Caritas Pirckheimer— along with statements of women in other convents that suffered the same fate—they seem to be acting in concert. Pressed to give up their way of life and embrace reforms imposed by city magistrates or princes, the sisters said: Do not force us “against our will, hearts, and conscience” to break with the Holy Catholic Church and accept this “new religion.”15 Yet their appeal to conscience did not arise from personal communications with one another; all were acting on the basis of theological and moral ideas received from earlier generations.

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It must be noted, however, that the world in which they had lived out their vocation was no longer in place. In the medieval world, conscience was invoked in relation to spiritual authorities within the Catholic Church; by contrast, the sisters were being prevailed upon by civil authority. Of course, the magistrates in Nuremberg believed they were acting in the name of the true Church. But their “church” was not the sisters’ “church”—a detail of huge significance. The magistrates were spokesmen for temporal authority. In this setting conscience acquired a public role in which religious convictions came into conflict with civil, not ecclesiastical, officials. By appealing to conscience the sisters affirmed that what they believed about God and the soul transcended temporal obligations.

Cura religionis By 1530 Nuremberg had become a Lutheran city in which only a remnant of the “old religion” remained. But a new threat had arisen with the emergence of the Anabaptists, a radical reform calling for adult baptism (hence “ana-baptist,” to rebaptize). The epithet “Anabaptist” is imprecise; it refers to a diverse array of beliefs with political implications that fitted awkwardly into conventional categories. The Anabaptists claimed they were returning to the Christianity of the New Testament, when the Church had comprised small local communities of fervent believers. By contrast with the conservative Lutheran reformers who worked through the city council, the Anabaptists had little respect for established authorities. In 1527 one of their leaders wrote a document known as the Schleitheim Confession. It set forth their principal beliefs, among which were that baptism is only for believing adults, that Christians can have nothing to do with earthly governments, and that pastors should be elected by their congregations. By establishing independent religious associations, the Anabaptists undermined the traditional view that religion was the vinculum societatis (bond of society)—that there could be no peace or social cohesion without a common religion. By insisting that church membership could not be compulsory, the Anabaptists threatened the stability of society. As one member of the city council in Nuremberg put it, the

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devil seeks to “open a terrible breach in our ranks, so that the word of God, true uniform religion, Christian order, and the power of the sword of secular government will be completely reduced to rubble.”16 Not everyone agreed. George Froelich, a clerk in the city chancellery, a humanist with evangelical sympathies, and a close friend of the secretary of the council, wrote a memorandum asserting that secular government had no authority in matters of faith. Froelich’s memorandum was electric, and the magistrates were alarmed. If not refuted promptly, his views would jeopardize the reform. The memorandum was titled, Whether Secular Government has the Right to Wield the Sword in Matters of Faith, and it was addressed to what Froelich called “evangelical governments,” that is, Lutheran magistrates who claimed the right to carry out reforms in the city. The Reformation had resurrected an historic debate within Christianity over the relation between spiritual authority and political power. In its medieval form this relation had been an affair of pope and emperor or king; in sixteenth-century Nuremberg the question was whether secular officials had authority to regulate the religious beliefs and practices of all citizens (cura religionis). Where, asks Froelich, do the magistrates “get the right to control faith either by executing those who do not wish to be of their faith or else by tearing them from property and goods, wife and children, and banishing them from the territory?”17 The only justification they give, says Froelich, is that it is their duty to protect people in temporal matters, and that a fortiori they should do the same in spiritual matters. To support their actions the magistrates pointed to the kings of ancient Israel, who promoted true worship, abolished idolatry, and destroyed idols. But, says Froelich, in the Old Testament there was a single commonwealth ruled by a king anointed by God. The “New Testament speaks of two kingdoms on earth” (Matthew 22:21), the spiritual and the secular, and nowhere suggests that secular government should regulate religious matters. Christ rules a spiritual kingdom, and secular rulers have sovereignty over earthly principalities. Just as each realm has its king, so each has its own “scepter, goal and end.” The scepter of the spiritual realm is “the word of God,” whose task is to move men to faith; the scepter of

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the secular realm is the “sword,” and its goal is to maintain “external peace.” The sword is of “no use in forcing people to adhere to this or that faith” because belief rests on choice, not coercion.18 As further proof that the government cannot force people to accept faith, Froelich cites the parable of the wheat and the tares in the Gospel of St. Matthew.19 There Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a householder “who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” When the wheat came up the tares (weeds) were growing in the midst of the wheat. So his servants asked the householder whether they should cut down the weeds. But the householder said: “No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.” To which he added: “Let both grow together until the harvest; and at the harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matthew 13:24–30). Froelich takes the parable to mean that those whose views differ, the tares, should be allowed to grow in the midst of the wheat, the faithful Christians.20 In making a clean distinction between spiritual and temporal authority, Froelich had in mind Martin Luther’s treatise Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, written in 1523. In this treatise Luther makes a traditional argument, based on Romans 13, that political authority and law derive from God and that Christians should be obedient to those who are placed above them. But, says Luther, there is another kingdom, another rule, governed by the Word of God. With this realm the secular sword and law have nothing to do. If wielded in spiritual matters, the secular sword abuses the “freedom of the Gospel.” The two kingdoms must be kept apart, each fulfilling its distinctive mission, “the one to produce piety, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds; neither is sufficient in the world without the other.” Of course no government can survive without coercion and for that reason Christ did not abolish the temporal sword. But its rule extends no farther than “life and property and affairs on earth.” God alone rules the soul, and when temporal authority presumes to “prescribe laws for the soul it encroaches on God’s government and misleads the soul.” Again and again Luther hammers home the point: earthly rulers have no power over souls. So

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when Paul says that “every soul should be subject to the governing authority” (Romans 13:1), he is not speaking of obedience in matters of faith. He has in mind “external things.” Christ made the same distinction when he said: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).21 Had God willed that there should be one rule, he would not have made his kingdom a “separate thing.” A prince can neither teach nor guide in matters of faith. This tenet leads Luther into a little excursus on the interiority of faith. A mere man cannot change hearts, for the psalmist says, “God tries the minds and hearts” (Psalms 7:9), and the book of Acts says, “God knows the hearts” (Acts 1:24). Therefore it is futile to “command or compel someone by force to believe this or that.” Each person must believe for himself. Belief is “a matter of the conscience of each individual.” For “faith is a free act, to which no one can be forced.” This rule is expressed well, Luther reminds his readers, in a proverb: “Faith cannot be forced.” It can also be found in Augustine: “No one can or ought to be forced to believe.”22 Here and in many other passages Luther astutely appropriates traditional theological concepts to address the situation in his day. In taking up his pen to oppose the way reform was being carried out in Nuremberg, Froelich argued that the Lutheran magistrates in Nuremberg had betrayed Luther’s teaching. Lawrence Spengler, the city council’s secretary and Froelich’s friend, did not see things that way. He wrote to Johannes Brenz, a Lutheran theologian, urging him to provide theological arguments in support of the rights of the council. Brenz was unable to change Froelich’s views, though Froelich acknowledged that the city council must disallow “discordant preaching,” “rebaptizing,” “polluted sacraments and ceremonies,” and above all “the public abomination of the mass.”23 Still, he believed that under the umbrella of the public religion, there should be space for the “sects” to follow their distinctive beliefs without hindrance. Each group should be free to practice “its own faith,” to establish and observe its “doctrines and ceremonies,” to engage and dismiss ministers, and to meet in “separate places.” Further, the government should not prohibit persons from leaving “one faith” and “being received into another.” At the same time, Froelich believed

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the government had authority to promote the “faith to which it adheres, to appoint and dismiss preachers and to establish [religious] ceremonies.” In short, he envisioned a society in which one religion would be maintained by civil authority, but that authority would allow other “faiths” to be practiced. Significantly, Froelich mentions the Anabaptists and the Jews but ignores the Catholics. In the eyes of the Lutherans the few Catholics who remained in the city were an historical anachronism. Froelich was a minor player in the Reformation, but he discerned something that escaped others. With the collapse of the corpus christianum and the formation of “confessional” communities, a way had to be found of accommodating dissenting groups within the social body. Froelich presciently recognized that the situation called for a new approach to religious nonconformism. So he made a case for tolerance, that is, for sufferance of beliefs and practices that were offensive to the people and rulers. In part his argument is pragmatic: the magistrates cannot kill all those who dissent nor drive them from the city. But it was supported by the ancient view that religious belief could not be coerced. He stands on the same ground as the sisters of St. Clare.

No New Religious Assemblies Froelich’s ideas earned a sharp rebuke. First to respond was Johannes Brenz, a churchman who had been active in promoting reform in Schwäbish Hall, a small city not far from Nuremberg. Brenz granted Froelich’s central point: the New Testament speaks of “two kingdoms,” and each kingdom has its “own distinct king, scepter, goal and purpose.” The secular government should “not protect true faith by force or by force drive out and punish false faith.”24 Nevertheless, the pressing question was whether the government must “tolerate in its territory the public assembly of every sect or faith, whether true or false, and at the same time guarantee peaceful conditions for them.” What exercised Brenz was not the beliefs of individuals but the public practice of a form of Christianity other than that supported by the local magistrates. Significantly, he uses the term faith in the same sense Froelich did in his memorandum: to designate the beliefs of a group of

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citizens who held distinctive teachings and gathered together for worship and prayer. “Faith” was shorthand for the new phenomenon in which people considered their primary identity to be as members of a “confessional community” whose way of life set them apart from others.25 In France the term used for “confession” was simply “religion.” As the Reformation spread across Europe these different “faiths” challenged the unity and cohesion of societies that had been united by one religion. More than any other fact, the presence of nonconformist communities in the cities and lands of Europe made some form of toleration necessary and eventually gave rise to calls for greater freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice. But in the early years of the Reformation only a few saw the need to accommodate nonconformists. Brenz was not among them. Such groups of believers, he wrote, should not be allowed on the basis of their “chosen faith . . . to establish a new assembly and a preaching office in a community that is not theirs to govern and in which they have no public authority.” If they were to do this, says Brenz, it would be a “public crime.” Private citizens have no “authority to call a preacher,” that is, to organize a separate religious association, to form their own “church.” Brenz was willing to allow people to hold different beliefs in private, but he opposed the organization of separate religious fellowships. “Let everyone believe and confess for himself whatever he wishes, that is certainly no concern of the secular magistrate; but it does concern the magistrate when someone establishes a new sect or a new preaching office without permission.” The presence of other “faiths” would confuse people by introducing a discordant spirit into society and would lead to disorder and tumult.26 Spengler also asked Andreas Osiander to write a refutation of Froelich’s memorandum. Like Brenz, Osiander agreed with Froelich that there were “two kingdoms: of God and the world, spiritual and temporal.” But the spiritual realm “often turns to the temporal realm and lays down laws for its conduct.” The two realms are “not separated from one another but serve one another, just as one hand serves the other.” It was consistent with the tasks of secular authority to appoint “good preachers” and defend true religion in doctrine and worship. Though the government could

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not rule over “one’s faith or conscience,” it should not permit anyone to hold a public religious office without approval of the council. No government could rule the heart, but teaching, preaching, and ceremonies—the public expression of religious belief—should be regulated by civil authority. The Christian magistrate was charged to defend right religion as well as to dispense justice, maintain peace, and keep good order. Toward that end he must assert authority in matters of “doctrine and worship.”27 In a second essay Osiander acknowledged that it was a “worrisome matter” to know how far the power of secular government extended. Perhaps it was “better to let a rogue live than to kill a good man,” but the government could not allow godless and dangerous people to prey on the weak at the same time that it promoted “whatever serves the glory of God and the common weal.” The secular realm was established not for its own sake but to serve the kingdom of God. St. Paul wrote that the government is the “minister of God” (Romans 13:4). Do not forget, Osiander warned, that we are speaking of a “Christian government” charged with the “protection and promotion of the truth.” His aim in writing, he said, was “not to ‘exalt secular authority’ and thereby sanction ‘haughty tyranny,’ ” but “to show God-fearing rulers how to make proper use of their power.”28 Froelich’s sharp divide between spiritual and secular power may have made good theological sense, but Brenz and Osiander were more in tune with the facts on the ground. And they were in agreement with the thinking of other Lutheran leaders, notably Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s collaborator.29 In a book summarizing Lutheran teaching, Melanchthon wrote that when we think of a prince, we picture a man holding in one hand a tablet of the Ten Commandments and in the other a sword. Secular authority, said Melanchthon, was charged to punish crimes such as adultery and incest, but it must also maintain “external discipline” with “all the commandments.” Those commandments included prohibitions on idolatry (“You shall have no other gods before me” [Exodus 20:3]), blasphemy (“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” [Exodus 20:7]), and heresy. Civic rulers were obliged to “accept the holy gospel, to believe, confess and direct others to true divine service” so that all things were done for the glory of

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God. It was also their responsibility to ensure that there were pastors, schools, churches, and hospitals available to their citizens.30 Melanchthon based his understanding of the responsibility of civil rulers on a division within the Ten Commandments, the socalled two tables of the law.31 The first table addresses the honor due to God: “You shall have no other God besides me”; “You shall not make for yourself a graven image”; “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”; and “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” The second table addresses the moral life: “You shall not kill”; “You shall not commit adultery”: “You shall not steal”; and the like. How these commandments were to be enforced in a Christian city or territory became a divisive issue during the Reformation. All assumed that the second table was the responsibility of civic officials; but there was deep disagreement over who was responsible for the first. Luther had attempted to erect a boundary between the two kingdoms, but in sixteenth-century Europe so sharp a divide was unworkable. In 1527 Luther wrote to Johann the Elector of Saxony, asking him to organize ecclesiastical visitations of his territory and promote reform ideas. He told Johann that, in a given territory, “there should only be one kind of preaching.”32 Though the government might be incapable of ruling the consciences of individuals, nevertheless it must ensure that all things were done to the glory of God. Though Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms hearkened back to the ancient metaphor of the two swords and aimed to preserve the independence of the spiritual realm, it fitted uncomfortably in the new political situation in which princes and magistrates determined what form of Christianity would be practiced in their territory or city. In medieval Christendom the doctrine of the two swords had been a way of negotiating the relation between pope and emperor; in a society without a pope it was anachronistic. Now pastors and theologians wielded the spiritual sword by preaching and teaching the Word of God; the temporal sword and spiritual sword were in the hands of magistrates and princes. There is some truth to the claim that Luther destroyed the doctrine of the two swords.33 But it was not theological ideas that brought down the medieval conception; the calculus was changed by the pressure of events. If

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there was no pope, and hence no visible spiritual head of the corpus christianum, then Christian magistrates had to take charge of the religious life of the cities and territories. The Church possessed authority but no dominion. The Lutheran view of the two kingdoms was a boon to the growing power of the monarchies in northern Europe as kings and princes stepped in to fill the religious vacuum. The universal aspiration of Christendom became a thing of the past, and in its place arose territorial or national churches. Once religious unity was shattered, there was no turning back. Still, no one could imagine how people could live together in peace if their cities and towns were divided by faith. A publicly supported Church was thought necessary to preserve order in society. Paradoxically, in wresting spiritual authority from the pope and bishops, the reformers opened the way for a “godly prince” to take command of the faith in his realm. Nevertheless, in the first decade of the Reformation the idea had been planted that independent religious communities had a claim on the public space.

chapter four

Custodians of Both Tables Switzerland

A church without a magistrate is a truncated and mutilated church. —ulrich z w i n g l i

in switzerland, as in Germany, humanism prepared the way for the Reformation. The city of Basel on the Rhine drew classical scholars from all over Europe and in the first decades of the sixteenth century became a lively intellectual center. In 1514 Erasmus was drawn to the city by its printing houses, and in a letter praised its learned community: “They all know Latin, they all know Greek, and most of them know Hebrew. . . . I have certainly never before had the luck to live in such a gifted company.”1 The study of Greek and the publication of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament in 1516 fostered a biblical humanism that would prove receptive to Luther’s ideas. Few scholars were as much at home in the world of classical letters and biblical learning as Ulrich Zwingli, a native of the Swiss village of Wildhaus, high in the Toggenburg valley. Born in 1484 into a pious family—his mother’s sister was abbess of a convent and 63

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his uncle was a priest—he received his early education from his grandfather. He studied Latin as a boy, continued his studies in Basel, and from there went to Bern, where he had his first contact with humanism. In 1498 he moved to Vienna to study scholastic theology and came to know the distinguished humanist Conrad Celtis. Next he went to the University of Basel, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Ordained to the priesthood in 1506, he served as a priest for ten years in the small town of Glarus. During those years he read widely in the works of Erasmus, later remarking that no one had influenced him more than the great humanist. In 1516 he was assigned to Einsiedelen, the home of a famous pilgrimage site with a statue of a Black Madonna. Thousands came to pray at the shrine each year, and Zwingli grew to deplore what he considered their superstitious piety. Soon his sermons were sprinkled with attacks on pilgrimages, prayers to the saints, and indulgences. What he found most offensive was the idea that divine grace was more accessible in particular places and things. He remained in Einsiedelen only two years, and in 1518 he was appointed “people’s priest” at the Great Muenster in Zurich. The new post offered a more prominent platform for his reform ideas, and when he took up his duties in January 1519 he announced that he would preach through the Gospel of St. Matthew verse by verse rather than follow the assigned readings in the lectionary. He attacked purgatory, monasticism, clerical celibacy, and the Mass. In 1525 Zwingli and several of his colleagues appeared before the city council with a petition to abolish the Mass, and on Holy Thursday a reformed service of Holy Communion was celebrated in the city. Soon afterward the city council took over the power of excommunication in the name of the church. For Zwingli the Reformation consisted of more than spiritual renewal and the adoption of new religious practices; it was the beginning of a new civil and ecclesiastical order. “The Christian city is none other than a Christian church,” he wrote, and he charged civil magistrates with carrying out the mandates of the Scriptures.2 It is false to think that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with external matters. If the apostles could lay down precepts on the slaughter of animals (Acts 15:20), why can the city council not

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legislate on religious matters, as long as they are in accord with the Word of God? “A church without a magistrate is a truncated and mutilated church.”3 His aim was to establish a new society as well as a new church, and he expected civil authority to carry out the reform. As Bruce Gordon, an historian of the Swiss Reformation, observed, “Zwingli’s position had become entirely interwoven with the interests of the Zurich council. His theology was now part of Zurich’s politics.”4 From Zurich reform spread to other German-speaking cities in Switzerland, most notably to Bern, the major military power in the region. Several friends of Zwingli had been preaching reform in Bern, though at first the city council resisted. By the 1530s the magistrates had taken over supervision of ecclesiastical affairs. New rites for baptism and the Lord’s Supper were instituted, and a church order was in the works. Once the Reformation was secure in Bern, the way lay open to the French-speaking cities under Bernese control in the Pays de Vaud, a large canton bordering France. But in the city of Lausanne the clergy and the people were unwilling to give up the old religion. When Pierre Viret, a reform preacher, appeared before the city council to demand the abolition of Catholic worship, the council sent him packing. Council members did agree to hold a disputation—not so much, it appears, to debate the rights and wrongs of reform as to serve as a tutorial to prepare for changes in religious practice. The emperor Charles V wrote to the Bernese councilors pleading with them not to hold the disputation but to let the forthcoming council in Mantua (what would become the Council of Trent) decide matters pertaining to reform. The Bernese politely refused his request and went ahead with the disputation. The result was predictable. In the same year, 1536, the council forbad priests from saying Mass. At the disputation the principal spokesman for the Bernese, Guillaume Farel of Geneva, was accompanied by a young Frenchman named John Calvin. Calvin’s role was minor—he spoke only after the reform leaders had carried the day—but the disputation represented his first public appearance on the side of the Reformation. Lausanne offers a glimpse into the thinking of Catholics who resisted the Reformation. Though the reforms were officially approved by the city council, many people continued to pray the rosary, priests

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secretly celebrated Mass, and monks refused to abandon their monasteries. The Bernese magistrates, however, were determined that Catholic clergy would submit to their demands. In 1537 a commission was established to examine the clergy and demand acceptance of the Reformation. The Bernese had promised they would not compel anyone to accept the new faith, but once in control they expected everyone to fall in line.5 The purpose of the commission was to identify which clergy would go along with the reforms and which would not. The monks at a nearby monastery in Lac de Joux first indicated their desire to remain in the “ecclesiastical state” in the hope that the forthcoming council would resolve the matter. But when faced with a decision, they abandoned the Catholic faith and embraced the reforms. Not everyone complied, however. The cathedral chapter, priests, and deacons responsible for liturgical and administrative matters would not yield to the demands of the commission. When several city officials arrived at the cathedral, the canons offered a theological defense of the Catholic faith. By good fortune several contemporary sources give us details of the inquest. At the first meeting several of the clergy acquiesced, but others held their ground and one, Michel Barbey, kept a record of the proceedings. The commission informed the canons that they would have to go along with the mandate for reform and hand over the archives and treasury of the cathedral to the council. At a second meeting, in February 1537, the canons were asked whether they intended to obey the edict on reformation or “hold to their law.” Barbey records that “they responded just as their conscience dictated.” The cathedral clergy had no quarrel with the articles in the edict that dealt with matters of morality, adultery, fornication, prostitution, blasphemy, and the like—what Protestants called the second table. These they would willingly keep, “according to the commandment of God.” But “as for the rest, our conscience binds us to live and die according to God as determined by the universal Church in which we believe. Nor will we give up the creed; we will keep it fully.”6 Their examiners had overstepped the boundary dividing civil and religious affairs. But the Swiss reformers had their own ideas about the relation between the two realms. When the commissioners realized they would not budge,

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the canons were told they would be free to leave the city—after they had handed over their goods and their titles. Then they were locked in a local chateau for two weeks at their own expense, after which they were banished from the region.7

Geneva and John Calvin In 1536 Bernese troops set their sights on Geneva, where the city fathers were eager to break free from the House of Savoy, the royal family that ruled territories in Italy, France, and Switzerland. During the previous year the local magistrates had begun to confiscate church property and other sources of revenue, and in 1536 they broke with the bishop. Against the will of the people they began to introduce evangelical reforms. As Calvin, who had recently arrived in the city, put it: the reformers had preached and burned images, “but there was no real reformation. There was only turmoil.”8 John Calvin was born in 1509 in the cathedral city of Noyon in northern France. After studying in Paris he read law in Orléans and Bourges, but eventually he gave himself enthusiastically to study of the classics. One of his first writings was a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia. As he became a more skilled reader of Greek he began to take an interest in the revival of biblical studies stimulated by the publication of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament. He began to keep company with scholars sympathetic to the Reformation, and in 1533 one of his friends, Nicolas Cop, was made rector of the University of Paris. In his inaugural address, Cop seemed to support some of Luther’s ideas, and French authorities acted swiftly and decisively. King Francis I sent instructions to the Parlement to search out the sympathizers and bring them to trial. For a time Calvin lived with his friend Louis du Tillet, a priest in Claix near Angoulême in southwest France, but soon he moved to Basel in Switzerland. During this period he went through a “conversion”—his word—that led him to cast his lot with the reformers.9 In the years after his conversion, Calvin began to write a book that was to become the most substantive and influential theological work of Protestantism. In 1536 it was published in Basel as The Institution of the Christian Religion (though during the next two decades

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it would be revised several times, eventually bearing the title Institutes of the Christian Religion).10 Calvin was thirty-seven years old. Dedicated to King Francis I, the book was at once a defense of his countrymen in France who were “hungering and thirsting for Christ” and were suppressed by the French authorities, and an elementary introduction to basic Christian teaching, the Ten Commandments, the Nicene Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. The final section of the work dealt with Christian freedom, ecclesiastical power, and political administration. It is a mark of Calvin’s genius that, even before he plunged into the work of reform in Geneva, he had begun to think deeply about the relation between spiritual freedom and political authority, the principal challenge faced by Christian thinkers when reform was introduced in the cities of Germany and Switzerland. Building on the traditional distinction of the two swords, Calvin wrote that “man is under a twofold government” (duplex in homine regimen). One government is “spiritual whereby the conscience is instructed in piety and in reverencing God; the second is political, whereby man is educated for the duties of humanity and citizenship that must be maintained among men.” The spiritual government pertains to the “life of the soul,” the temporal to “outward behavior”—safety, food, housing, the law, and other needs of the present life. The spiritual and temporal realms are always to be viewed apart from each other. “While one is being considered, we must call away and turn the mind aside from thinking about the other.” There are in man, as it were, “two worlds, over which different kings and different laws have authority.” By attending to this distinction, we will not erroneously transfer the doctrine of the Gospel concerning spiritual liberty to the civil order. A Christian is a citizen of both kingdoms.11 Though Calvin made a clean distinction between the two realms, he nevertheless believed that civil government should not only care for the temporal needs of men but also “prevent idolatry, sacrilege against God’s name, blasphemies against his truth, and public offences against religion.” City magistrates must ensure that there be a public manifestation of religion in a Christian society. Calvin realized that this statement seemed to contradict the distinction between the two realms. “Let no one be disturbed that I

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now commit to civic government the duty of rightly establishing religion, which I seem above to have put outside of human decision.” I do not, he writes, “allow men to make laws according to their own decision concerning religion and the worship of God.”12 City magistrates have no charge to regulate religious affairs, but they do have responsibility to see that God is honored in the city’s public life. In the 1536 edition of his Institutes Calvin had discussed conscience, but as he revised the book he dealt with the topic more systematically and with greater attention to its scriptural foundation. This elaboration was prompted by what he called “ecclesiastical constitutions,” laws laid down by the pope and bishops and made binding on the faithful. He asks: Can the Church “lawfully bind consciences by its laws”?13 Calvin is speaking not about obedience to secular law but about fidelity to ecclesiastical legislation pertaining to how God is to be worshipped—fasting, confession, holy days of obligation, and so on. In taking up the question of conscience he aimed to defend what he called “spiritual freedom,” the freedom of the Christian to be subject to God alone, not to any human authority.14 It would be a “great wound” if in those matters in which the Lord left us free we were governed by men. My purpose, he says, is to show that laws of the Church have no authority “to bind souls inwardly before God and to lay scruples on them, as if enjoining things necessary to salvation.” Consciences “are ruled by God.”15 Between the first edition and the revisions of his Institutes, Calvin made a thorough study of the writings of the apostle Paul and wrote a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. As he read the letter more closely, he had to cope with passages suggesting that Paul did not distinguish cleanly the outer forum of secular government from the inner “forum of conscience.” In the beginning of chapter 13 Paul had written: “Let every person [soul] be subject to the governing authority. For there is no authority except from God.” A few verses later, however, he says that we are to obey rightly ordered authority not only for fear of punishment but “because of conscience” (Romans 13:5). This stipulation caused Calvin some discomfort, because if it were true that consciences are bound by civil laws, then the distinction between the two realms “would fall.”16

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This conundrum leads him to consider more fully the meaning of conscience. The term, he explains, comes from the Latin word for knowledge and designates a distinctive kind of spiritual knowing with an awareness of God. Unlike other forms of knowledge, conscience does not allow a person to suppress “within himself what he knows.” Calvin cites the famous passage from Romans 2:15–16 wherein conscience is a witness to what one has done, whether good or evil. Simple knowledge “can remain closed up within man,” but conscience is knowledge exposed to God’s discerning eye and judgment. For that reason it serves as a kind of “guardian” to spy out one’s secrets buried in darkness.17 Conscience dwells in an inner space, a realm unto itself, into which God alone can enter. “Our consciences do not have to do with men but with God alone.”18 Calvin realized, however, that he had not resolved the dilemma implicit in Paul’s statement that we must obey rulers not only because of punishment but because of conscience. To address the matter he distinguished between two different kinds of laws. Some laws are properly the responsibility of the magistrates, but such laws do not apply to the “inward governing of the soul.”19 Laws dealing with spiritual matters are different from those concerning the common good. A law that prescribes how one should worship God is unlike one that says, “Thou shalt not kill.” It follows that laws having to do with religious matters, whether made by a magistrate or by a bishop, cannot be made matters of conscience. In those things the conscience must be free. The pope and bishops cannot “burden our consciences with new laws” on the pretext that they have been appointed “spiritual lawgivers.” Everything that is necessary to live a good life has been laid down in the Scriptures. The bishops “have no right to command the Church to require observance of what they have themselves conceived apart from God’s word.”20 Calvin’s understanding of the two realms and of conscience would prove indispensable to later generations of Christians who faced suppression and persecution. From his writings—he was read much more widely than Luther—they learned that in matters of faith, kings, princes, and religious leaders are barred from trespassing on God’s sanctuary within the human heart. In temporal matters

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Christians are subject to civil authority, but in matters of faith they are subject only to God. At the same time, he believed that a publicly supported church was necessary for civil peace. “No polity can be successfully established unless piety is its first cause.”21 This tension in his thought would bedevil later thinkers.

Calvin as Reformer Calvin’s teaching on the two realms and on freedom of conscience would be put to the test as the Reformation advanced in Geneva. When he arrived in 1536 the city was under the control of Bernese troops, and a reformed civil and ecclesiastical order was being installed. The city magistrates had broken free of the House of Savoy, sent packing “foreign” (Savoyard) priests who had served the people, and begun to confiscate church property. The principal governing authority was the Small Council, comprising twenty prominent citizens, and a larger council of two hundred advised by a consistory of clergy. Authority for religious matters, following the Zwinglian pattern, was under the control of the council. At first Calvin’s role in Geneva was largely educational: he offered a series of lectures on the Bible for small groups of citizens. But soon he was drawn into the world of political and ecclesiastical reform. And a rough world it was. The Swiss magistrates were chary of having clergy tell them how they should conduct their affairs. Calvin, however, thought that on certain matters—for instance, who should be received at the Lord’s Table and who deserved excommunication—authority rested with the clergy. Men untrained in the Scriptures and Christian doctrine could not decide such matters. The Genevan reformers, however, made little headway with the local magistrates. In 1542, after they had sent a letter protesting the council’s imperiousness, their proposals were rejected. Bruce Gordon, Calvin’s biographer, writes that “the ministers were left in no doubt to whom they owed obedience. Excommunication was a matter for the state.”22 A decade later, in the early 1550s, a similar dispute erupted in the city. With other clergy Calvin appeared before the syndics to make their case, and the magistrates agreed to review the matter. A few weeks later a group of clergy was summoned to meet with the

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council and told it was the council’s responsibility to decide who would be admitted to the Lord’s Table. By this time, however, Calvin had strong support in the city, and eventually his party was able to gain control of the government and pursue his vision of a “godly community.”23 As Calvin became more deeply immersed in the city’s affairs, the line between the two realms began to blur. His belief that there could be no well-ordered society without laws on “religion and divine worship” shaped his policy. The magistrate must become custodian of both tables of the Decalogue, the first table that deals with the worship of God (“You shall have no other gods before me”) and the second that deals with moral behavior (“You shall not commit adultery”). If, however, the Christian magistrate is custodian of both tables of the law, inevitably the question arises whether “force is compatible with piety.” This, says Calvin is a “hard and difficult question,” for the Decalogue forbids the taking of life: “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). Can magistrates be pious men and at the same time shed blood? Citing examples from the Old Testament, Calvin argues that coercion is justifiable if the magistrate “is not acting on his own but carrying out the very judgments of God.” As ministers of God, magistrates do not bear the sword in vain.24

Sebastian Castellio On October 27, 1553, Michael Servetus was burned as a heretic at Champel in Geneva. A native of Spain, Servetus was a learned humanist with a lively interest in biblical languages. As he traveled around Europe he had met some of the early leaders of the Reformation: Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, and Johannes Oecolam­­padius. When he was only twenty years old he published a theological critique of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity entitled On Errors concerning the Trinity. He claimed there was no biblical basis for the traditional teaching that God was known in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, enshrined in the Church’s creeds. The book shocked his Protestant friends and its sale was forbidden in Strasbourg and Basel. Realizing he was not safe in Strasbourg, Servetus fled the city, moved to France, and adopted the name of Michel de Villeneuve.

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There he worked as a printer, geographer, physician, and even as an astrologer. For the next twenty years he conducted himself as a faithful Catholic and lived quietly and undetected. But he had dreams of a more radical reformation than his Swiss friends envisaged. In 1553 he published another book, The Reform of Christianity, that argued Christ was merely a man filled with the power of God. Foolishly, Servetus thought he would be able to win John Calvin over to his views and began to carry on a correspondence with him. But Calvin soon lost patience with Servetus’s “mad ideas” and cut him off. With Calvin’s consent, a friend of Calvin’s brought a section of Servetus’s book to an inquisitor in France and provided the Inquisition with copies of Servetus’s correspondence with Calvin. It seems ironic that Calvin, an ardent reformer, was willing to provide documentation for a heresy trial carried out by the Catholic Inquisition. But the magisterial reformers, notably the Lutherans and the Calvinists, were orthodox on the chief articles of the Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity and the person of Christ. In questioning whether Jesus was God, Servetus had challenged a central article of the Christian faith. He was arrested and brought to trial but managed to escape and on his way to Italy stopped in Geneva, perhaps to challenge Calvin. One Sunday he made the mistake of attending a service at the Church of Madeleine where Calvin was preaching. He was recognized and arrested, brought before the Council of Geneva, and found guilty of heresy. The next day Servetus was led to the stake. The trial and execution of Michael Servetus had the support of Protestant leaders in Switzerland and across Europe. Some observers were scandalized, however, and Calvin has borne the weight of opprobrium ever after, earning a reputation for intolerance and rigidity. Calvin did examine Servetus shortly before the execution and was appalled at his teaching. Servetus’s beliefs betrayed the heart of Christian teaching; therefore, he had to be punished. The syndics had authority in religious matters, and many agreed that execution was a fitting punishment for heresy in fundamental articles of faith. In a letter to Calvin Philip Melanchthon said: “I concur entirely with your judgment. I maintain that your magistrates have acted rightly by condemning a blasphemer to death after a proper trial.”25

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Not all, however, agreed, and Calvin realized he needed to explain his collaboration in Servetus’s trial and execution. He published a book titled Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a vigorous defense of his actions. Drawing on the Old Testament, he argued that it was the responsibility of magistrates to vindicate God’s honor. To be sure, the princes of this world have no power to “penetrate the human heart” or to compel men to believe; nevertheless, they cannot allow “God’s name to be reviled.”26 Calvin sent the work to a friend, Nicholas Zurkinden, a magistrate in Bern, and within days Zurkinden wrote Calvin a long letter in response. Zurkinden was not in principle opposed to the city council imposing penalties for religious dissenters, but he urged leniency. I would prefer, he writes, “less use of the sword for the suppression of involuntary or even deliberate offences against the Christian faith.”27 It is too easy and tempting for a magistrate to exceed the limits of his authority. Before the execution of Servetus a group of scholars had planned to publish a collection of texts dealing with the treatment of heretics, De haereticis, an sit persequendi (Whether Heretics Should Be Persecuted), under the pseudonym Martin Bellius. The book was chiefly the work of Sebastian Castellio, a French humanist who had been converted to the cause of reform by reading Calvin’s Institutes and, after moving to Geneva, had served as principal of the College of Geneva. But Calvin lost confidence in him and he had moved on to Basel, where he eventually won a position teaching Greek at the university. Castellio believed that the execution of heretics was a monstrous offense against the teachings of Christ. Whereas Christ had taught his followers to forgive, the officials in Geneva set themselves up as judges; whereas the first Christians had striven to live saintly lives preparing to stand before the throne of Christ, Christians now spent their time debating what one should believe about the Trinity, predestination, free will, the state of the soul after death. Puffed up with knowledge, they looked down on those who thought differently.28 Who was to judge whether someone thought to teach heresy should be led to the stake? With the help of others, Castellio collected opinions, ancient and new, of those who had written on this matter, in the hopes that people would act more wisely in the future.

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Castellio’s De haereticis was the first book published during the Reformation to offer a substantive defense of toleration of “heretics,” or religious dissenters. The term heretic is of course ambiguous because by mid-century, when Castellio wrote, its meaning depended on who was using the term. What one religious group called heretical might be orthodox to another. For example, those who practiced infant baptism considered rebaptism a false teaching, and Lutherans scorned the Zwinglian view of Christ’s presence in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Protestants considered the pope a heretic. Nevertheless, Castellio had a point: it is not so much what one believes that matters; it is who makes the judgment. Had Servetus lived in Poland, where an anti-Trinitarian regime had been installed, his teaching would not have been ruled heretical. The weight of Castellio’s argument was not doctrinal. He was concerned with the nature of religious belief and the limitation of temporal power in dictating what people believe. It is not surprising, then, that the first selection in De haereticis was from Martin Luther’s treatise On Secular Authority, laying out Luther’s understanding of the two kingdoms, one spiritual, one temporal. It is “futile and presumptuous to command or try to compel anyone to believe this or that,” wrote Luther.29 Rulers are incapable of judging spiritual matters, for faith and religion “reside not in the body but in the heart, which cannot be reached by the sword of kings and princes.” The second is from another Lutheran, Johannes Brenz, who had weighed in against Froelich’s critique of the magistrates in Nuremberg. Nevertheless, Brenz emphasizes that God has ordained “two kinds of punishments,” the spiritual by the Word of God and the civil by the sword. Murderers and public enemies are subject to civil punishment; unbelievers and heretics are subject to God in the next world. As the parable of the tares shows, only at the end of time will the heretics receive their punishment.30 The parable of the wheat and the tares pops up again and again in Castellio’s dossier. He quotes Erasmus, who in turn cites the “orthodox fathers” Jerome and Chrysostom, who took the parable to mean that Christ forbad putting heretics to death. In the pulling up of the tares, some saints may be slain unknowingly. Elsewhere Chrysostom says that it is better to wait “until the proper time,”

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that is, until the harvest, when Jesus will be the judge. In the meantime, although Jesus forbids us to kill heretics, he does not forbid us to stop their mouths. Similarly, Augustine wrote that “in this life one cannot tell whether someone ‘in error’ may turn the error to good. For that reason do not deprive them of life.”31 Among patristic authors the longest selection is from Lactantius, the early fourth-century Latin writer discussed in the first chapter. Lactantius is a relatively minor writer, so it is noteworthy he holds such a prominent place in the dossier. Humanists loved Lactantius because of his elegant Latin prose. The great Pico de la Mirandola proclaimed him Cicero Christianus.32 It is possible that, as his writings became known, some saw parallels between the persecution Lactantius had endured in the fourth century and the persecution of “heretics” during the Reformation. Whatever the case, once Lactantius came into circulation on the side of “toleration,” he was cited again and again by advocates of religious freedom. Castellio knew where to look in Lactantius. The selection is taken from book 5 of the Divine Institutes, where the principal arguments against coercion in religious matters are found. “There is no room for force and violence because religion cannot be compelled. Let words be used rather than blows, that the decision may be free.” The man “who lacks devotion and faith is useless to God.” There is nothing more excellent in life than religion, but it is not to be “defended by killing,” as the Romans do. “If you wish to defend religion with blood, with torments, with evil, then she is not defended but defiled. Nothing is as free as religion. If the heart is averse to sacrifice, then religion is taken away and become naught.” The Roman persecutors had “abused the power which was conferred on them.” If one overlooks the references to Rome, Lactantius could almost be talking about the magistrates in Geneva. Though he does not cite the parable of the wheat and the tares, he makes the same point in other words: God commands that we “wait in patience the heavenly judgment when he will reward each according to his deserts.”33 In later centuries Castellio came to be celebrated as one of the first and most important voices for toleration in the sixteenth century. He is famous for having said: “To kill a man is not to safeguard a doctrine but to kill a man.”34 Some have called him a

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rationalist or skeptic. But this seems unjust. He was driven by a deep moral sensibility that ran against the spirit as well as the violence of his age.35 But his intellectual contribution to the growth of religious freedom is overshadowed by that of John Calvin. Though Calvin was culpable in the execution of Servetus, his interpretation of the two realms and of conscience in the Institutes gave later advocates of religious freedom the theological tools to meet new challenges.

Theodore Beza: Castellio’s Critic The most strident critic of Castellio’s De haereticis was Theodore Beza, a close confidant of Calvin and his eventual successor in Geneva.36 Beza had been born into a Catholic family in Vézelay, France, in 1519, and in 1548, after studying classics and then law at Orléans, he had cast his lot with the Protestants. He moved to Geneva and eventually settled in Lausanne, where he became professor of Greek. When he learned of Castellio’s attack on Calvin, he wrote to a friend that this impious man, this imposter, “left nothing intact in the Christian religion.”37 So he prepared a rebuttal, The Punishment of Heretics by Civil Authority, in defense of the execution of Servetus by the Genevan authorities. The Church, according to Beza, cannot be succored by angels; it must be ruled by laws promulgated and enforced by civil authority. God had “put the sword in the hands of the magistrates to suppress crimes against the First as well as the Second Table of the Commandments of God.”38 Each city should be knit together by a single confession imposed by civil authorities who are charged to issue laws dealing with blasphemy, the keeping of the Sabbath, and the public worship of God. It is the task of the clergy to judge between true and false teaching, but once the religious authorities have determined that a person is guilty of heresy, the state has the task of punishing the heretic. Religion is not solely a private matter, and those who strip the magistrates of power to punish heretics bring about the “ruin and utter destruction of the Church.”39 Beza knew that his fellow Calvinists in France were being subjected to severe persecution by the royal authorities. In 1572

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thousands were murdered in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. This raised a troubling question. Why was it legitimate for the authorities in Geneva to discipline and punish those who did not submit to the Calvinistic regime, whereas it was wrong for the French to suppress the Huguenots? In a later work, Concerning the Rights of Rulers over Their Subjects and the Duty of Subjects toward Their Rulers, published two years after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Beza argued that coercion has no place in dealing with religious convictions. “Since religion touches the consciences [of people] which can in no way be subjected to violence, it would appear that it should not be rendered secure or be defended by means of any armed force.” The only tools for dealing with questions of faith are the Word of God, prayer, and patience. Nowhere in the Scriptures does Christ himself use force to persuade people to accept the Gospel; nor did the apostles. They did not take up arms to defend themselves but chose rather to face death and martyrdom.40 Their only weapon was the sword of the Spirit. Beza’s Concerning the Rights of Rulers represents a shift more in tone than in substance. He affirmed liberty of conscience as a spiritual matter, a gift of Christ by which faithful Christians learn inwardly and outwardly to live their lives in obedience to God. Yet he believed that “true religion” should be exercised on the basis of “decrees lawfully passed and settled and confirmed by public authority.” The “purpose of well-ordered polities,” he wrote, was to give glory to God, not simply to maintain peace and quiet in this life. Where a false religion was practiced, as in Catholic countries where people were forced to attend the “execrable sacrifice of the Mass,” Christians should join in “pious gatherings” to hear the Word of God and celebrate the sacraments as ordained by Christ. A godly society, however, could not countenance the worship of false gods; nor could it accommodate dissenting communities, such as the Anabaptists, who opposed the “true” religion. Nonconformists should be subject to the severest punishments.41 There is no hint in Beza’s mature writings that he thought it possible to tolerate more than one form of public practice of religion in society. His model was Geneva, a city whose life was ordered around one confession. But the growth of independent

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“churches” in the cities of Europe gradually undermined the view that all citizens should confess the same “faith.” This threat was most palpable in France, where the spread of Calvinism forced statesmen and political thinkers to rethink traditional assumptions about the relation between religion and society.

chapter five

Two Religions in One City France

It is to the honor of our kings that not having been able to do what they would, they have made a show of being willing to do what they could. —mon t a i g n e

of the many changes launched by the Reformation, none was more consequential nor more unsettling than the emergence of settled religious minorities within territories or nations that once had been united by a common confession. Religion had been the vinculum societatis, the unifying bond of society, and Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, could not imagine a peaceful society divided by religious belief. As a leader in the Polish Reformation put it: “Where people are not held by a common faith no other bond will hold them together.”1 The church building that stood on the central square of the city was a visible expression of this unity. The bells that sounded from its steeple not only called people to prayer, they also assembled the city for political gatherings, warned of an impending storm or attack, announced the arrival of a prince or noble, and publicized marriages and 80

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deaths.2 Thomas Traherne, an English poet, said that bells “call whole cities to adore.”3 The explosion of religious fervor unleashed by the Reformation challenged the equation of civic and sacral community, and the havoc created by the presence of two forms of religious adherence, two “confessions,” in one society confused and disoriented people. A Frenchman who had lived through the changes in his country put it this way: “Would you have ever thought in your youth that you would see something so extraordinary that two different religions would be practiced in the same city, and even in the capital of France?”4 He does not call those who practice their faith differently “heretics” or “schismatics”; rather, he says they hold to a different “religion,” by which he means a different form of Christianity. He is speaking not of Jews nor Muslims but of Protestant Christian communities in his city. The growth of Calvinist communities in French cities and towns would prove particularly vexatious for French kings, who ruled over a strong centralized monarchy and took religious uniformity for granted. An almost mystical bond existed between the French people and the “most Christian king,” “the eldest son of the Church.” A challenge to the Church was an affront to royal sovereignty. For centuries France had honored the ancient adage “Une foi, une loi, un roi.” As defender of the faith, the king was charged with maintaining the spiritual as well as political unity of the kingdom. When Calvinist communities began to be formed in French cities, there were few precedents, save the sword, for dealing with the inevitable conflicts. Nevertheless, in the course of several decades in the second half of the sixteenth century, high officials began to face the unpalatable fact that some form of accommodation was necessary.

The City of Rouen In the sixteenth century the city of Rouen in Normandy had seventy thousand inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in France, after Paris.5 Because of its location on the Seine River, with access to the North Sea, Rouen was France’s busiest port. Its high-quality hosiery and clothing beckoned merchants from all

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over Europe and made the city a major commercial center. It was the seat of an archbishop, housing an imposing Gothic cathedral, thirty-six parish churches, and some nine hundred clerics, monks, sisters, mendicants, and other religious. It is estimated that the “clerical” population made up 1.2 percent of the populace. In 1550 Rouen staged an extravagant ceremony to welcome Henry II, king of France. A contemporary account of the festivities lists the prominent persons and groups who passed in procession before the reviewing stand: first the clergy marched by, including members of religious orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites; next came higher clergy, such as canons of the cathedral and their dean; then parish clergy. They were followed by royal and municipal officials, judges and lawyers, merchants, and members of Parlement, the provincial high court. Then came an honor guard made up of a select group of artisans, tailors, shoemakers, bakers, hatters, plasterers, tanners, and the like. At the end of the procession rode seventy youths from the best families. The ceremony welcoming the king colorfully displayed the union of the sacred and the civic in Rouen. The city presented itself as one community in which religious, social, legal, commercial, and political life were interwoven. In this setting reform ideas that fostered division were unwelcome. Nevertheless, the large number of skilled artisans and merchants in Rouen, combined with a steady stream of visitors from elsewhere in Europe, presented fertile soil in which reform ideas could take root and grow. A contemporary observed, “Trades with a certain nobility of spirit [high-status artisans, printers, goldsmiths, and painters] were the easiest to ensnare.”6 Lawyers tended to remain Catholic, but members of the petite bourgeoisie influenced by Renaissance humanism were more open to new ideas. Those who first embraced the Reformation came disproportionately from the cities, and some of the Protestant leaders were members of prominent royal families, for example, Anthony, king of Navarre and Prince de Condé of the Bourbons. Because Rouen was a port, new ideas arrived earlier than in cities inland. In 1525 “Lutheran” thinking had reached the city but, as in other parts of France, it was converts to Calvinism who would

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be the heralds of reform. By the time the city celebrated the visit of King Henry II in 1550, reform ideas had been circulating for two decades. The city was, however, an administrative center, and officials of the government and the court were reluctant to give up ancient rituals, notably the Catholic Mass. Initially the Protestants were isolated individuals or clandestine conventicles that met secretly to hear Calvinist sermons, but in the late 1550s a Calvinist minister named de la Jonchée was able to organize the movement, appoint clergy, and hold regular services. In a state governed by one confession, religious dissent was one step removed from sedition, and the government countered with force, arrest, imprisonment, and in some cases execution of clergy. By 1560 the Huguenots, as French Calvinists came to be called, “raised their head more than previously,” according to a Catholic chronicler.7 A Calvinist writer put things differently: “The Gospel began to be strong in 1560.”8 For the first time reform congregations held public services, and the government proved incapable of deterring large numbers of French people from embracing the new “religion.” A reformed church in Rouen had been organized with some ten thousand members, its own clergy, an administrative structure, and regular assemblies for worship. A Spanish ambassador who visited the city was astonished to discover three to four thousand Protestants meeting regularly in the plaza in front of the cathedral. Across the country, as the number of Huguenots climbed, especially in the south, they became a visible and disruptive presence, tearing the fabric of society. A political party, not simply a religious sect, was in the making. It is estimated that by 1560 the Huguenots accounted for 10 percent of France’s population.9

Politiques So deep was the divide, and so bitter the antagonism, between Catholics and Protestants that France stood on the brink of civil war. War would soon come, but in June 1560 Michel de l’HÔpital, an uncommonly resourceful statesman, became chancellor. An accomplished Latin poet, a humanist in the spirit of Erasmus, and a distinguished lawyer, he had served as master of requests for the

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Crown, in which capacity he was charged with handling petitions to the king. As chancellor he had a key role in shaping and implementing government policy toward the Huguenots. One of his first actions was to win support for a royal edict that removed heresy trials of Protestant dissenters from secular to ecclesiastical courts. Heresy was to be dealt with by a diocesan tribunal, and sedition springing from heretical beliefs was to be tried before civil courts. The distinction between heresy and treason—or, in the language that came to be used, “Huguenots de coeur” and “Huguenots d’état”— brought some relief to those who wished only to practice their new faith quietly, without interference from local officials. L’HÔpital was not, however, advocating toleration of another religion; his aim was national unity and internal stability. To that end he supported sufferance of dissenters who were in other ways loyal citizens. His views were similar to those of the politiques, French leaders who supported some form of accommodation of nonconformists for the sake of national unity. But by distinguishing heresy and sedition, he suggested, if only implicitly, that religious matters were not the business of the Crown. The new policy cut against the grain of long-standing practice and was stubbornly resisted by the Parlement in Paris. In late 1560 King Francis II died and was replaced by his brother, Charles IX. Because the new king was only fifteen years old, the queen mother, Catherine de Medici, acted as regent. In early December, a few days after Francis’s death, the Estates General, a body comprising representatives of the three estates— clergy, nobility, and citizens—met at Orléans southwest of Paris, and l’HÔpital gave the opening address. Religious disorder, he said, was due to the corruption and avarice of the clergy, absenteeism among the bishops, and the low level of instruction of the laity; people were eager to hear those “qui quaerunt res novas” (who are seeking after new things).10 The king realized, he explained, that “maladies of the spirit” were different from bodily illnesses. The turbulence in France could not be resolved by the sword: “Mitte gladium tuum in vaginam” (Sheath your sword in its scabbard). A new approach was needed. Still, l’HÔpital honored the ancient dictum “One faith, one law, one king.” It was “folly to think that peace, repose, and amity among us is possible among persons of

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different religions.” Let us banish the designations “Lutheran, Huguenot, Papist, which breed only faction and sedition; let us retain only one name: Christian.”11 But for many the term Christian did not include the Protestants. On January 1, 1561, a priest named John Quintin delivered a stirring speech before the king celebrating the illustrious history of Catholic France. Quintin had traveled widely and knew reform movements in Europe at first hand. He had also written several treatises against “heretics.” In his speech he acknowledged that reform was needed “in” the Church, but the Church itself was “without blemish” and needs no reform. The Church is the body of Christ. Then he offers an historical panorama of French history going back to the baptism of Clovis, the Frankish king, and the adoption of Catholic Christianity by his people in the early sixth century. From its earliest days, says Quintin, the French monarchy had one faith, one law, one king. He reminds Charles that his namesake, Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great, Charlemagne, was a “devoted and humble defender of the holy Church of God” and was actively engaged in ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs. To this day the clergy look to the king as defender of the faith and plead with him not to change any article of faith nor make alterations to the holy sacraments. Nor should he allow new sects to import ancient heresy into the land, grant heretics their own “temples,” or even allow them to live in the kingdom. God, he concludes, has “put the sword in your hand to defend what is good and to punish evil.” He implores the king to remove this evil from our midst. Everything the French people have held dear for centuries is now in jeopardy. The king must act.12 A month later, a day after the Estates General adjourned, another cleric, Jacques Bienassis, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Bois-Aubry near Tours, gave a speech to the members of his community. Bienassis knew well that Quintin spoke for many opposed to accommodation with the Huguenots, and his speech sounds like a direct rebuttal of Quintin. “I am well aware that many think it wrong to tolerate two religions in one kingdom, and in truth it could be wished that there were only one, provided it were the true religion.” But until God dispels the ignorance that divides our kingdom and brings us together in confessing the one

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truth, there is no sense using “force in matters of conscience and religion, because conscience is like the pain of the hand, the more it is pressed, the more it resists, and lets itself be ordered only by reason and good advice.”13 Bienassis was no reformer; he considered the rise of Protestantism a calamity, and he envisaged a day when reformed congregations would return to the Catholic faith and the people of France would live in peace and concord. But he had come to see, as had others, that there was no course save accommodation of the Huguenots, even though this meant the recognition of another “religion.” If nothing were done France would be splintered and eventually destroyed. His appeal for toleration is driven more by the pressure of the facts on the ground than by any notion of religious freedom. Still, his choice of language suggests he knew the Calvinist churches represented more than a troublesome faction in the body politic. By invoking conscience, Bienassis implicitly acknowledged that the Huguenots were moved by genuine religious convictions, not by political aims. The beliefs of the Protestants might be based on “ignorance,” an imperfect grasp of Christian truth, but Protestants could not be brushed aside in the name of national unity. If we prohibit them from practicing their religion, argued Bienassis, we will only drive them away from religion altogether. It is better “that a man be a Christian in one way or other, good or bad,” than that he become an atheist “without God, without religion and without conscience.” Let us learn to live in peace while both religions are practiced.14 An historical footnote: Bienassis’s reason for tolerating the Calvinists was not unlike the thinking of Emperor Galerius in the early fourth century. When Galerius saw that Christianity could not be suppressed by persecution—the Christians were too many, their communities too cohesive—he concluded that it was time to end the persecution: seeing that “they neither paid the reverence and awe due to the gods” nor were allowed to worship “the God of the Christians,” he decided to grant indulgence that Christians might “again be Christians and may hold their conventicles, provided they do nothing contrary to good order.”15 Over twelve hundred years later French kings faced a similar situation. Unlike Galerius, however, French leaders had the resources of Christian tradition, most notably

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the moral and spiritual weight of conscience, to help them move, however hesitantly, toward a form of toleration. Bienassis was not alone. Others were working with similar ideas. In 1562 Étienne Pasquier, a learned constitutional lawyer, wrote Exhortation to Princes and Lords of the Privy Council to Prevent Sedition.16 A firm believer in Catholicism, Pasquier had little sympathy for what he called the “sects.” Yet he saw how deeply the country was divided and the futility of persecution. The time had come, he wrote, to recognize that there was no way of dealing with the anarchy except “by allowing two churches in [our] state, one of the Romans, and the other of the Protestants.”17 If the dissenters were few, one could lop off those who disturbed the peace, but to suppress a large section of the populace would harm the entire body. The Catholics could not destroy the Protestants without bringing about their own ruin. Pasquier was urging toleration, but there was more here than a pragmatic accommodation of dissenters. He displayed a genuine empathy for the Protestants as fellow Christians. Both the “Romans” and the “Protestants” honored and worshipped the one God and confessed the God who has taken on flesh for our redemption. How, Pasquier asks, can we banish such people and force them to give up homeland, family, goods, property, and all that makes human life dear? Some said that heretics should be cut off by fire or the sword. That strategy might have been possible when their numbers were few, but that time was past. I know, writes Pasquier, that France has been nourished by the Catholic faith from time immemorial, and that allowing another religion will bring about a “change in the kingdom” (renouvellement de Couronne). But we have no choice save permitting “in each city a double Church” (double Église). There was no reason to expect that this arrangement would foster sedition. Factions spring up only when a magistrate is partial to one side. If he keeps his sword in its scabbard, religious divisions will not lead to war.18 Pasquier perceived that the central issue was not whether Protestants should be tolerated as individuals, but whether their associations should be granted the freedom to gather for worship and administer the sacraments as they understood them. In a poignant phrase, he says that they are “asking for a church,” a community in

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which they can practice their faith. “Who will marry me?” they ask. “Who will baptize my children? Above all, who will give me Communion?”19 Pasquier knew that the Huguenots were fellow Christians who worshipped the one God, “if not in the same way, at least with the same zeal.” In this regard he was unusual; few in France saw things that way. Though Pasquier did not speak for the Protestants, he pleaded on their behalf: “Do not force our consciences at the point of a sword.” We are all Christians united by the “holy sacrament of Baptism.”20

Advice to a Desolate France Shortly after Pasquier published his treatise, Sebastian Castellio, in a short work titled Advice to a Desolate France, added a strident voice to the chorus critical of the present policy. Castellio had been born in France, and after his years in Geneva he had returned to his native land, where he witnessed the atrocities visited on the French people. France was afflicted with a fearsome malady, he wrote: “a war . . . so horrible and detestable that I do not know whether there ever was a worse one since the earth came into existence. . . . For they [the combatants] are not strangers . . . as was the case in the past, when, being attacked from the outside, you [France] at least found some solace at home and in the love and unity of your children. But this time your own children are ravaging and afflicting you . . . by murdering and strangling each other within your bosom.”21 The principal cause of France’s malady, says Castellio, “is the forcing of consciences.” He was aware of efforts to bring peace— for instance, the January Edict, which allowed what he calls the “Evangelics” to hold sermons outside the towns. But as he became familiar with what was happening, he saw that both sides were at fault, Huguenots as well as Catholics. Each was driven by the desire “to preserve religion” with the sword. The Catholics tried to force people to believe something against their consciences, but for a God-fearing person it was better to be deprived of life than “let his conscience be forced.” Evangelics, meanwhile, had abandoned their peaceful ways, killing their enemies and desecrating churches. They demanded that others agree with them in everything. But

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there is no biblical basis for violence in the name of religion. The French should cease “the forcing of consciences and stop persecution, not to mention the killing of a man because of his faith, and rather allow those who believe in Christ and who accept the Old and the New Testament, to serve God in your country, not in accordance with the beliefs of others, but in accordance with their own.”22

Religious War On Easter Sunday 1561 violent clashes broke out between Catholics and Protestants in Paris and other cities in France. As the hostilities mounted, it was clear the king was losing control of things. L’HÔpital urged a change of tactics. He ordered magistrates not to imprison leaders “for the religion they hold” but to punish those “who in the name of religion cause an infinity of scandals, violence, murder and sedition.” L’HÔpital’s actions were resented in Paris, for they seemed to suggest that “diversity of religion” was now approved “against what has been stated and prescribed in previous edicts and also in the laws and the ancient constitutions.” In fact, that summer a new edict seemed to roll back the advances that had been made. It strictly prohibited Huguenots from preaching publicly and administering the sacraments in any form other than that “observed in the Catholic Church.” However, it also forbad authorities to molest anyone “on account of religious differences” and pardoned those who had been persecuted, on the condition that they lived “paisiblement, catholiquement, et selon l’église catholique.” But it is unlikely that the edict was ever implemented.23 A last effort at reconciliation took place in August 1561. Catherine de Medici, the queen mother and regent, convoked a gathering of Catholic and Protestant clergy at Poissy on the Seine River, not far from Paris, to discuss theological differences.24 The meeting was attended by members of the royal family, fifty Catholic clergy, including some forty bishops, and a sizeable representation of Calvinist clergy, led by Theodore Beza, as well as canonists, periti (theologians), the poet Ronsard, and the humanist Peter Ramus. The colloquy met in the refectory of a convent of Dominican nuns, and an engraving

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depicts the assembly with the names of the principal participants.25 The aim, according to King Charles, was to resolve difficulties and allow the people to live “in peace and reunion with each other.”26 Though the colloquy began with high hopes, it quickly foundered on the understanding of the Eucharist. Beza famously said that “Christ’s body is as far removed from the bread and wine as is heaven from earth.” Compromise, much less agreement, was impossible. Instead of bringing about rapprochement, the debate sealed division and hardened Catholic resistance. As the assembly was leaving the refectory, one of the cardinals was heard to say that if the Protestants were ready to subscribe to the teachings of the Catholic Church they would be received as penitents with open arms. But if not, they could not be part of “one faith, one law, one king.” There could be only one Church in France.27 In the months that followed, the unity of the nation was in jeopardy. In January 1562 an assembly of representatives from eight regional parlements met at St. Germain near Paris. Again l’HÔpital gave the opening address. He reminded the gathering that the religious policies of the past months had failed. Persecution and punishment of the Protestants had only heightened their fervor. Some were urging the king take sides, he said, but how could the king order troops to “fight against their fathers, sons, brothers, wives, or relatives”? The Crown had no choice but to step back from religious quarrels. Religion was not the proper business of the state. Religious questions, l’HÔpital said, were to be dealt with by the “genz d’église”—the Church—and it was not his task as chancellor to make judgments about “doctrines of religion.” The question before the assembly was not de constituenda religione (about maintaining religion) but de constituenda republica (about maintaining the commonwealth). Many may be “citizens who will not be Christians.”28 The principles that had guided French society for centuries had to be modified and a way found for the two religions to coexist in peace. L’HÔpital was a sagacious politician, neither a philosopher nor a theologian—yet he proposed an interpretation of the historic doctrine of the two swords, suited to the exigencies of the sixteenth century. The meeting of the Estates General issued what came to be known as the January Edict (1562), or the Edict of St. Germain. It

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allowed Protestants to hold religious services and to meet in a synod outside walled cities and towns as long as they did not gather at night or take up arms. The nouvelle religion was to be given legal recognition under certain conditions. Predictably, the edict was opposed by the Parlement in Paris, which refused to register it because it broke faith with the ancient adage “one faith, one law, one king.” The Parlement would not tolerate “two religions in our kingdom” and insisted that there be “one only, which is that of our Holy Church, in which the kings our predecessors have ever lived.”29 Catherine, the queen mother, affirmed the ancient belief there should be only one religion in the state, but she realized that this was possible only if the Protestants were banished or exterminated. She concluded that it was necessary to allow two religions until God reunites us in the same will. The edict was officially registered only in March, and only after the queen mother had written several letters to the Parlement. By an unhappy turn of fate, the edict was aborted shortly after being registered by the Parlement. Early in March Francis, the duc de Guise, a member of a prominent Catholic family opposed to the Huguenots, came upon a gathering of some three hundred Huguenots worshipping in a barn outside Vassy, a small town on his estates. When they refused to disperse, his armed troops set on the worshippers and killed some forty of them. Though Francis tried to distance himself from the massacre, it sparked war. In the southwest, where they were strongest, the Huguenots began to form militias to defend themselves and gain control of towns that were sympathetic to their cause. In short order they took a number of French cities: Orléans, Angers, Tours, Rouen, Le Havre, Lyons, Grenoble, Vienne, and others. But the odds against them were steep, and one by one French forces were able to regain the lost cities. In 1570 another edict proposed to allow the Huguenots limited freedom for Protestant worship in two towns in each of the twelve gouvernements of France. Catholic leaders were in no mood to accept this, and the edict was shattered by a premeditated strike against Huguenot leaders in Paris and other cities on St. Bartholomew’s Day in August 1572. Soldiers were instructed to “kill any Huguenots you find.”30 The cities they chose—Rouen, Orléans, and Lyons—had been taken over by Protestants at the start of

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the religious wars. In all, some two thousand were killed in Paris and four thousand in the provinces. Many Protestants turned back to Catholicism. Before the massacre, Rouen had sixteen thousand Huguenots; after the massacre, only three thousand. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre stopped the growth of Calvinism in France, though the number of Protestants who remained was considerable.

Jean Bodin During this tumultuous decade lived the learned and astute thinker Jean Bodin (1530–96), a political philosopher with deep knowledge of legal and constitutional history. Bodin had served for a time as master of requests in the household of François, duc d’Alençon, brother of King Francis, and in his travels was able to observe governments at work in England and the Netherlands. At Toulouse he had studied law and come under the influence of Guillaume Budé, the distinguished scholar of Roman law. His most famous work, Les six livres de la République, is a compendious book on the best form of government. Bodin’s République was published four years after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. It is not, however, a book of circumstance, a timely tract responding to the intractable division within French society. Bodin was writing for the ages, and his thought flows broad and deep. The République is a scholarly and closely argued defense of absolutism based on historical precedents. Only a sovereign prince, “with a most high and perpetual power,” could ensure political unity and social peace.31 Even when people change their religion—as happened in Sweden, Scotland, Denmark, En­ gland, cantons of Switzerland, and territories in Germany—they cannot dispense with a strong sovereign.32 Though Bodin’s primary agenda in writing the book was to outline a theory of the authority of the sovereign, he had given much thought to the role of religion in the life of a republic. “There is nothing which doth more uphold and maintaine the estates and Commonweals than religion; and that it is the principal foundation of the power and strength of monarchies and Seignories.” But as events unfolded in France, he tempered his ideas to fit

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the turbulence menacing cities and towns. This tempering is most evident in his discussion of what he calls “colleges.” By “college” he has in mind what we call voluntary associations, civic organizations that differ from the “natural community of the family.” Colleges are formed by people with common interests: for instance, merchants, tradesmen, physicians, weavers, tailors, husbandmen. Most are formed to deal with “worldly matters,” but there are also religious colleges, associations of people who share a common confession. Both types of colleges are necessary for the health of the commonwealth: “without love and amity the world itself cannot long stand.”33 Colleges can, however, become factions that foster sedition and harm the commonweal. This risk applies even to religious colleges, for “nothing is more deceitful than corrupt religion.” The “majesty of the gods” can be a cloak for villainy. By way of example, Bodin mentions the Bacchic societies in ancient Rome, but he also has in mind “conventicles and meetings of seditious persons” in his own day who gather “under the pretended show of religion.” Specifically, he mentions the violence of the Anabaptists in Münster, Germany, who took up arms, drove out the bishop and magistrates, and held the city until they were put down by an imperial army.34 Even when religious associations are peaceful they can unsettle communities by introducing new practices that confuse the faithful. In religious matters convention and tradition set the norm for what is believed and practiced. “People everywhere,” writes Bodin, “are most jealous of their religion, and cannot endure any rites and ceremonies, differing from the religion by themselves generally received.” When faced with a new religion that casts doubt on established ways, the prince naturally responds by crushing the offending group. He has many means to “suppress that which he does not like.” He can, for example, hold back from the group “preferments” and show by his actions that he “abhors that religion which he desires to have extinguished.” But—here Bodin comes to the point—even if a prince is convinced of the truth of his religion, and his people are divided into sects and factions, he “must not use force.”35 Religious colleges must be treated differently from civil or professional associations, because religion has to do with belief; men cannot be compelled to believe what they do not wish to believe.

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For this reason the magistrate must have “special regard for conscience, that it be above all things held in reverence.” In religious matters laws have no force. In support, Bodin cites Lactantius: “Laws may well punish offences, but they cannot fortify the conscience.”36 It is futile, Bodin says, to rely on force in dealing with religious belief. The more the minds of men are coerced, the more stubborn they become. With religious groups, suppression will only lead to greater resistance. This is particularly true when the dissenting communities are great in number and vigorous in spirit. Echoing what other politiques had said about dealing with the Huguenots, Bodin asserts that when the numbers are many, “the best advised princes and governors of Commonweales imitate the wise pilots, who when they cannot attain unto the port by them desired, direct their course to such port as they may. . . . Wherefore that religion or sect is to be suffered, which without the hazard and destruction of the state cannot be taken away; the health and welfare of the Commonweale being the chief thing the law respects.”37 Bodin also offers historical arguments. In the later fifth century, after the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, northern Italy was ruled by Theodoric (455–526), king of the Ostrogoths. Though most of the people living in Italy were Catholic, Theodoric and his people adhered to an Arian form of Christianity. But Theodoric was a prudent ruler who allowed the Catholics to retain their churches and property and hold to their traditional ways. In Ravenna, which was under his rule, the two “confessions,” Catholic and Arian, learned to live peacefully with one another. Theodoric, says Bodin, did not “force the conscience of his subjects, nor have them tormented because of their religion,” lest he should take the “spoyle of their good or bind their minds.”38 Bodin cites a letter Theodoric wrote to the Senate in Rome about the Jewish community in Genoa. The question was whether the Jews should be allowed to rebuild part of their synagogue. Some Christians opposed the project. Theodoric, however, thought that the Jews were protected by custom and law. So he ruled that they could rebuild the roof of the synagogue, though they should not enlarge it so as to display any “ornament,” any symbols of the Jewish religion. To drive home his point, Bodin highlights one

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sentence in this letter: “Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credit invitus” (We cannot command in religious matters, for no man is to be compelled against his will to believe). If people are forbidden to practice their religion even in the privacy of their homes, they will be driven to atheism.39 Bodin was not an exponent of religious freedom. He urged toleration, doing what one must for the good of the country when all other avenues are closed. But he recognized that religious colleges require preferential treatment because they are formed on the basis of convictions that are beyond the reach of the sovereign. His reasoning was deeper and more systematic than that of his contemporaries in France, and he set his ideas within a larger historical and philosophical framework, drawing on texts from Christian antiquity against coercion in religious matters. In small ways he was moving beyond toleration as a political necessity and reaching for a principle to support a right to practice one’s religion freely. Approaching religion in the context of a discussion of “colleges,” Bodin understood that European rulers were being tested not by the beliefs of individuals but by the presence of long-lasting nonconformist religious communities in the cities and towns of France.

Edict of Nantes In 1574 the young King Charles IX (b. 1560) died of tuberculosis and was succeeded by his brother, Henry III. In 1576 yet another edict was issued, the Peace of Monsieur (or Edict of Beaulieu), which proposed to allow the Huguenots to meet in all places in the kingdom, with the exception of Paris and its suburbs. But its ruling was premature and impossible to secure. Again the Parlement in Paris refused to register the edict. For a time the Catholic League, the most aggressive force behind suppression of the Huguenots, gained the upper hand. But the mood was tense, because it was known that if Henry III died, his Protestant cousin Henry, king of Navarre, was next in line. For many, the possibility of a Protestant king of France was unthinkable. As pressure mounted from the Catholic League, Henry was forced to issue yet another edict, this one turning back the concessions of earlier pronouncements. In 1585 the king decreed that all his subjects should “live henceforth

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according to the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, and that those who belong to the new religion abandon it and embrace the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion.” If they cannot obey our laws, let them leave our land.40 Henry chafed under the tutelage of the Catholic League. In a futile attempt to gain independence he arranged to have two of their leaders assassinated. But his rash deed only exposed his weakness. He also tried to convince his cousin Henry to give up his Protestant beliefs, but without success. His foes were bent on his destruction. In April 1589 King Henry III was assassinated, and France was faced with the prospect of being ruled by a Protestant King Henry IV. So alarmed was the pope, Gregory XIV, that he excommunicated the new king and threw the weight of his office behind the Catholic League. As pressure mounted, Henry IV finally relented, and in July 1593 he returned to the Catholic faith. Over the next few years the king and leaders in France searched for a settlement that would be acceptable to all parties. But there was no easy way to integrate a well-organized Huguenot ecclesiastical organization, replete with its own clergy, into a country that was overwhelmingly Catholic. Several decades later Cardinal Richelieu would call the Huguenots a “state within a state.”41 At his coronation Henry had vowed that he would “maintain and uphold in our kingdom the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Religion.” He did not, however, convert to Catholicism, and he assured Calvinist leaders that he would do everything in his power to bring about a “happy union between all my subjects.”42 In truth both sides were exhausted, and this cognizance led, after laborious negotiations, to yet another edict: the famous Edict of Nantes in April 1598 signed by the king. The Edict of Nantes offered little that was new and took most of its language from earlier edicts. It recognized the ecclesiastical organization of the Huguenots, but it also declared that “the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion shall be restored and re-established in all places and localities of this our kingdom and countries subject to our sway.” Catholicism would remain the religion of the land, but to avoid conflict and bloodshed, those who held to “la Religion Preténdu Réformé” (the so-called Reform religion) should not be molested nor “compelled to do anything in the matter of religion

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contrary to their consciences” as long as they conformed to the edict.43 The Huguenots were given leave to practice their faith in their homes and to gather for worship in those towns they controlled in August 1597 and in other cities mentioned in earlier edicts. Huguenot books were not to be published or sold in any other cities than those expressly mentioned in the edict. When the edict was put before the Parlement of Paris, the assembly refused to register it. A delegation from the Parlement was sent to the king, who responded with an uncompromising letter ordering Parlement to register the edict. He observed that he had received the delegation in a private room, as a father receives his children—not dressed in royal garments, in the fashion of his predecessors when addressing foreign ambassadors. He had formulated the edict for the good of peace, and the Parlement was obligated to obey. “God has chosen to make me king, which is mine by right and succession.” He acknowledged that there were factions in the Parlement working against him, but he was determined to put an end to them. “Do not bring up the Catholic religion with me; I love it more than you do, I am more Catholic than you: I am the eldest son of the Church, which you are not nor can you be. . . . I am king now, and am speaking as king. I will be obeyed.”44 But the Parlement was resolute and sent another delegation to the king. In response Henry wrote a second letter explaining in greater detail the rationale behind the edict. “I believe that some of you are moved by religious considerations, but the Catholic religion can only be maintained by peace, and the peace of the state is the peace of the Church.”45 The Parlement had no choice but to yield.46 Catholicism remained the religion of the land, and many remained hostile to the idea of permanent religious toleration. But it no longer seemed unreasonable that France could tolerate the practice of a religion besides Catholicism. And the principle enunciated by Michel de l’HÔpital three decades earlier, that the business of the Crown was not to maintain religion but to maintain the republic, was defended and applied by a new generation of thinkers. It was not that religion and the state had “nothing to do with one another” but rather, as a French lawyer put it, “Tolerance of two religions . . . need not cause a split in the State.” The unity and

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the stability of the country did not depend on religious conformity.47 This principle represented a huge advance, intellectually as well as politically, for it showed that by the end of the sixteenth century it was possible to acknowledge that religious pluralism could be a permanent feature of Christian societies. Religious unity was a thing of the past, a “thing to be desired more than hoped for,” according to Pierre du Belloy, a lawyer who wrote a commentary on the Edict of Nantes in 1600.48 With all its promise, however, the Edict of Nantes turned out to be a false dawn. Many Frenchmen remained hostile to the presence of Protestant communities in their midst and in 1685, in the Edict of Fountainbleau, King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and ordered the destruction of Huguenot churches.

chapter six

Freedom of Worship The Netherlands

How is it possible to grant liberty of conscience without exercise of religion? —phil ip m a r n i x d e s a i n t - a l d e g o n d e

in the middle ages the Low Countries were divided by geography, language, and culture, the northern region being Germanic and the south belonging to the Latin culture that reached back to the Franks who had come under Roman rule. In the fifteenth century the dukes of Burgundy, princes of the royal house of Valois, began to extend their rule northward, and the Netherlands became part of a kingdom whose central city was French-speaking Brussels in Brabant. At the end of the fifteenth century, Mary, the daughter of a Burgundian duke, married Maximilian of Hapsburg, whose father was the Holy Roman emperor. Through her marriage the Netherlands were united not only to the House of Burgundy but also to the ancient Hapsburg family of Austria. In 1493 Maximilian succeeded his father as emperor, and his young son Philip became the Hapsburg ruler of the Netherlands. In 1504, when Philip inherited the Spanish crown, the Netherlands came under the rule of 99

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the king of Spain as well as of the Hapsburgs. So it happened that when the Reformation arrived in the Low Countries, disputes over religious matters became interwoven with resistance to Spanish rule. Reform and revolt went hand in hand. As in other European countries, the rise of humanism prepared the way for the Reformation. North European humanism began in the Low Countries in the late fifteenth century. Two of the first humanists, Rudolph Agricola and Wessel Gansfort, were active in Groningen, and Desiderius Erasmus, the most distinguished humanist of the age, was born in Rotterdam. The humanists cultivated the study of the Bible in the original languages, schooled people to read and interpret the Scriptures, and nurtured personal piety. Erasmus was even suspected of being a “keen supporter of Luther.”1

The Arrival of Reform Lutheran ideas reached the Low Countries as early as 1519. Jacques Praepositus, an Augustinian monk in Antwerp, was the first to embrace them. Luther’s writings quickly became widely available, and the new doctrine sparked lively debate in taverns and private houses, so much that in common speech the term Lutrianen became a synonym for “heretics.” The Netherlands were, however, part of the Holy Roman Empire, and Emperor Charles V vigorously prosecuted the new “heresy.” Unlike in Germany, where the reformers enjoyed the protection of the local prince, in the Netherlands the emperor had a free hand. He acted swiftly to ban the books, sermons, and writings of Luther, and suppressed his followers. In October 1520, at Leuven, eighty copies of Luther’s writings were burned, and the following July, in the presence of the emperor, four hundred Lutheran books, many seized from booksellers, were destroyed. Tribunals were set up to prosecute dissenters, and the first executions took place in the summer of 1523.2 Within a decade more radical ideas had made their way to the Low Countries through the Sacramentarians, who believed that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist was only symbolic. In 1527 a young widow from Monnikendam was tried and burned at the stake. When asked what she believed about the sacrament, she said,

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“I hold your sacrament to be bread and flour, and if you hold it as God, I say that it is your devil.” When she was led to the stake she was offered a crucifix, but she refused to kiss it. As she turned away she said: “This is not my Lord and my God; my Lord God is in me and I in him.”3 The Sacramentarians were followed by the Anabaptists, who rejected the doctrines and rituals of Catholicism and urged their followers to “seek God from the heart, and serve and follow him without a preacher, teacher, or any other outward meeting.”4 In Germany, where they had bred violence and provoked anarchy, Emperor Charles had no patience with them. In the Netherlands he issued “placards,” public proclamations imposing severe penalties, to wit: “All those, male or female, who are found to be infected by the said condemned sect of the Anabaptists or those that baptize again . . . will be put to death without delay.”5 In the late 1520s a priest from West Frisia named Menno Simons began to doubt whether Christ was truly present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. He found Anabaptist teaching more palatable than Catholic doctrine. He also had questions about baptism. At first, Anabaptist talk of a “second baptism”— rebaptism of one who has been baptized as an infant—sounded strange to his ears. But as he examined the Scriptures he found that he “could find no report of infant baptism.”6 Initially he used his pulpit to preach evangelical reform, but in 1536, twelve years after his ordination, he broke all ties with the Catholic Church. Because the Anabaptists were ruthlessly pursued by the authorities, he went into hiding and began to write pamphlets on baptism, spiritual resurrection, and Christian doctrine. By chance, a group of three hundred Anabaptists had fled to the region where he was hiding, and Simons believed he was called to shepherd these “poor straying sheep.” Simons became the leader of a less militant form of Anabaptism that shunned political activity, renounced violence, and taught nonresistance. By mid-century his followers were called Mennisten (Mennonites), and in the course of the next several decades they became one of the most influential religious confessions in the Netherlands. In the early seventeenth century, when English Baptists—who likewise held to “believer’s baptism”—crossed the Channel, fleeing

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the rule of King James I, they made contact with the Mennonites, and several of the first English writers on liberty of conscience were influenced by their teaching. It was, however, the Calvinists who were to bring order to the haphazard growth of religious sects promoting reform. Initially the Calvinists came from France and had their greatest success in the French-speaking southern provinces and in Antwerp, a Dutchspeaking city. But the Inquisition dealt harshly with them, and many were killed or fled to England or to Germany, where they established communities offering shelter for other exiles. From abroad they spearheaded the advance of Calvinism in the Netherlands. So great was the commerce between the exiles and those who remained at home that an inquisitor complained, “The poor simple people have been misled by these people who can go back and forth to England and other places.”7 The port city of Emden in northern Germany embraced the Calvinist creed early, and its strategic location on the Dutch border gave reformers from Germany easy access to the Low Countries. As an active seaport, it eased regular contact with Calvinists in England. Swiftly it became a vital center of Calvinist life, and its presses published a steady stream of books and pamphlets spreading reform ideas.8 By the 1550s Calvinism was the dominant reform confession in the Netherlands. With a strong doctrinal tradition, bolstered by Calvin’s systematic exposition of Christian teaching in the Institutes, its stable ordered communities had more staying power than the disparate and fragmented reform groups scattered about the country. As the Calvinists became more public in professing and practicing their faith, they challenged long-standing social and religious patterns of life.

Commotion about Religion The rise of Calvinism coincided with political upheavals in the Netherlands. When the Holy Roman emperor Charles V abdicated in 1555, he was succeeded by his son Philip II. Philip, however, did not inherit the title of emperor; that crown went to Charles’s younger brother, Ferdinand. So it fell to Philip to rule the Low Countries as king of Spain, not as emperor, a title lacking not only

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the authority but also the luster. Charles had been born in the Flemish city of Ghent; Philip was born in the Spanish capital, Valla­ dolid. He spoke neither Flemish nor French. He spent his entire life in Spain, his court in Brussels was made up largely of Spaniards, and when he needed to impose his authority on the Netherlanders he called in Spanish troops. It was not lost on the Dutch nobility that with the accession of Philip their country had come to be ruled by a foreigner.9 Several years after his election and elevation as king in Brussels, he departed for Spain, never to return to the Netherlands. The combination of maladroit rule from afar, militant Catholicism, local grievances, and calls for reform was a toxic brew, which in certain regions boiled over in open revolt against Spanish rule. To rule the Low Countries in his stead, Philip appointed his half sister Margaret of Parma regent, and a Burgundian statesman, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (later cardinal), as prime minister. Two issues immediately provoked resistance. The first was taxation. The textile industry and trade had made the Low Countries one of the most prosperous regions of Europe, and Philip needed cash to prevent his kingdom from sliding into bankruptcy. So he began to impose onerous new taxes. To do so, he needed the support of the provincial estates—but they vigorously opposed his action. Another source of controversy was a proposed change to the ecclesiastical map of the country. Historically, most of the bishoprics had been located in the south. But in 1559, in the bull Super universas, Pope Paul IV (1555–59) authorized a thorough reorganization of the ecclesiastical structure of the Netherlands. As king, Philip had the privilege of proposing nominees, and by increasing the number of new bishops in the north he would gain greater control over its rebellious cities. His new order met with fierce opposition from leading figures, including clergy. But what cut deepest was Philip’s adamantine refusal to accommodate the growth of Calvinism in the country. The movement was spreading by means of “hedge-preaching,” that is, large open-air gatherings in fields outside of cities. By the early 1560s Calvinists were also holding public services in several cities, and a Dutch Calvinist “church” was in the making. At Antwerp in 1566 a Calvinist confession of faith was adopted. Known as the Confessio

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Belgica (from the historic name of the region), it was authored by Guido de Brès, a reformed pastor, who was martyred a year later. The Calvinists had become so numerous in the cities and towns that Margaret, the regent, complained that they were seeking “to establish two religions in complete equality.”10 Philip was resolute, however, and responded to the growth of Calvinism by ratcheting up the Inquisition and hunting down the “heretics.” His instructions to Margaret were explicit: “I cannot refrain from telling you that considering the condition of religious affairs in the Netherlands . . . this is no time to make any alteration. On the contrary, His Majesty’s edicts should be executed.” He recognized, however, that the public execution of the heretics made them “martyrs.” So he advised her to have them executed “in secret.”11 Defiance of the king came not only from Protestants but from civic leaders who feared that Philip’s actions undermined public order and civic unity. A group of nobles issued a declaration with a solemn oath that if any “molestation or persecution” did take place, they would assist “with our bodies and our property to the utmost of our ability.”12 Their declaration touched on religious matters only tangentially, but at about the same time, several tracts were published that addressed the religious question directly. A Brief Discourse to King Philip, written by Francis Junius (Francois Du Jon), a Reformed scholar, is worthy of note. Born in France, Junius first read classics and law. Later he took an interest in theology and moved to Geneva, where he studied with Calvin. In 1565 he returned to the Netherlands, and for a brief time was a pastor in Antwerp. The aim of Junius’s pamphlet was to advise the king on how to deal with the “commotion about religion.” He presents what had become the customary defense of religious toleration: violence is powerless in dealing with matters of faith. “How would it be possible to rule over the conscience and the spirit of man through corporeal things?” It was no doubt desirable that the subjects of His Majesty should belong to one faith, but faith was “a pure gift of God engraved into the heart of the human person.” It was futile to think that the king could force people to change “what they believe in their hearts.” Studying history, including the Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire, one learned that “when a new religion is based on an inner conviction based on the Word of God,” no

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human effort can suppress it. Physical violence had no power over “inner belief.” Some had fled their homes to find shelter in foreign countries in order to enjoy “freedom of conscience.”13 Junius realized that more was at issue than the freedom of individuals to believe what they wished; the question was whether the Calvinists would be allowed to practice their faith publicly as corporate religious fellowships. How can a religion exist, he asked, “without public worship and ceremonies?” Would the Protestants be allowed to “assemble, to preach, to catechize and to profess openly what they believe in their inmost hearts?” If we could not “extirpate the faith which these men cherish in their hearts,” there was nothing to be gained by preventing them from “attending their public worship and the services by which they are maintained in their religion and the fear of God.” In other words, the “heretics” were Godfearing people, and to make them irreligious and disrespectful of public authority did not benefit the commonweal. There should be “two ways of public worship in public sight,” for only so could the commonwealth honor the “obedience due to God and the king” and preserve “public order.”14 Like the politiques in France, Junius was urging forbearance; he was not proposing a general theory of religious freedom. He had eyes only for the Calvinists. It was not, however, a time for the cool reason of savants. In some cities people had turned to violence, destroying images, breaking stained-glass windows, effacing churches, and destroying priceless religious paintings. The wave of iconoclasm shocked the Spanish court. The king dispatched the Duke of Alva, nicknamed the Iron Duke, to crush the opposition. “I will not consider nor do I desire being a king of heretics,” wrote the king.15 Alva arrived in the summer of 1567, and a new tribunal was established to deal with the dissenters. Some twelve thousand people were brought to trial and a thousand executed. To the Spanish authorities it seemed that the revolt had been crushed and Philip was back in control. But Alva’s cruel tactics only stiffened resistance to the king. In 1571 a distinguished statesman with the lovely name of Philip Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde wrote Defense and True Declaration of the Things Done in the Lowe Countrey to defend the historic liberties of the Dutch confederation. Born in Brussels, Marnix had studied theology under Calvin and Beza at Geneva, and on his return to

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the Netherlands was taken into the service of William of Orange, the leader of the revolt. The country, he wrote, was being “reduced into one body, and made subject to one form of laws and jurisdiction and brought to the name and title of a kingdom.”16 The king planned to govern the Low Countries as he governed the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples. We are loyal to the king, wrote Marnix, we obey his commandment, pay tributes and taxes, “but we do desire that we may have our conscience and Religion left us freely, lest in that last judgment we be found guilty of violating the faith of Jesus Christ with an ungodly conscience.” In the name of Jesus Christ, “we profess in our public religion, pray and beseech your majestie’s highnesses, that we may defend ourselves, our wives, children and riches, but above all our conscience from the pride of the Inquisitors, from the avarice of the new bishops, and from the outrageous lust of the most mischievous ministers of the Inquisition and rascal soldiers.”17 Without religious freedom there could be no political liberty. By the early 1570s the revolt was proceeding at full tilt. William of Orange, the leader of the revolt, had returned to the Netherlands from England, and in 1572 a band of privateers with the colorful name of Sea Beggars seized a small coastal island and executed nineteen Catholic priests. With their support William prepared to mount an invasion of the south. His armies captured a number of cities, but the strength and tenacity of the Spanish troops forced him to turn back. He did, however, hold the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, and in an address to their inhabi­ tants he pledged to establish a representative government and allow freedom of religion. Everyone would be free, he said, to adopt the “teaching of the prophets, of Christ and the apostles which the Churches have taught until now.” Those “who reject these doctrines may do so without any injury to their goods as long as they are willing to behave peaceably.”18 In 1575 the States General of Holland proposed that the Calvinist regions abandon the “tyrant” Philip, who had oppressed his subjects. Soon Zeeland and other provinces joined them to drive out the Spanish soldiers who were ravaging the country. In October 1576 the Protestant forces met at Ghent, where they quickly reached an agreement, joined by some Catholic provinces, known

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as the Pacification of Ghent. It called for the expulsion of Spanish troops from the Low Countries and an end to persecution, and opened the way for the establishment of a new government in the north. The religious question, however, was not resolved. In 1578, at a meeting of a synod of the reformed church at Dordrecht, a document calling for a “religious peace” was issued on behalf of “the inhabitants of the Netherlands . . . who desire to live after the Reformation of the Gospel.”19 It advocated the free practice of both Catholicism and Protestantism, “the exercise of the one and the other religion.”20 But events were moving swiftly, and in 1579 Philip dispatched a new general, the Duke of Parma, to unite the southern provinces loyal to the king. In January 1579 the Union of Arras, a confederation loyal to Spain, was formed. That same year, provinces in the north bound themselves together in the Union of Utrecht and declared independence from Spain. In 1581 the States General of the new Protestant government issued the Act of Abjuration, a document whose language would be echoed in the Articles of Confederation of the American colonies in 1777. “In accordance with the law of nature and in order to preserve and defend ourselves and our fellow-countrymen, our rights . . . and the life and honor of our wives, children, and posterity, so that we may not become the Spaniard’s slaves, and forsaking the King of Spain with good right, we have been compelled to devise and practice other means which seem to provide better for the greater safety and preservation of our aforesaid rights, privileges and liberties.”21 The Low Countries were now divided into a Catholic south, which became modern Belgium, and a Calvinist north, which would be known as the Netherlands. The political division did not, however, resolve the besetting difficulty of finding a way for the two “religions” to live together. In the northern provinces Calvinism became the public religion, and in some cities “papal exercises” were forbidden. In 1581 placards were placed in public places prohibiting celebration of the Catholic Mass; monasteries were forced to close. In 1583 the States General forbad “the public teaching or practice of any other Religion in the present United Provinces.”22 But prohibition could not be the answer. As the new order began to take shape, many

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tracts and pamphlets were published in the hope of finding a way to establish “religious peace.”

Seeking Religious Peace In 1579 the distinguished French diplomat Philippe Duplessis Mornay stated what had become obvious: “In this country [the Netherlands] there are now two religions.” Mornay had served as ambassador for Henry II, king of France, and now was living in the Netherlands in the service of William of Orange. He could see that the situation in the Netherlands was more perilous than in France. If things continued on the present path, he wrote, “the country will be laid waste and we will lose everything.” The only way forward was to live and let live—not to defeat with arms those who held to another confession. “We can either allow them to live in peace with us or we can all die together.”23 But peace was out of reach, as those charged with maintaining order knew well. This is evident in an illuminating document purporting to be a conversation between the burgomaster of Harlem, Niclaes van der Laan, and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522– 90), an engraver in copper, a classicist, and a theologian.24 The dispute turns on whether it is legitimate to use force to ensure uniformity of religious belief. Coornhert tells the burgomaster that he has no mandate from God to “rule, order or compel souls and to deal with heretics.” But van der Laan responds that as a “Christian authority” he cannot, “silently and with good conscience,” allow people to fall into error. Coornhert cautions that the authorities cannot know whether souls are being led astray. King Philip killed many who were devout Christians. Granted, says van der Laan, but what “are the legal means” at my disposal? Quoting Calvin, Coornhert answers that the “pure truth of God” is the only means of dealing with heretics. Does that then mean that everyone should be allowed “to do as he likes in religious matters?” asks the burgomaster. That would only create a “Babylonian confusion.” In response, Coornhert cites the familiar parable of the wheat and the tares. The landowner allowed the weeds to grow beside the wheat “without being weeded out.” And Coornhert reminds van der Laan of the words of Jesus: “Render unto God the things that are

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God’s and unto man the things that are man’s” (Matthew 22:21). Men are entitled to “freedom of conscience” because only God has “authority over men’s souls and conscience.” The burgomaster is unconvinced. Coornhert has said many fine things, and van der Laan agrees that it is wrong to kill people for the sake of religion—“but to permit several religions to be exercised is, in my opinion, not right.”25 Coornhert responds: If people are not granted the right to practice their religion, then even though the punishment may be “less severe,” the “constraint upon conscience remains.” The result is a “want of freedom,” for in Calvinist regions of the country people were now being punished more frequently than under papal rule. In other words, to grant liberty of conscience to individuals is not enough. Something more is needed. In tract after tract the same dilemma surfaces. By the latter decades of the sixteenth century liberty of conscience was widely acknowledged, but people continued to believe, based on experience, that religious divisions would lead to social discord and violence. There seemed no way forward as long as a commonweal was governed by one faith, and each minority “confession” thought of itself as a miniature Christian body. The religious wars in France and the bloodletting in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre were well known in the Netherlands. At about the same time, another line of thinking began to emerge. Some writers defended liberty of conscience as a “natural right.” The clearest statement appears in an anonymous treatise titled Good Admonition to the Good Citizens of Brussels (1579). The key passage is worth quoting in full: It is well known that human freedom is located particularly in the soul, which is the chief part of us and in view of which we are called human. Freedom of the soul means freedom of conscience. This freedom means that a person may accept and hold such a religion as his conscience witnesses to him and that no one has the right or the power to hinder him in it or to forbid it violently. This freedom does not have its origin in the Pacification of Ghent, but properly belongs to an individual by nature and by natural right because religion is a bond that a person has with God. It is for this reason that

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he owes an account to no one besides God alone. This whole thing is well-known and requires no proof. If people did not have the freedom to accept and hold such religion as they deem good according to conscience, then the Christian religion could never have gotten its start. On the contrary, our parents would have had to stay in the heathen religion which they had once accepted without ever being able to change it.26 This is pungent language, and it brings together in an original way ideas that had been in play for centuries. Human freedom has its resting place in the inner being. Freedom is a spiritual, not political, concept. It arises from the bond a person has with God, not from political institutions or arrangements. The phrase “this whole thing is well-known and requires no proof” is admittedly vague— but from what follows, it seems to refer to the dignity of human beings created in the image of God with the power to choose and act. This reading supports the central point of the passage: freedom is innate and belongs to a person “by nature and by natural right.” It is not a privilege granted by government, not an accommodation or an act of clemency. It is a right given at birth, and it cannot be taken away by laws or decrees. By introducing the language of “natural right,” this anonymous author goes beyond arguments for toleration and puts religious freedom on a sturdier theological and philosophical foundation. “People have been threatened with many things to force them to conform to the will of others, but no one can take away from us what properly belongs to us by nature.” With the introduction of natural right, the winding path of Christian thinking on religious freedom begins to straighten. In the late Middle Ages thinkers such as Jean Gerson (1363– 1429) had defined “right” (ius) as a power (potestas) or faculty of the soul. Initially rights pertained to natural goods: property, selfpreservation, and the like. But in time the concept of rights was expanded to include spiritual matters. Gerson, writes Brian Tierney, “formulated a theory of individual subjective rights that included a natural right of each person to fulfil God’s law, a natural right to liberty.”27 Each person has a sphere of choice, a realm over which he has control, and in which he is free to act. “Natural dominion,”

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wrote Gerson, “is an immediate power of taking things . . . into one’s control and use according to the rules of natural right [iuris naturalis].”28 It would, however, take the events of the Reformation to provoke thinkers to defend liberty of conscience as a natural right. Another tract from the same period, Political Education, approaches the matter of religious rights from a different perspective: the distinction between the two realms. This anonymous author draws on Roman political writers Seneca and Cicero as well as the Scriptures to bolster his case. According to ancient writers, he says, the task of government “consists in the welfare and prosperity of the community and subjects.” Quoting Cicero’s De officiis, he says that government was “instituted to do justice.”29 God has granted kings and temporal authorities power only over the bodies and goods of their subjects. Government has “no command over one part of man, namely the soul.” Citing the Gospel of Matthew— “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (10:28)—the author says that the “power of worldly authorities cannot transgress the bounds of the body and good of the subjects.” For Christ says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, to God the things that are God’s,” that is, tribute and honor belong to Caesar, but adoration and worship belong to God. In the words of the First Letter of Peter: “Fear God, honor the King” (1 Peter 2:17). These words, let it be noted, had been spoken by Donata, a Christian woman, when questioned by a Roman proconsul in the third century.30 The author of Political Education also cites the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Persian court (Daniel 4:28–29). Shadrach and Abednego’s resistance to the imperious Nebuchadnezzar proves that a “king has no competence to govern or command the souls and consciences of men.” Their words should be written in golden letters in places where princes converse, reminding them that they may not “usurp command over the conscience of their subjects and . . . force them to idolatry or disbelief by use of weapons.” If the king of Spain had not set his armies “to force consciences” but had simply ruled over goods and bodies, there would be peace.31

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In his study of the political thought of Dutch thinkers during the revolt against Spanish authority, Martin van Gelderen emphasizes that the distinctive contribution of Dutch writers was to advocate “freedom of conscience” as an “individual natural right.”32 That is true, but the debates in the Netherlands had more to do with the status of religious communities than with the rights of individuals. Without public worship, rites and ceremonies, ministers and priests, schools and institutions, religious faith cannot flourish. Dutch thinkers argued that religious freedom must include free exercise—the public practice of religion—as well as liberty of conscience. A clear exposition of the corporate nature of religious confession is found in a pamphlet by Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde, who had been burgomaster of Antwerp when the city was occupied by Spanish troops. Some claim, he writes, that the war to be freed from Spanish rule was undertaken to preserve the liberties of the country; in truth, that is not what happened. The reason is this: the Spanish promise of freedom of conscience was given with the proviso “There is no public worship and no offence is given.” But this was a trap to ensnare the Protestants. “For it is well known that conscience, which resides in people’s minds, is always free and cannot be examined by other men and still less be put under their control or command.” There is no disagreement on this point, says Marnix. But no one has been executed on grounds of belief alone. It is the public practice of religion that offends. “There is no difference between so-called freedom of conscience without public worship, and the old rigor of the edicts and inquisition of Spain. . . . How is it possible to grant freedom of conscience without exercise of religion?” How can people enjoy the benefits of freedom if they cannot gather together to worship God? “If they have no ceremonies at all and do not invoke God to testify to the piety and reverence they bear him, they are in fact left without any religion and without fear of God. But if they do have ceremonies and want to show openly that they honour God, their religious services must be conformable to their conscience as this is allowed to be free.”33 One ingenious way of negotiating the private/public divide was to organize what the Dutch called a schuilkerk, a clandestine church. Article 13 of the Union of Utrecht granted freedom of conscience,

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but it made no provision for dissenters to practice their faith publicly. Nonconformists responded by turning private spaces, for example, spacious rooms in large homes, into “churches” where adherents could meet for worship without displaying a public face to the city. For instance, in the seventeenth century there was a well-appointed religious sanctuary in a private home, a Catholic church known as Our Lord in the Attic. Neighbors, of course, knew what went on in the building, but as long as the church was not visible from the street it was permitted to exist; magistrates allowed a congregation to worship clandestinely as long as it followed certain rules. The pastor of a Catholic church in Amsterdam agreed that the entrance would not be on the main street, no sleds would be parked in front of the building, people would not mill about chatting after the service, and no rituals would take place on the street. The aim was to ensure that there would be no visible expression of a dissident religious society.34

Johannes Althusius Though Calvinism had begun in Switzerland, spread to France, and become the religion of the northern provinces of the Low Countries, it was left to a German thinker, Johannes Althusius, to provide a systematic account of Calvinist thought on politics and religion. Althusius was born in Westphalia in 1557 and studied classics, law, philosophy, and theology at Cologne, Heidelberg, Geneva, and Basel. He began his academic career in the faculty of law at the Herborn Academy in Germany, a Calvinist institution similar to a university but on a smaller scale. He served as rector of the academy in 1597 and 1602. In 1604 he was called to Emden in Frisia in northern Germany, where he would remain the rest of his life.35 Althusius looked out on a world sundered by decades of religious strife and political turmoil, especially in neighboring Netherlands. He believed that there could be no stable or enduring society without the bond of religion. It was the duty of the sovereign “to establish and permit only one religion in his realm, and that the true one.”36 The sovereign’s responsibility was “twofold”: the “welfare of the soul” and the “care of the body.”37 In the preface

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to the third edition of his Politics, Althusius says that the precepts of the Decalogue “infuse a vital spirit into political and social life by prescribing a way, rule, guiding star, and boundary for human society.” If anyone would take them out of politics, “he would destroy it.” By the Decalogue Althusius intends not only the second table, with its prescriptions against theft, murder, false witness, and the like, but also the first table, with its exhortation, “You shall have no other gods before me.” What would human life be, he asks rhetorically, “without the piety of the first table of the Decalogue” and “the justice of the second”?38 Althusius wrote with a firm grasp of the history of his own time and a close textual knowledge of the writings of contemporary theologians and philosophers, including Jean Bodin. He also was familiar with the pamphlet literature that had sprung up during the Dutch revolt. But his Politics is not a tract for the times; it is a scholastic treatise, organized systematically with careful attention to terms and concepts, institutions and offices, all supported by references to Roman law, the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, and the Schoolmen, and guided by an overarching vision of a well-ordered commonwealth based on Calvinist principles. Yet Althusius was keenly aware that the corpus Christianum was no longer securely in place, even in its Protestant form, and that rulers had to deal with nonconformist religious communities living in their midst. This aspect of his work was particularly significant for the developing understanding of religious freedom. For Althusius, it was self-evident that the magistrate should defend and protect “orthodox religion” in his realm.39 Therefore, “atheists, impious and profane men” should be excluded from the city. Jews, however, should be treated differently. They were to be permitted to live in the territory and have business dealings with the “faithful,” but not to have synagogues. Moreover, Jews should not be allowed to contract marriages with Christian women. Christians should not frequent Jewish rites. As for the “papists,” they were allowed to live in the territory, but they must not practice “their superstitions,” nor could they contract marriages with Protestants, nor have their own churches.40 Althusius distinguished those heretics who “overthrow the foundation of faith,” such as the Arians, from others such as Novatians,

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who erred in certain articles of faith but did not destroy the cardinal Christian teachings. Each was to be treated differently—the first by exile or even the sword, the latter by excommunication. Althusius did, however, allow that heretics’ gatherings should not be prohibited. Whether he spoke of historical Arians or Novatians, or of sects of his day, is uncertain. What is clear is that he believed in degrees of toleration, depending on the nature of the dissent from the communal profession. Those who publicly renounced the faith were to be treated harshly. But what of those who held to a confession different from the customs and beliefs of the city? Althusius advised rulers to examine the confession to determine whether it was in accord with the Word of God. If it was, the magistrates should grant the adherents “free public exercise of their religion.” To which Althusius adds: “Who expels true worshippers of God from his realm, expels God as well.”41 Then he explains his reasons. “The faith and religion of a man exists in the mind alone and in the conscience,” and “only God has imperium in this area.” Jesus said: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). Only God knows the intimate recesses of the heart. Faith is a gift of God, not of Caesar, and it “cannot be coerced.” If the soul is opposed to belief or has taken leave of it, there is no faith. At this point, Althusius cites Lactantius: “Religion cannot be commanded, and no one can be forced to believe unwillingly.” Faith, says Althusius, “requires persuasion, not command, teaching, not orders.” Only the sword of the Spirit is effective in dealing with matters of belief; arms are powerless. Only when “heretics” are guilty of criminal actions should they be punished, as one punishes the pious who commit crimes.42 A magistrate who uses force in dealing with religious dissent “exceeds the limit of his jurisdiction and claims for himself imperium over the conscience.” Persecution leads to social discord, and the sovereign who wishes order must refrain from persecution. If he cannot prohibit the practice of another religion without harm to the republic, he must allow it to exist, lest he bring about the downfall of the republic. He “should tolerate the dissenters for the sake of public peace and tranquility, looking the other way and allowing them the exercise of a religion that is unapproved, until

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God illuminates them, lest the entire kingdom and with it the household of the Church be overthrown.” This was of course the argument of the politiques in France, and Althusius employs Bodin’s metaphor of a captain in the midst of a stormy sea. The sovereign “shall therefore tolerate the practice of diverse religions the way a skilled captain bears with diverse and conflicting winds and clashing waves. As the captain in the midst of such winds and waves brings his ship safely into the harbor, so the magistrate directs the commonwealth in a manner that keeps it free from ruin for the welfare of the Church.”43 In a later work, Theory of Justice, Althusius took up the question of whether dissenters should be forced to leave a territory if they did not hold to the city’s public confession. He answered in the negative. If a ruler forcefully removed a dissident religious community from his realm, he deprived its adherents of “liberty of conscience,” because he rendered them unable “publicly to exercise their religion.” Here Althusius uses the phrase “liberty of conscience” (libertas conscientiae); elsewhere he uses “liberty of mind” (libertas animi), by which he means the “free power to judge, will, choose, not will, or refuse.” Liberty of mind is not subject to any “rule, order, fear or coercion.” This freedom is grounded in “natural law,” which guarantees that one is free “to will or to dispose of those things under one’s control as long as they are not prohibited.”44 Althusius’s thinking is an inflection of what had been said by earlier writers, but it reflects a hard-earned clarity learned from experience. He gave theological reasons for the rights of religious dissenters and realized, as did Bodin, that religious communities had to be treated differently from other associations. He also knew at first hand the difficulties faced by rulers in a republic holding to one confession. The third edition of his Politics is dedicated to the “illustrious leaders of the estates of Frisia between the Zuider Zee and the North Sea, most worthy lords.” Althusius viewed society from the perspective of the ruling class, not that of the dissenters, and this perspective creates a tension between what he says about liberty of conscience and the actual task of governing. As John Witte observes, Althusius recognized that absolute freedom of religious exercise was not possible, given the conviction that the state should confess one orthodox Christian religion—namely, Calvinism. “The

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great question that every higher magistrate must judge is how much religious diversity and non-conformity to tolerate within his or her domain without fraying the bonds of civil community.”45 This dilemma would continue to vex rulers in every part of Europe. The conflicts in the Netherlands over “religious peace” are a significant chapter in the history of religious freedom. By the latter part of the sixteenth century, ideas and arguments forged during the first decades of the Reformation had gained wide acceptance, and Dutch thinkers deployed them in defending the right to practice one’s religion freely. But in two respects, the Dutch stand out. First, Dutch thinkers made explicit what earlier writers had intimated: it is not enough to defend the freedom of individual consciences; religious freedom must protect the rights of religious communities. Second, liberty of conscience must be recognized as a natural right, not a privilege granted by ruling authorities. In the next chapter it will be seen that liberty of conscience had become so fixed in the minds of many that in England a Jesuit priest could liken it to the air we all breathe.

chapter seven

Sturdy Piety Catholics in England

Liberty of conscience is like unto liberty of breathing and using the common aire. —robe rt p e r s o n s , s j

long before the reformation of the sixteenth century, public dissent from the Church of Rome had made its mark on English life. In the fourteenth century, the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (1330–84) mounted a vigorous critique of the papacy, prayers to the saints, veneration of images, pilgrimages, and relics. Wycliffe was condemned by Pope Gregory XI in 1377, but he continued to write and gained a following among merchants, artisans, some clergy, and a few members of Parliament. After his death his followers came to be known as the Lollards, a term that may come from the Dutch word lollen, to sing softly. Claiming to base their teaching solely on the Scriptures, the Lollards believed that each person had the right to read and interpret the Bible without reference to the learning of the Church Fathers or the speculations of the Schoolmen. They opposed clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, auricular confession, and indulgences, and held that the legitimacy 118

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of the sacraments depended on the moral character of the priest. They had a good run for several decades, but Henry IV, who became king in 1399, was offended by their disdain of conventional piety and ordered their leaders hunted down and burned at the stake. The Lollards promoted vernacular English translations of the Bible, and their devotion to reading and meditating on the Scriptures made an enduring contribution to the Reformation as it eventually unfolded in England. It is, however, misleading to take the Lollards as representative of late-medieval English spiritual life, as though the Reformation was just waiting to happen. In The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy has shown that medieval Catholicism was not a “failing religion”; conventional forms of religious piety still held the affections and guided the devotion of the people.1 Civic and religious life was marked by rites of passage celebrated in the Church’s rituals, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and last rites; holy days honoring saints and festivals celebrating the life of Christ governed the rhythm of communal life. Images of the saints could be found on drinking cups and bowls, rings and bracelets, lintels and gables, as well as the walls of churches. Every region and town had its own saints, and pious laity left bequests in their wills to ensure that lamps be kept burning before images of favorite saints in their parish churches. In England, unlike in the German cities or Swiss cantons, the path to reform began neither with sermons of clergy zealous to purify the Church nor with the wanton destruction of images of saints and crucifixes.2 Ironically, it began with a king who bore the title Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith) and had written a book on the seven sacraments attacking Luther’s theology. Henry VIII had become king in 1509, and as Lutheran ideas began to cross the Channel he wrote: “Who contemns the ancient Doctors of the Church, and derides the new ones in the highest degree loads with reproach the Chief Bishop of the Church.”3 Henry loved the Church’s rituals and he regularly served at Mass, “his own person kneeling on his grace’s knees.” Each Good Friday he dutifully crept on his knees to kiss the feet of the crucifix. He piously received “holy bread and holy wine every Sunday” and observed “all other laudable ceremonies.”4

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It was not reform ideas but Henry’s desire for a male heir that set in motion events that, over the course of several decades, would transform religious life in England. In 1509 Henry married Cath­ erine of Aragon, widow of his brother Arthur, who had died in 1502 after only seven months of marriage. Catherine was the daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, and by marrying Catherine Henry hoped to seal an alliance with Spain and produce a male heir to succeed him. Between 1510 and 1518 Catherine gave birth to six children, including two sons, but all died except a daughter, Mary. Henry concluded—or rationalized— that the marriage was cursed because he had violated the commandment in Leviticus: “If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is an impurity; . . . they shall be childless” (Leviticus 20:21). Henry appealed to Pope Clement VII for an annulment, but the pope was reluctant to grant it. Catherine was the aunt of Emperor Charles V, whose troops had sacked Rome, massacring most of the Swiss Guard and holding the pope hostage. It would have been reckless to risk offending the emperor by granting Henry an annulment. Furious at the pope’s refusal to bend to his wishes, the king deposed Cardinal Wolsey, the lord chancellor, who had been charged with presenting the king’s petition position to the pope. As the clash with Rome was unfolding, Henry’s eyes turned to one of the ladies at court, Anne Boleyn. With the support of his confidant Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, the future archbishop of Canterbury, Henry concluded that the only way to gain an annulment was to remove the Church of England from the authority of the pope in Rome.

Thomas More and John Fisher To replace Cardinal Wolsey, Henry appointed Thomas More (1478–1535), a distinguished humanist, lawyer, and high official at the court. More was a gifted Latinist and the author of Utopia, a work on political philosophy that had made him famous in humanistic circles. After his appointment to the Privy Council in 1517 More advanced swiftly as master of requests, speaker of the House of Commons, and advisor to the king. He wrote several works defending traditional Catholic teaching against Martin Luther, and as

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chancellor he actively persecuted heretics, condemning fellow Englishmen to be burned at the stake.5 But as More was drawn into the arena of the king’s divorce, his fortunes began to change. In 1527, while staying at Hampton Court (a palace built for Cardinal Wolsey and confiscated by the king after his fall), the king approached More to speak of “this great matter.” Opening the Bible before him, the king pointed to the passage in Leviticus and said that his marriage was against not only the laws of the Church but also the “written law of God” and the “law of nature.”6 More tried to finesse the matter, but his hesitancy troubled the king. After More became lord chancellor the king asked him again to look into the issue, but More remained unpersuaded. Nevertheless, he was a dutiful servant of the king and presented university opinions in favor of the divorce to Parliament. In 1531 the English clergy were asked to acknowledge the king as the “sole protector and supreme head” of the English Church. Two years later Thomas Cromwell brought before Parliament the Statute in Restraint of Appeals, which ruled that authority in the Church had passed from the pope to the king. England, it affirmed, was an “empire” governed “by one Supreme Head and King.” The sovereign was “furnished, by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God, with plenary, whole and entire power, pre-eminence, authority.” That same year Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, granted Henry an annulment of his union with Cather­ ine and blessed his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Unhappily, the marriage to Anne only compounded Henry’s predicament. Anne gave birth to a girl. A year later Parliament adopted the Act of Uniformity, which declared the king the “only head of the Church of England on Earth so far as the Law of God allows.” Significantly, it gave him power to appoint bishops. In the same year the Act of Supremacy recognized Henry as the “Supreme Head of the Church of En­ gland.” By making the king head of the Church, Henry subverted one of the core principles of medieval canon law: the universal jurisdiction of the pope. Gratian’s Decretum, the charter document of canon law, states that “those who preside over human affairs cannot judge those who are in charge of the divine.”7 As Torrance Kirby, an historian of the English Reformation, put it: “The two powers of

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Gelasius were in open conflict.”8 The Treasons Act, adopted by Parliament in 1532, made any appeal to Rome treasonous. By breaking with Rome, Henry had created a new kind of political and ecclesiastical entity. For centuries Christian people in the West had been governed by two authorities, the pope in Rome and emperors or kings in the various lands of Europe. By making the king not only the head of the body politic but also head of the Church, the English Parliament laid the foundation for a national Church. The English model had some parallels to “national” churches in eastern Europe (Bulgaria, for example) and more distant lands (such as Ethiopia or Armenia). But in the West the papacy had been the unifying institution, and the establishment of an independent Church in England shattered this unity. The new order presented English Catholics with an inescapable and fateful choice: Rome or England. In 1534 Parliament adopted the Act of Succession, which declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine of Aragon “void and annulled” and recognized any children of the king’s union with Anne Boleyn as legitimate heirs to the throne. By the same act, the king’s subjects were required to abjure allegiance to any “foreign authority or potentate.” On the day the act was given its first reading, one member of Parliament wrote: “After this day the Bishop of Rome shall have no manner of authority within the realm of En­ gland.” By the end of March all members of Parliament had taken the oath, and More was expected to follow. He knew the consequences of refusal. As his son-in-law put it: “It is perilous striving with princes, the wrath of a king means death” (indignatio principis mors est).9 When he appeared before Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, and William Benson, the last abbot of Westminster, More was handed a copy of the act. He said he did not fault those who had taken the oath, nor condemn the conscience of any other man. “But as for myself in good faith my conscience so moved me in this matter, that though I wolde not denie to swere to the succession, yet unto the othe that there was offred me I coulde not sware, without the iubardinge [jeopardizing] of my soul to perpetuall dampnacion.” That Anne Boleyn was the legitimate queen he could accept, but he would not renounce the pope

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and sever ties with the Catholic Church. This is, he continues, “one of the cases, in which I was bounden that I shoulde not obey my prince, sith that what so ever other folke thought in the matter.” Though others thought differently, to him “the trouth seemed on tother side” in refusing to take the oath.10 More’s appeal to conscience was a confession of his belief in the Catholic Church, its creeds, rituals, and institutions, established “by the corps of Christendom.” There was only one true Church and “one faith in the howse of god.” To submit to the oath would be to deny his faith and the faith that had nurtured Christians for centuries. “If there were no more but myself upon my side, and the whole Parlement upon the other, I wolde be sore afraid to lene to mine owne mynde only against so many.” But in refusing to take the oath, he was relying not on the “consail of one realme” but on the “general consail of Christendome.” In standing against the usurpations of King Henry, More believed he was holding to the faith of those living and dead. More was brought before the royal commission a second time and informed that a number of the London clergy had sworn the oath. When he again refused, he was dispatched from Westminster to the Tower of London. John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was also brought before the commissioners and, like More, said that he could swear to the succession, but not to the other parts, “because his conscience will not suffer him to do so.”11 More and Fisher were executed and Fisher’s head was displayed on a post on London Bridge.

Recusants Though Henry did not set out to reform the English Church, he unleashed forces that led to deep and enduring changes as others took in hand the levers of reform. He had resisted radical reforms of traditional practices, but with the crowning of his son Edward VI after Henry’s death in 1547, the Protestant cause had the wind at its back. The first edition of the Book of Common Prayer was issued in 1549, containing the daily offices of morning and evening prayer, the Lord’s Supper (or Holy Communion), and the Psalter. It would become the authoritative liturgical book for English churches. In comparison with the orders of worship in Calvinist countries, the

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Book of Common Prayer was conservative; nevertheless it was a sharp break with traditional Catholic piety and theology. It did retain some traditional features—a structured liturgy—and mandated the use of the surplice, a long white tunic that would become for the Puritans a hated symbol of the remnants of Catholicism in the English Church. The Church of England was well on its way to becoming a Protestant communion, but reform was cut short when Edward died in 1553 and Mary, the daughter of Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, succeeded him. Mary was a devout Catholic, and after her coronation she acted swiftly to reinstitute the Latin liturgy, deposed bishops who opposed her, persecuted Protestants, and appointed Reginald Pole archbishop of Canterbury. Pole’s mother was the niece of Edward IV, and early in life he was a favorite of King Henry VIII, who offered him the see of York. But he declined. Later he wrote a book defending the unity of the Church and criticizing Henry’s behavior. Pope Paul III appointed him one of three legates to preside at the Council of Trent. Mary died at forty-two years after only five years of rule, and Cardinal Pole died within a few hours of Mary’s death—a coincidence that was to some a sign of divine providence. The crowning of Elizabeth as queen of England in 1558 was greeted with relief and delight by the growing numbers of Protestants, and Elizabeth moved quickly to reverse laws put in place by Mary. A new Act of Supremacy was adopted, requiring every cleric to acknowledge the queen as “the only Supreme Governor . . . in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things.” Elizabeth abolished the Latin rites, and the Book of Common Prayer was reissued with minor changes. Other forms of worship were forbidden. The Act of Uniformity of 1559 required everyone to attend church on Sundays and holy days. The penalty for absence, levied by the churchwarden, was a fine of twelve pence for a single absence; fines increased each month for those who were persistently absent. Most Catholics were able to avoid the penalties by finding loopholes in the law, making up alibis of pressing business, or claiming illness or old age; wealthy Catholics arranged to have Mass celebrated in their homes by clandestine priests.12 But not all eluded the law. An example is Edmund Plowden (1518–85), a prominent English lawyer

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and minister of Parliament under Queen Mary. When questioned about his absence from services at the parish church, he first offered legal arguments, but when pressed said that he had some “scruple in conscience” about certain things in the law. His belief, said Plowden, must “precede his subscription”: A “grete impietie should be in hym if he should subscribe in full approval or belief of those things in which he was scrupulous in belief.” According to his testimony, it was not stubbornness or willfulness that drove his refusal; rather, he could not attend the official worship of the Church of England because he knew “in conscience . . . that the service nowe used is not that uniforme and Catholick service with all Christendome.” To act against his conscience would “dishonor God” and be “wicked and damnable to him.”13 Conscience was the property neither of Catholics nor of Protestants. When Catholics invoked conscience their Protestant judges understood what they meant. For example, in 1571 a bill concerning “church attendance” was placed before Parliament. Edward Aglionby (1520–91), a member of Parliament, translator, and scholar, spoke in favor of the provision that everyone, including the wealthy who had private chapels, should be required to attend the parish church. There should be “equality between the prince and the poor man,” he said. Attendance at church was a public duty, a way of displaying the unity and cohesion of society. But Aglionby drew a line at receiving Communion in celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. Hearing divine services of hymns, prayers, and sermon was one thing, but one should not “enforce consciences” to receive Communion. “The conscience of man is internal, invisible, and not in the power of the greatest monarch in the world, in no limits to be straitened, in no bonds to be contained.”14 Not all were so forbearing. Some Catholics thought their only course was to take up arms. In 1589 a group of nobles in northern England rebelled with the aim of deposing Elizabeth and installing Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, on the English throne. But the insurgents were no match for Elizabeth’s forces, and after several battles the revolt was crushed and the rebellious earls took refuge in Scotland. The uprising hardened Elizabeth’s feelings toward her Catholic subjects. Their place in English society was further compromised by the bull Regnans in

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excelsis (1570), issued by Pope Pius V shortly after the rebellion. This bull declared Elizabeth not only a heretic but a usurper of the crown of England. It absolved her Catholic subjects from “any oath of allegiance and from any type of duty in relation to lordship, fidelity and obedience.” It confirmed what many believed—that Catholics were not only religious dissenters but traitors—and led to a ratcheting-up of the state machinery of surveillance and repression. Catholics could obey the queen and face the fires of hell, or obey the pope and suffer temporal punishment. Wealthy Catholics took refuge in their homes, where they could practice their faith in private. But this practice required clergy, and in the 1570s a group of English Catholics organized by William Allen, a onetime fellow at Oriel College, Oxford, founded a seminary at Douai in northern France to train clergy for a mission to England.15 Among the students at Douai was Edmund Campion, an Englishman who had studied at St. John’s College, Oxford. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1573 and was ordained a few years later. In 1580 he returned to England disguised as a jewel merchant. He traveled about the country meeting with Catholics, celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, and teaching. Eventually the authorities caught up with him, and in the summer of 1581 he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In December of the same year he was led to the scaffold.16 In his travels in England Campion stayed in the homes of Lord William Vaux and his brother-in-law, Thomas Tresham. The authorities knew that Vaux and Tresham had shielded Campion, and warrants were issued for them to appear before Sir Walter Mildmay, the chancellor of the exchequer. When the brothers refused to answer Mildmay’s questions about Campion, they were imprisoned. In November Vaux was tried in the Star Chamber, an En­ glish court that sat in the royal palace of Westminster. He was accused of receiving the “renegate” (traitor) Campion into his home. Vaux said that his refusal to answer questions should not be taken as proof of disloyalty to the queen. If he could swear to what his inquisitors asked “without offending of my conscience grievously,” he would do so. But he could not, and he asked that the court not “impute it to contemptuous obstinancy, but rather to fear of offending my conscience.”17

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Tresham was charged with the same offense, and he too rested his appeal on the certainty of conscience. He demanded that the inquisitors give him specific times and places when and where they claimed he had been with Campion. After going round in circles with them, Tresham finally stated that at issue was not disloyalty to the queen—that is, treason—but his religious beliefs. It would be “a grievous sin to swear against the knowledge of my conscience.” Note the phrase “knowledge of my conscience,” reflecting the original sense of the term conscience. Then Tresham explained that his inquisitors were guilty of confounding the temporal and spiritual realms: “Some things be proper to God, others to Caesar, which we may not confound. But in this, it being no mere temporal demand but a matter in conscience and thereby concerneth my soul, I am to have such special regard in this my oath before your honours, as I may be able to make my account before the majesty of Almighty God at the dreadful day of judgment.”18 By this time the language of two realms, one spiritual, the other political, had become commonplace. But it is noteworthy to find it on the lips of a Catholic. Yet as Michel de l’HÔpital and Caritas Pirckheimer showed, such language had a place in Catholic discourse. And it could be used for different ends. In France it was employed by the politiques who were seeking a way to accommodate the Huguenots; Tresham used it to defend the practice of what had become a nonconformist religion in England.

Robert Persons As Thomas Tresham’s confession illustrated, the appeal to conscience was of a piece with arguments about the limits of temporal authority in spiritual matters. Those arguments may have had some force in other countries, but in England the Crown claimed sovereignty over both realms. So it is not surprising that during the reign of Elizabeth, and then during the reign of James I, for Catholics the debate centered on the pope’s role as supreme spiritual authority. Among Catholics the most compelling and controversial figure was a native Englishman, Robert Persons.19 Persons was born at Nether Stowey, Somersetshire, in 1546 and studied at Oxford University, where he took a baccalaureate degree.

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As a young man he was attracted to Calvinism, but in 1574 he left England to study medicine at Padua. On the way he stopped at Louvain, where he made the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola under the direction of the English Jesuit William Good. A year later Persons was received into the Society of Jesus. He moved on to Rome, where he heard lectures by Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez and became friends with Edmund Campion. As Persons moved more fully into the Catholic orbit, he began to envision the possibility of restoring Catholicism in England. In the summer of 1580 he had returned to England as an agent for the “English Mission,” and for a year the two traveled the country in disguise ministering to Catholics. After Campion was arrested and executed Persons continued his pastoral ministry for several months, then escaped to the continent. Persons was a fluent and prolific writer whom Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth-century British prime minister, praised for the “purity and pristine vigor” of his “vernacular diction.” His most popular work was The Christian Directory, subtitled The Christian Exercise, Appertaining to Resolution, a spiritual handbook on how to overcome sin and lead a holy life. It was wildly popular and went through forty editions in the decades after it was published. Two years after its appearance a Protestant version by Edmund Bunny was also a huge success and was reprinted sixteen times. The Catholic version remained in print until 1861; Evelyn Waugh called it a “text book of sturdy piety.”20 The Christian Directory was Persons’s most enduring work, but it is only one book in a large literary oeuvre. Many of his writings are apologies for Catholicism and quixotic musings on the restoration of a Catholic king to the English throne. In 1580, while still in England, Persons published a little book, A Brief Discours Containing Certayne Reasons Why Catholiques Refuse to Goe to Church, sometimes called simply Reasons for Refusal, under the pseudonym John Howlett. Addressing Queen Elizabeth, Persons asks why the “common received religion of universal Christendome” can so soon “be abandoned by the disfavor of any one countrye.” Why is it that many of your “most louing, faithful, and dutiful subiectes” are “now afflicted for their consciences”?21 Although some Protestant writers had defended the right of English

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citizens to resist unjust laws, the Catholic Church, says Persons, condemns these views. Christians should be obedient to princes, whether just or unjust, as the apostle Paul writes, for “conscience sake, even as unto God himself” (Romans 13:5). The recusancy laws mandated attendance at the local parish church but, says Persons, “hearing of Mass” is a matter of salvation. Wise princes do not “enforce men to actes against their conscience, especially in religion.” Even among the Turks, no man is “compelled to any act of their religion, excepte he renounce firste his owne.” After setting forth the chief matter of the treatise, Persons turns to a list of “reasons,” nine in all, why Catholics refuse to go to the parish church. To wit: attending Protestant services is harmful to their souls; it scandalizes faithful Catholics and weakens their resolve; it confuses people into thinking there is no difference between a Catholic and a “Schismtake.”22 Persons’s aim was to have Catholics stand up and be counted, and he recalls a story from the early days of the Church about a Christian soldier who refused to wear the “crown” (garland) in a military ceremony.23 When the emperor Septimius Severus died in 211, his sons made a gift of money to the army. In one camp the soldiers stepped forward wearing garlands to receive their award. But one, a Christian, appeared before the dais carrying the garland in his hands. When asked why he presented himself with head uncovered, he said that he was a Christian. He was brought before the prefect and executed for defiling Roman religion. In our day, writes Persons, Catholics cannot hide; if they bow the knee to the English Crown they publicly proclaim that there is no difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Though the ostensible purpose of the Brief Discours was to encourage Catholics to confess their faith publicly, the book was largely an apology for the truth of Catholicism. This book, Persons tells the reader, is from a “catholyke mynde [that is] from a man, which in his conscience is thoroughly perswaded, that onelye the Catholyke Romayne Relygyon is trueth, and that all other newe doctrynes and relygions, are false relygions.” Attending Protestant churches is a “schismatical act” that undermines Catholic solidarity and cuts off English Catholics from the whole body of Christians dispersed over the world.24

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After escaping from England in 1582, Persons moved to Rome, where he took part in a plan to convert James VI of Scotland to Catholicism, his mother’s religion, and bring about the reestablishment of Catholicism in England. He also joined with other Catholic leaders in promoting a Spanish invasion of England. Neither project succeeded, but even after the failure of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Persons was undaunted and wrote a little book titled Memorial for the Reformation of England.25 Though not published during his lifetime, it later became well known—and fiercely attacked. It was printed in 1690 by Edward Gee, an anti-Catholic Protestant divine, with a hostile introduction and commentary. When “the change of religion will happen”—what Persons called the “perfect Reformation”—God will send a “good Cath­ olick Prince” to sit on the English throne, and Parliament will begin anew “to build from the very foundation the external face of our Catholick Church.” Persons’s romantic vision imagined a time when there would be reconciliation among the various religious groups through a program of reeducation. Once again there would be one religion in England and religious affairs would be administered by a “Council of Reformation” under the direction of the sovereign.26 In his earlier work, seeking to win space for Catholicism, Persons had drawn a line between temporal authority and religious life. But when he offers a portrait of a restored Catholic kingdom, that line is very fine, even nonexistent. Persons assumes a moderate form of coercion will win people over to Catholicism. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by James VI, the son of Mary, queen of Scots and a descendant of Henry VII. Even at this late date, after more than forty years of Protestant rule, Persons still dreamed—and by this time it was most certainly a dream—that James would convert and reestablish Catholic rule in England. He made an appeal to the king but lacked the political savvy to outmaneuver a wily ruler who thought he had been invested with spiritual as well as temporal authority. In sermons at the time of his accession, James was celebrated as a godly prince, a new Constantine who would bring spiritual unity to the kingdom. In an early address to Parliament James outlined a vision of a “general Christian union in Religion,” grounded in Scripture and the teachings of the Church Fathers. James was not ripe for conversion to Catholicism.

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The Catholic cause was further damaged by the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, an effort by a group of Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament when the king was in attendance. A small band was able to gain access to a cellar under Parliament and store explosives there. When the plot was exposed, offering further evidence that Catholics were traitorous, the conspirators were executed. Even before the plot James had tightened the recusancy laws and was determined that Catholics living under his rule should “publish their honest fidelitie in Temporal things to their Soveraigne.”27 In 1606 Parliament passed another Oath of Allegiance, ruling that “the pope neither of himself nor by any authority of the Church or See of Rome . . . has any power to depose the king . . . or to authorize any foreign prince to invade him.” The oath required Catholics to “abhorre, detest and abiure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position, That Princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, may be deposed or murthered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever.”28 At issue was the potestas deponendi, the pope’s spiritual power to depose a heretical sovereign. Several months after the oath was adopted, Pope Paul V issued a “brief” condemning it as contrary to Catholic faith and forbidding Catholics to sign it. But some ignored his admonition, notably the “archpriest” George Blackwell, the putative head of the Catholic community in England. At the suggestion of the pope, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the great Catholic theologian, wrote a letter to Blackwell laying out arguments why a faithful Catholic must renounce the oath.29 The king resented Bellarmine’s presumption in addressing an English subject from his Olympian perch in Rome, and in response he wrote a little essay titled Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus (Triple Wedge for a Triple Knot). Nothing in the oath, he insisted, challenged the primacy of St. Peter; it had to do with civil obedience, not matters of faith. Persons thought the 0ath challenged fidelity to the pope as “supreme Pastour of the Catholicke Church,” and set forth his views in a pamphlet titled The Judgment of a Catholicke English-man. Concerning a Late Booke Set Forth, and Entitled: Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus, or, An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance.30 No Catholic can take “said Oath in truth of Conscience.” There is no violence, Persons wrote,

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like that “laid upon men’s consciences” when they are forced to “say or sweare any thing against their Conscience.” This truth does not apply only to Catholics. Were a Jew or a Turk forced to swear that there is a “blessed Trinity,” he would sin grievously.31 The king believed that under his rule, in contrast to that of Elizabeth, Catholics had been treated with mercy and clemency. But, asks Persons, what kind of clemency is it that does not allow “liberty of conscience”? “Why has the [king] not objected in like manner, that they expected the libertie of breathing, and using the common ayre, as well as Protestants. For that neither breathing, nor the use of common ayre, is more due unto them, or common to all, than ought to be libertie of Conscience to Christian men, whereby each one liveth to God, and to himselfe.” Wherever one travels in Europe, says Persons, in Germany, France, or the Low Countries, all, Protestant and Catholic, profess that their principal grief against the ruling authorities is that they do not recognize “liberty of conscience.”32 Persons brings forth a long line of authorities, from the Scriptures and from Christian writers of antiquity, beginning with the passage from Romans 13 (“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities”) quoted in his Reasons for Refusal. Obedience to the king or emperor is commanded by God, but when the king demands obeisance in spiritual matters, faithful Christians must resist. Persons tells the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were trusted servants of King Nebuchadnezzar but refused to eat the food he offered because it was prohibited by Jewish law (Daniel 3). He mentions the seven Maccabean brothers who were martyred under the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Maccabees 7). They did what the king commanded as long as it was not against “their Law and Conscience.”33 St. Augustine said that Christians should submit to lawful authority even if the ruler were a wicked person; only when the ruler orders them to worship idols must they claim a higher authority, drawing a clear distinction between “their eternal Lord and their temporal master.”34 Persons also quotes a passage from Tertullian’s Apology arguing that Christians should honor the emperor as second after God and obey the emperor in temporal affairs.35 In sum, the early Fathers were dutiful in temporal affairs but “not in matters concerning God, our religion, or conscience.”

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Robert Persons was a major player in the English Mission, and his tireless efforts over three decades did much to strengthen Catholic resistance to Protestant rule. Though Edmund Campion is better known and celebrated as a Catholic martyr, Persons is historically more significant. His many writings offer a unique perspective on the politics of religious practice in England at the end of the sixteenth century. He is a Catholic witness to the ubiquitous concept of liberty of conscience among all who were persecuted during the sixteenth century. Yet Persons stands apart from Protestant writers. As a Catholic, he continued to hold that the Church was a universal communion. The great sin of the English sovereigns was not simply that they suppressed the practice of Catholicism; they had separated England from Catholic unity, or, as he often puts it, from “Christendom.” Christendom was breaking up into territorial “churches” that had only loose unity with one another. This development was under way throughout Europe, and the English Reformation proved to be the more radical. For the establishment of a national Church was “the purest form of Reformation.”36 In the early seventeenth century, from a quite different perspective, separatist Puritans would mount a frontal attack on the alliance of throne and altar.

chapter eight

Seeking Faith’s Pure Shrine English Separatists

Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews or whatsoever. It appears not to earthly power to punish them in the least measure. —tho m a s h e lw y s

the puritans were as much a threat to King James’s religious policies as were the Catholics. Addressing Parliament, the king said: “I think it all one to lay down my crown to the pope as to a popular party of puritans.”1 By the time James came to the throne, the Puritans, who traced their history back to the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, were a powerful and influential presence in the country. In 1558, when Elizabeth succeeded her half sister, Mary Tudor, the Catholic queen, some imagined the pace of reform would quicken. But they swiftly became disillusioned. The sympathies of the new queen were Protestant, but Elizabeth was an unbending conservative with little sympathy for evangelical reform ideas. In a letter to Matthew Parker, the archbishop of Canterbury, she deplored the “vain love of singularity” of the nonconformists. God had given her authority, she wrote, to defend the “public peace” and “concord” and also the “truth of this his Church.” She wished that “all such diversities, 134

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varieties, and novelties” be repressed and “one manner of uniformity” be enforced throughout the realm that the people may “quietly honour and serve Almighty God in truth, concord, peace and quietness.”2 She expected “order and uniformity in all the external rites and ceremonies,” including the wearing of liturgical vestments, “the priest in surplice white,” as Shakespeare has it in his poem “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” To some this smacked of “popery.” Vestments may seem a trifling matter, but the wearing of the surplice (a long white garment with full sleeves worn over a black cassock) touched a matter of high principle, the relation between religious practice and royal authority. Two years later Parker published his Book of Advertisements, regulations dealing with preaching, worship, appointment of clergy, and the “outward apparel of persons ecclesiastical.” He met stiff opposition, and in London the book’s publication provoked some to separate publicly from the Church of England. The parish was the ligament of society and the framework for local government, with responsibility not only for public worship but also for keeping records, maintaining the roads, caring for the poor. Separation was illegal and absentees from the parish services were liable to a fine. Earlier some had met clandestinely to pray and read the Scriptures, but as the bishop of London put it, those opposed to the Advertisements “openly separated themselves from us.” They gather in private homes or in the fields and even on ships, ordaining their own ministers, who administer the sacraments and reject episcopal authority.3 Several generations later, when the separatists had become more numerous, the poet Thomas Traherne complained about empty churches across the land: “Lo, we Those blest abodes neglected see.”4 In 1570 the newly appointed Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603), gave a series of lectures on the Acts of the Apostles questioning the episcopal constitution of the Church of England. Removed from his professorship, he moved to Geneva, but his boldness cheered critics of Elizabeth’s rule. In 1572 a group of Puritans issued an Admonition to Parliament calling for abolition of the episcopacy and urged others to separate from the Church of England. Most notable was Robert Browne, who had been a student at Cambridge

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when Cartwright had given his lectures on the Acts of the Apostles. In 1581 Browne established an independent congregation in East Anglia and was promptly imprisoned for his illegal act. After being released, he migrated to the Netherlands with members of his congregation. If the Church of England would not reform according to the biblical pattern, it was, he thought, the obligation of believers to constitute a true church. The Lord will receive us, he wrote, if “we come out from among the wicked and separate ourselves.” The sovereign has no authority to lay down rules and regulations on how Christians should pray or worship; to compel people in matters of faith is to usurp the kingship of Christ.5 When James succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, the Puritans imagined he would be more receptive to their ideas. While he was on his way to England from Scotland to assume the throne, a group of Puritan leaders presented to him the Millenary Petition on reform of the Church. They requested that they be relieved of the “common burden of human rites and ceremonies,” by which they meant the sign of the cross, the surplice, and the like. James heard their case at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 and was initially sympathetic, but when the matter of the episcopacy was raised, James famously said, “No bishop, no king,” and let it be known that he was opposed to a Presbyterian form of church government.6 The conference did, however, prompt the king to commission a new translation of the Bible, what came to be known as the Authorized Version because it was authorized to be read in the churches. It is more widely known as the King James Version. It was not a neutral rendering of the biblical text but a conscious effort to displace the Geneva Bible, the Bible of English Protestants (as well as of Shakespeare and John Donne). James disliked the Geneva Bible because it savored “too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits.”7 To escape having to conform to the practices of the Church of England, in the winter of 1608 a group of English “separatists” set sail for the Netherlands.8 On board the ship was Thomas Helwys, an English barrister born into the Nottinghamshire gentry in 1575. Early in the new century he began to develop radical religious views and became friends with John Smyth, a Puritan preacher in Lincoln. In 1606 Smyth formally “separated” from the

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Church of England and Helwys followed him a year later. In Amsterdam, however, Smyth and Helwys drifted apart as Smyth developed ties with the Anabaptists and took the radical step of rebaptizing himself, an act that evoked a chorus of shock and horror among all: Puritan, separatist, and Anglican. Later he would renounce his rash gesture, but the two men differed on other theological matters. Smyth founded what is generally regarded as the first Baptist church, the Brethren of the Separation of the Second English Church at Amsterdam. Before his early death in 1612, he came increasingly under the influence of the Mennonites. In the meantime, Helwys set his mind on establishing a more conservative “separatist” church. Keenly aware that his fellow separatists were being persecuted in England while he was living abroad in safety, he returned with a small band of followers to London, where he founded the first Baptist church in England. Before departing Amsterdam, however, he arranged for the printing of a treatise entitled A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity.9

The Mystery of Iniquity Inside the cover of a copy of The Mystery of Iniquity Helwys inscribed a note to King James. “Hear, O king, and despise not the counsel of the poor, and let their complaints come before thee. The king is a mortal man and not God, therefore has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them, and to set spiritual lords over them.”10 It is not known whether the king read the book, but James scoffed at radicals who had the effrontery to instruct him on matters religious. In a proclamation early in his reign concerning the use of the Book of Common Prayer, he said: “It is the chiefest of all kingly duties . . . to settle affairs of religion.”11 Within months of his return to En­ gland, Helwys was arrested and confined to Newgate Prison in London, where he died later in the year. Helwys inhabited an apocalyptic universe of biblical imagery drawn from the book of Daniel, the Revelation of St. John, and some of the more vivid passages in the earliest letters of the apostle Paul. The title of his treatise comes from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians where he warns Christians that the “mystery of

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iniquity is already at work” (2:7) as prophesied in the book of Revelation: “And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads” (13:1ff.).12 This prophecy, writes Helwys, is fulfilled in “that Romish mystery of iniquity.”13 The first aim of The Mystery of Iniquity was to expose the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. This can be done, says Helwys, by comparing the present-day Roman Church with the Church the apostle Paul addressed in the Epistle to the Romans. Today the Romish Church is a “strange exaltation of power and pomp” that carries a “bloody sword.” Kings and princes bow down before the pope, who arrogates to himself power over souls, making “spiritual laws and decrees” that “bind men’s consciences.” Is this not the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by Christ (Matthew 25:14–15)? What we see with our eyes is certain proof that in our time there has been an “an utter desolation of Christ’s power and authority.”14 But Rome was not alone in despoiling Christ’s kingdom. According to the book of Revelation, there was “another beast which rose out of the earth.” This beast had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. “It exercises all the authority of the first beast . . . and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast” (Revelation 13:11ff.). The second beast is the Church of England, whose “archbishops and lord bishops do all the same things” as Rome. They “make laws, canons and decrees” and “bind men’s consciences to obey.” Helwys unrolls a catalogue of transgressions of the Church of England, whose bishops “force and compel men to submit” to its “conformity,” which is an image of the beast: “surplice, and [making the sign of the] cross, and churchings [rituals for a woman after giving birth], and burials and coop [prison], and chantings, and organs in your cathedrals.” The second beast demands that we follow the form of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer that legislates the order of services and the times when they shall be held: that is, it prescribes a liturgical calendar of festivals and holy days. Most offensively, it prescribes prayers rather than allow people to use their own words.15 Helwys’s critique is directed not only against the English Church; his target is also the king who appoints and supports the

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archbishops and lord bishops. He is, however, careful not to attack the authority of the king in other matters. The king, according to the New Testament, has lordship over “all the goods and bodies of his servants.” He calls James “our lord the king” who has been given “power and authority” to make ordinances and laws (1 Peter 2:13–14) that must be obeyed not only out of fear but also “for the sake of conscience” (Romans 13:5). Whoever resists the king resists the ordinance of God.16 The king must, however, bow before another king, Christ, who rules a kingdom in which the king of England is himself a subject. For Christ commanded that we should give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s (Matthew 22:21). The king’s earthly power cannot “rule over the kingdom and heritage of Christ.” If the king of England uses his power to force people to conform to his will in spiritual matters, he is no different from the king of Spain, or Queen Mary, the Catholic queen of England in mid-sixteenth century. “For an earthly sword is ordained of God only for an earthly power, and a spiritual sword for a spiritual power.” The king cannot, for example, force people to “eat the Lord’s Supper against their consciences.” Men should be free to “choose their religion themselves.” King Henry of En­ gland had freed his people from the bondage of the first beast, but King James holds us in bondage to another.17 By the early seventeenth century many of the ideas in The Mystery of Iniquity had passed through the minds of other writers. Helwys’s distinction of the two realms, one spiritual and the other political, is a distillation of arguments made in tracts written in the Netherlands during debates over “religious peace.” His language about forcing consciences echoes the writings of Sebastian Castellio. There is, however, an urgency about Helwys’s book. He was a member of a persecuted religious fellowship, what is sometimes called a “believer’s church.”18 In the language of Ernst Troeltsch, an early twentieth-century historian of Christianity, Helwys belonged to a “sect-type” community. Troeltsch contrasted such groups with the “church-type,” the form of Christianity that aspires to universality and seeks to bring everyone within range of its influence.19 Historically, the church-type has been closely allied with the state. By contrast, the sect-type exists alongside the established church

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and models itself on the churches of the New Testament. Its members aspire to inward perfection through a personal relation with Christ; accordingly, it sets down strict rules of admission and behavior. It eschews infant baptism and requires conversion before being accepted into membership. In Helwys’s words: the true baptism is “amendment of life for the remission of sins.”20 Helwys and other separatists had abandoned the medieval view of the Church as a universal corporate body including all baptized Christians; in its place they established intentional communities, gathered fellowships of true believers independent of traditional ecclesiastical offices such as the bishop and also of temporal authority. This new understanding of the Church was first evident in the early decades of the Reformation when Anabaptist groups elected their own religious leaders and established their own patterns of worship. As a member of a persecuted group, Helwys was keenly aware that there were others in England, most notably the Roman Catholics, who were struggling to survive in a society with a “Protestant” established Church. It is estimated that at the end of the sixteenth century 3 percent of the general population and 12 percent of the nobility remained Catholic. Even though Helwys had deep prejudices against Catholics, he believed that what he asked for his religious community must apply to other noncomformists, even to the Catholics. There can be no double standard. Helwys thought Catholic profession and practices were “dangerously opposite to the kingdom of Christ and to the king and state.” Nevertheless, he thought the king should not provoke evil against the “Romish religion.” He has no more power over their consciences than over ours, and “that is none at all.” If they are obedient subjects, and keep all human laws made by the king, he can “require no more.” For “men’s religion is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man.”21 More remarkably, Helwys believed that liberty of conscience had a bearing on Jews and Muslims as well as on Catholics and other dissenting Christians. In a far-reaching statement he said: “Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews or whatsoever. It appears not to earthly power to punish them in the least measure.”22 His is not a theoretical pronouncement. Jews had lived in England since the

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Norman conquest but had suffered repeated persecution; at the end of the thirteenth century they were expulsed from the country. During Helwys’s lifetime few Jews lived in the country, but he had firsthand contact with Jews in the Netherlands. Muslims were a different case.23 Christians in the West knew about the Muslim conquest of Constantinople, the great center of Byzantine Christianity, in 1453, and they had heard tales of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529. In Helwys’s day the English had commercial relations with the Ottoman Empire, and corsairs of the Muslim kingdoms in North Africa, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli bedeviled English ship captains, capturing their crews and demanding ransom. In England Muslims could be seen on the streets in cities and towns, in the courts and the residences of nobles. In learned circles scholars had taken an interest in Muslim culture and religion. A chair of Arabic was established at Oxford in 1636, and the first En­ glish translation of the Qur’an was published in 1649. In this setting the inclusion of Muslims in Helwys’s The Mystery of Iniquity is understandable, if unexpected. More to the point, it shows that Hel­ wys’s treatise was not simply a defense of the rights of Christian nonconformists. It rested on a theological understanding of the freedom and worth of all human beings and the conviction that religion, whether for a Christians, Jew, or Muslim, was a personal relation to God; hence the king does not “answer for it.” Helwys lacked the discipline of a well-schooled thinker, and his essay advances more by assertion and the emotional flamboyance of biblical imagery than by argument. But the main business never stands still, and his discussion of Catholicism and the inclusion of Jews and Muslims displays a compelling luminosity. If liberty of conscience is recognized for any, it must be recognized for all. Helwys had the clearness of mind to discern that as a matter of justice the ruling authorities must grant liberty of conscience no matter what faith people held.

Other Separatist Voices Helwys was not alone in putting forward a vigorous critique of the Church of England. In 1606 Leonard Busher, the son of a tradesman in Gloucestershire, emigrated from England to the

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Netherlands. He soon made contact with English “baptists,” but he affiliated with a different group from those of John Smyth and Thomas Helwys. In 1614 he published Religion’s Peace; or, A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, a combative defense of liberty of conscience coupled with a rejection of the idea of a national church. The essay was addressed directly to King James. “Your majesty and parliament do stand for the maintenance of the religion wherein you were born.” No one can attain the “one true religion of the gospel . . . merely by birth.” It can only be attained by a “new birth,” as Christ taught: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).24 True religion has nothing to do with with blood or place of natural birth; it requires a second birth. The separatists challenged deep-rooted assumptions about the Church of England. Richard Hooker (1554–1600), a learned Anglican theologian and churchman, had written that Englishmen were simultaneously members of the Church of England and of the commonwealth. “There is not,” he wrote, “any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England.”25 Citizens of a Christian nation constituted a Church; hence, the standards of belief and practice of all must be determined by the Church in collaboration with royal authority. Busher thought the idea of a national church abhorrent and contrary to the mind of Christ. Kings and bishops can no more command faith than they can command the wind. “As the wind bloweth where it listeth, so is every man that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).26 Only the Word of God, not fire or sword, can move the heart. “You may force men to church against their consciences, but they will believe as they did before.” The two realms must be kept separate. “Kings and magistrates are to rule temporal affairs by the swords of their temporal kingdoms, and bishops and ministers are to rule spiritual affairs by the word and Spirit of God, the sword of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, and not to intermeddle one with another’s authority, office and functions.”27 Busher also argued that liberty of conscience is not simply a matter of justice; freedom to confess one’s religion is a social good that will allow people to live in peace and security and give Christianity space to flourish. In the years since the onset of the Reformation,

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European society was increasingly pluralistic. In the Netherlands, where he lived, not only were there adherents of different Christian “confessions”; Jews and Muslims also lived among the Christians. If the English Crown demanded that only one religion be legal in the country, a toxin would poison society as people hid their beliefs out of fear of punishment. The king has nothing to fear from lawful “Jews and papists” who “write, dispute, confer and reason, print and publish” on matters touching on religion; he should fear instead those “tainted with treason.” Far from being a danger to the king, liberty of conscience would ensure a stable and peaceful society. The Turks in Constantinople do not compel Christians and Jews to follow Muhammad’s law, yet they live together peaceably.28 In his defense of freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice, Busher cites a passage from Eusebius’s Life of Constantine, a letter supposedly written by the emperor to the bishop of Rome. Busher is mistaken on that point, and he seems to have conflated several passages from Constantine found in the Life. Nevertheless, he was correct to invoke Constantine. The emperor had written that everyone should be allowed to follow the “persuasion of their conscience” for that will ensure “peace and tranquility.” It is one thing to “embrace religion willingly,” another “to be compelled through fear of punishment.”29 By the beginning of the seventeenth century, texts from Christian antiquity were part of the arsenal of champions of liberty of conscience.30 They demonstrated, as the introduction to Busher’s treatise put it, that “the plea for liberty of conscience is no new doctrine.”31 John Robinson, leader of the group that would sail on the Mayflower to Plymouth, cited Tertullian and Lactantius in his Observations Divine and Morall to show that the “ancient fathers . . . pleaded against all violence for Religion, true or false.” Tertullian had written that religion “is of humain right and natural libertie. . . . It is no propertie of Religion to compel to Religion, which ought to be taken up freely.” Lactantius argued that religion is attainable only by faith and the heart’s devotion. God would not be worshipped by the unwilling.32 John Murton (1585–1626), another separatist writer, also appealed to the authority of Christian antiquity. He had lived in the Netherlands for a short time, and on return to England was

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imprisoned because of his pamphlet, Persecution for Religion Judged and Condemned, and a larger work, A Most Humble Supplication of Many of the King’s Majesty’s Loyal Subjects.33 The central themes of his work are familiar: it is not within the power of the king to compel the heart. The conscience is subject only to the one Lord.34 “No mortal man may make a law to the conscience and force unto it by persecution” when faith is wanting. It was, however, not his ideas that make Murton noteworthy. While in the Netherlands he learned of a book published in Dutch by the Anabaptist scholar Pieter Twisck. Long, run-on titles were fashionable; here it is in full in translation: Religion’s Freedom: A Brief Chronological Description of the Freedom of Religion against the Coercion of Conscience, Drawn from Many Various Books from the Time of Christ to the Year 1609; from Which One Can See Clearly . . . How One Should Treat Heretics; That the Steel Sword of the Worldly Governments Does Not Extend over Conscience to the Compulsion of Belief.35 Twisck’s book is a lengthy compilation of Christian texts on religious freedom from antiquity to his day, and in his Humble Supplication Murton includes an abbreviated selection of Christian authorities. Murton’s work was read by Roger Williams and excerpted in his The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution.36

Roger Williams Roger Williams was born in 1603, educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and ordained in the Church of England. Already at Cambridge he was attracted to the Puritan cause. In 1629 he met with John Winthrop, the future governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; Thomas Hooker, a Puritan clergyman who would found the colony of Connecticut; and John Cotton, who would become a prominent leader of the church in Boston and later an adversary. Winthrop sailed to America in spring 1630, and Williams arrived a year later in February 1631. As an ardent Puritan (Winthrop called him a “godly minister”) and a man of learning, “though unsettled in judgment,” Williams was called as pastor to teach at the Boston church.37 But to everyone’s surprise and astonishment, he refused the invitation because, in his words, “he durst not officiate to an unseparated people.” From the very beginning of his days in the new land, Williams was a staunch advocate of “separation.”

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His precipitate refusal was repeated a few months later when he was called by the church in Salem. Initially he accepted the invitation, but he soon moved on. Next he headed to Plymouth, the first settlement in the region to form a “separatist” church. He remained there for a year, but in the summer of 1632 “he began to fall into some strange opinions . . . which caused some controversy between the church and him.”38 Williams was an equal opportunity irritant. In Plymouth he took an interest in the Native Americans and their rights to the lands the colonists had claimed by charter from the English Crown. Later he would write A Key to the Language of America, an introduction to the Indian languages spoken in the Narragansett Bay area. It was the first book written on the topic. After Plymouth, Williams returned to Salem to serve as assistant to the head pastor. But again he stirred up controversy, in part because of his attack on the validity of the colonial charter, but also for his separatist views. The leaders in Boston tried to reason with him to change his opinions, but Williams adamantly refused. In the summer of 1635 he was brought before the general court of the colony and sentenced to banishment back to England. Before the sheriff could execute the sentence, however, Williams fled south in the depth of winter and walked off into a “howling wilderness.” He was given shelter by a tribe of American Indians and eventually settled at the headwaters of Narragansett Bay on land purchased from the Indians. The new community was given the name Providence. In 1643 Williams returned to England to defend his colony against the claims of its neighbors in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In March 1644 he was able to secure a charter for Providence Plantation uniting the several settlements in the Narragansett Bay, later known as Rhode Island. In returning to England, however, Williams had more in mind than a charter for the new colony. He carried with him a letter of John Cotton written a decade earlier dealing with Williams’s banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Some of Williams’s friends, without his knowledge (or so he implausibly claims), published the letter under the title A Letter of Mr. John Cotton Teacher of the Church in Boston. It was followed shortly by Williams’s reply, Mr. Cotton’s Letter Printed, Examined and Answered.39

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The name of John Cotton, a revered Puritan clergyman, ensured that the letter and its reply would gain an immediate public hearing. At the time the Westminster Assembly of Divines had been convened to reform the Church of England, and toleration was the talk of the day. Cotton’s principal charge against Williams was that his separatist views were a menace to the church in the new land. The church is not, writes Cotton, the company of the pure; it is a “mixt fellowship.” Hypocrites as well as the godly are found in it, and separatism breeds division and further separation. Cotton defends a very ancient understanding of the church forged by Augustine in the heat of the conflict with the Donatists. Against their rigorism (the sacraments are dependent on the holiness of the priest), Augustine maintained that the Church was not the community of the righteous but a body composed of the good, bad, indifferent, and imperfect as well as the holy and virtuous. Williams, however, held that the true Church was composed only of “holy and godly persons” who practiced a “true worship free from ceremonies.”40 Only “visible saints” who felt stirrings of grace in their souls and could demonstrate this to the satisfaction of other saints were welcome. The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had consciously broken with the civil and ecclesiastical structures in En­ gland; in New England there were no bishops and no authority beyond the local congregation.41 Williams, however, thought they had not gone far enough; to his mind the Massachusetts Bay Colony had created another form of the established Church of En­ gland, “implicitly national,” in his phrase. In Massachusetts Bay civil and religious authority worked in tandem. Though Williams had been banished from the colony on religious grounds, he pointedly reminds Cotton that he was removed from the civil community, not excommunicated. This implied, says Williams, that “the Commonweale and the Church is yet but one,” and someone “banished from the one, must necessarily be banished from the other also.”42 Cotton and Williams were both influenced by John Calvin, but each seized on different aspects of Calvin’s thought. Cotton adopted Calvin’s view that civil officials were custodians of both tables of the Decalogue, charged to support the well-being of society as well as the outward worship of God. Williams fastened on

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Calvin’s distinction between the two realms. “Confounding them brings all the world into combustion,” he wrote. The office of the magistrate is “to preserve the civill State in civill peace and order” and has nothing to do with “worship and the consciences of men.”43 Strong language, this, and Williams does not shrink from its implications. The Church must be walled off from the world. The image of the wall comes from the prophet Isaiah, who pictures the “house of Israel” as a vineyard enclosed by a wall or hedge. Because of Israel’s faithlessness, God had broken down the wall separating the vineyard from the encroaching wilderness. In time it yielded only wild grapes (Isaiah 5:1–6). By mixing unregenerate and true believers and giving civil magistrates authority to compel people to “outward conformity,” wrote Williams, the wall no longer stands. Once the Church had been “separate from the world,” but now a gap has been opened “in the hedge or wall of separation between the Garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world.”44 Besides the enclosed vineyard Williams also employs another biblical figure, the golden lampstand or candlestick from the Revelation to John: “Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on the turning I saw seven golden lampstands [candlesticks], and in the midst of the lampstands one like the son of man” (Revelation 1:12–13). The candlestick had once enlightened the “National Church of the Jewes” through kings and prophets and sacrifices; but with the coming of Christ a spiritual kingdom has been established and the candlestick removed. God has set up the “Golden Candlesticks of particular churches.” If the garden is ever to be restored and protected, “it must of necessitie be walled in pecularily unto himselfe [Christ] from the world.” The holy must be separated from the unholy, the penitent from the impenitent, the godly from the ungodly. To “frame any other building” on such grounds “is no other than to raise the form of a square house upon the Keele of a Ship.”45

The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution The debate between Cotton and Williams was played out at great—in truth, interminable—length over the next several years. A few months after the initial exchange, Williams’s The Bloudy

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Tenent of Persecution began to be sold in the bookstalls in London. How it slipped by the censors is a mystery. Less than a month after it was published, the House of Commons ordered it to be burned: “That Mr. White do give Order for the publick Burning of one Williams his Books, intituled, &c. concerning the Tolerating of all Sorts of Religion.”46 By that time Williams was far out in the Atlantic on his way home, with the charter for Providence Plantation safely in hand. At the beginning of the Bloudy Tenent Williams provides a brief preface listing the principal arguments of the book. His aim, he writes, is to show that the Scriptures offer no support for the persecution of religious believers. In particular he will provide “Satisfactorie Answers” to the use of biblical texts by writers such as John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Cotton to advance the argument that civil states have authority to persecute dissenters. Civil states are “essentially Civil” and therefore cannot be judges of spiritual matters or of how people worship. It is the “will and command of God” that since the coming of Christ “a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships, bee granted to all men.” The sword is powerless in the face of religious differences; only the “Sword of God’s Spirit, the Word of God” can vanquish spiritual foes. “Uniformity of religion” in a civil state is contrary to the will of God, for it confounds civil and religious matters. This means Christians must “disclaime” any hopes for the conversion of Jews to Christ. Finally, true civility” and Christianity can flourish in a state that includes “divers and contrary consciences,” that is, different forms of belief and worship, whether Jew or Gentile.47 Roger Williams asserts that liberty of conscience applies equally to Jews, Muslims, and Catholics—indeed, to all men, not only to dissenting Christians. Recent studies have shown that Williams had personal contact with Muslims.48 His brother was a “Turkey-Merchant,” and on one his trips to the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps Izmir, Istanbul, or Aleppo, he had obtained a Bible purchased from a merchant in the Ottoman Empire. Williams also had done some study of Islam. In one writing he mentioned that Muhammad is considered the seal of the prophets, superseding Moses and Jesus. At the same time he was critical of Muslim beliefs

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and considered Muhammad an imposter who would be condemned to hell for misleading his followers. Yet he is does not budge from his central argument, that all men must be granted liberty of conscience. In his The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy he says that he has “impartially pleaded for the freedom of the consciences of the Papists themselves, the greatest enemies and persecutors . . . of the Saints and Truths of Jesus.” It is “their due and right,” as it is of all others. “Soul-freedom”—one of Williams’s terms for freedom of conscience—belongs to all men, for no one can believe and consent to what is imposed on him.49 After the preface and some introductory material, including an address to the two houses of Parliament, Williams inserts a selection of passages from the Scriptures, from early Christian writings, and a few recent writers, taken from John Murton’s Humble Supplication. Among the citations one finds a text from the fourthcentury Christian writer Hilary of Poitiers against persecution, a passage from Tertullian’s Ad Scapulam, quotations from the writings of Johannes Brenz, the Calvinist theologian, and words from Martin Luther. From the New Testament he includes the parable of the wheat and the tares, the words of Jesus rebuking his disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans, the saying that Caesar should be given that “which was his,” and Paul’s statement that the weapons of spiritual warfare are not carnal. Significantly, he quotes King Stephen of Poland, “I am King of Men, not of Consciences, a Commander of Bodies not of souls.”50 John Cotton was familiar with the excerpts included in The Bloudy Tenent, and before Williams begins the main body of his book he includes Cotton’s “answer” to “aforesaid arguments against persecution for cause of conscience.” Cotton agreed with Williams that “it is not lawful to persecute any for Conscience sake,” but he adds the phrase “rightly informed.” These two words, “rightly informed,” sum up the substance of the dispute between Williams and Cotton. For Cotton freedom of conscience was qualified by the content of one’s belief. Conscience was not a license to believe whatever one wished; its judgments could err, particularly in fundamental matters of faith. In that case a Christian magistrate had no choice but to discipline wayward members of the community. Only spiritual weapons can be used to admonish the wayward, but if an erring person is

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hard of heart and corrupts the souls of others, some form of coercion is legitimate. “Liberty of conscience,” writes Cotton, is to be granted to men that fear God as long as they do not “persist in Heresie, or turbulent Schisme.” Temporal power and religious authority were distinct, but there were limits to what could be tolerated in a Christian society. In support Cotton appeals to St. Augustine, to St. Bernard, and to John Calvin. Williams’s view was that only God can give laws “to the soul and conscience of man.”51 Williams begins his response to Cotton with an apocalyptic vision of the world as a “dungeon of darkness” where truth has been banished and the blood of those who bore witness to Christ cry out against the rulers of this world. But he moves swiftly to the first pillar of his argument: it is contrary to the New Testament and the teaching of the apostles that people should be “constrained to yield obedience to such doctrines and worships as are by men invented and appointed.” Thousands have been condemned and persecuted because civil states and commonweals compel their subjects to a “dissembled uniformitie.”52 Williams thought that the idea that rulers and governors should have civil power could be traced back to the reign of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. In the fourth century there was a falling away from the primitive Church—in Williams’s words, a “sleep of the Church.” Under Constantine “the great Mysterie of the Churches sleepe, the Gardens of Christs Churches turned into the Wildernesse of National Religion, and the World the most unchristian Christendom.”53 Constantine did more harm to Christ and his kingdom than the “raging fury” of the most bloody Neros, because he believed that the government should maintain the true religion with a “material sword.” In subjecting the Church to political rule he made the “garden of the Church and the field of the world to be one.” The result was the establishment of national churches in Catholic countries, in Lutheran countries, in all countries where a sword of steel and an arm of flesh have displaced the spiritual sword. How can true followers of Christ yield obedience to “doctrines” and “worships . . . by men invented and appointed?”54 In opposing a national Church, Williams wished not only to remove the vestiges of Catholicism in England or in the American colonies, he also wanted to take down historic Christendom. In his

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view that was possible only if civil governance and the things of religion were wholly separate. In the course of the book Williams offers several arguments to show that religion has no place in the ordering and governance of civil society. What binds people together is not faith but the “common-weale or safety” of the people in their “bodies and goods.” There is no need to “pull God and Christ, and Spirit out of Heaven” to serve the ends of government. All over the world people enjoy “civil peace and quiet” even though the name of Christ is not known.55 But his most original argument is theological, not political. Some claimed that there was a direct lineage from the kings of Israel to Christian kings. After Constantine’s reign other emperors (and later Christian kings) came to believe, says Williams, that they were “antitypes of the Kings of Iudah.” In more recent times Henry VIII bore the title Fidei Defensor and thought he had received his “diadem” from heaven. In the same way other kings and queens of England believed they received their office from God.56 The terms type and antitype refer to a way of interpreting the Bible found in the New Testament and employed widely in the early Church. The basic idea is that persons and events in the Old Testament (types) find their fulfillment in persons and events in the New Testament (antitypes). The passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea was a type of baptism, the rock from which the Israelites drank in the desert was a type of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1–6), the source of living water (John 7:38). By similar reasoning the kings of Israel were thought to be types of Christian kings. As Israelite kings—for example, David, Solomon, Hezekiah—were custodians of the religion of Israel, so Christian kings are charged to guard and promote the Christian faith and worship. But, says Williams, this political use of typology—Jewish kings as types of Christian kings—unravels the inner logic of typological interpretation. A type points to spiritual, not material, things. Which means that the kings of Israel cannot be types of actual kings; they can only signify a spiritual kingdom in which Christ is king. After the coming of Christ no civil ruler can be invested with spiritual power in the fashion of the kings of Israel.57 The second pillar of his argument is a distinctive understanding of the Church, or better, “churches.” Williams seldom uses the term

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in the singular. For him a church is a community of people who are “called out” (the meaning of the Greek term for church, ekklesia) from the world, as the Israelites were called out of Babylonia. The true form of a Church is a “church-covenant,” a group of people who share a common confession and come together to worship and serve God according to their understanding of the Scriptures. In other words, a “believer’s church.” A national church is not the “institution of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Williams models his view of the Church on the small communities depicted in the New Testament, particularly in the epistles of the apostle Paul. In our time, however, people have known only the “parish church,” which is made up of dead stones or timber. With the founding of separate churches, “Christ Jesus the Sun of righteousness” has been revealed so that his people can become a “company or Church of living stones” (1 Peter 2:9). Christ dissolved the national Church of the Jews and established a more spiritual way of worship with its own form of government. These churches are “separate from National, Provinciall, and Diocesan Churches,” and assemble as “particular Churches.” They do not seek temporal rule but a spiritual peace far different from the civil and human peace of the commonweal.58 Churches ask of the government only that it “permit liberty to the free and voluntary Spiritual meetings of their Subjects.” Where they gather, what they confess, and how they worship “must be left to the particular determination of the churches.” Though the magistrates “declare them to be heretical,” God’s people must enjoy “their liberty of conscience and not be forced.” The Word of the Lord is the only “rule, Light, and lantern.” People must be free to “assemble and practice what they believe even if it goes against the ordinances [religious regulations] of the magistrates.”59 Williams did not, however, view independent churches simply as private institutions. They were part of the public life of the city. This comes clear in a fascinating exchange with John Cotton over the interpretation of the passage from Tertullian’s Ad Scapulam. In his Humble Supplication Murton had cited Tertullian in the following translation: “It agreeth both with humane reason, and natural equity, that everyman worship God uncompelled, and believe what he will; for it neither hurteth nor profiteth any one another mans Religion and Beleefe: Neither beseemeth it any Religion to compel

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another to be of their Religion, which willingly and freely should be imbraced, and not by constraint; for as much as the offerings were required of those that freely and with good will offered, and not from the contrary.”60 The New England Puritans had extensive libraries that included many of the writings of the Church Fathers. John Cotton’s collection was one of the most extensive. His grandson Cotton Mather said that his grandfather’s “library was vast, and vast was his acquaintance with it; but although amongst his readings he had given a special room unto the fathers, and unto the school-men, yet at last he preferred one Calvin above them all.”61 It is likely that Cotton knew the passage from Tertullian at first hand. He explains that the purpose of Tertullian’s treatise was to restrain Scapula, the Roman governor of Africa, from persecuting Christians. Tertullian is correct, says Cotton, that religion cannot be compelled and that people should “be allowed to believe willingly, or not to believe at all.” That is why we do not compel the Indians to accept Christianity but allow them “to continue in their unbelief.” There are, however, limits to what can be permitted in a Christian society; open idolatry, for example, cannot be tolerated. This leads him to assert that when Tertullian says another man’s religion neither hurts nor profits any, “it must be understood of private worship and religion professed in private.”62 But the issue was precisely that—whether separate religious communities would be able to practice their faith publicly. Cotton believed that nonconformists’ religious practices threatened the peace and stability of society. This led him to an unexpected and idiosyncratic interpretation of the passage from Tertullian, that he is speaking of private worship. Williams countered that Tertullian “doth not speake of private, but of publike Worship and Religion.” A false religion within the Church will cause harm, but one practiced outside of the Church will do no more harm to the Church than “weedes in the Wildernesse hurt the enclosed Garden.” As for the commonweal, “a false Religion and Worship will not hurt the Civill State, in case the worshippers breake no civill Law.”63 Williams had the better of the argument. The term public does not appear in the passage from Tertullian—the word is Williams’s. He realized, as had others before him, that freedom of religion meant

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little if it did not permit religious communities to practice their faith openly. Williams’s experience in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and his debate with John Cotton led him to sweep away any vestiges of earlier conceptions of the relation of Christianity to political authority. He severed the link between the two tables of the law. The state is charged only with enforcing the commandments on morality of the second table and ensuring the well-being of society. In a sentence that recalls John Calvin and anticipates John Locke, Williams says that the “proper end of civil Government” is the “preservation of the peace and welfare of the state.”64 He also breaks with the historic conception of the Church as a corporate body bound together by offices, creeds, and rituals. Williams had eyes only for “particular churches.” Williams’s theological conception of churches as voluntary associations would alter the terms in which religious freedom would be discussed. If the Church is a national body that possesses universal divine truth, everyone must be bound by its teachings and practices, and only the state can enforce its mandates. If, however, churches are gathered communities of committed believers, only those who willingly confess the beliefs and submit to the discipline of a particular church are bound to its rule. They ask of the state only that they have the freedom to follow their distinctive ways of life without interference from civil authority.

chapter nine

Liberty Necessary unto Human Nature

Conscience is the Judgement that a man maketh of Himself and his Actions, with reference to the future Judgement of God. —john ow e n

by the mid-seventeenth century, the world in which the Reformation was born lived only in memory. In the sixteenth century the idea there could be two religions in one city was novel and disquieting, but the emergence of distinct “confessions,” Calvinist, Lutheran, Puritan, Baptist, and the like, created an environment in which religious division was the stuff of daily life. This was particularly true in England, which had the most diverse and contentious religious culture in Europe. On the continent in the territories within the Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Augsburg (1555) had made possible limited toleration for religious minorities in Lutheran and Catholic lands. This was not the case in England. With the accession of Charles I in 1625 to succeed his father James I, the divide between the established religion supported by the Crown and nonconformist parties, especially the Puritans, widened. From the beginning of his 155

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reign Charles set out on a “catholicizing” policy on religious matters by appointing William Laud (1573–1645) archbishop of Canterbury. Laud opposed the prevailing Calvinist theology and churchmanship of the Puritans with its emphasis on preaching and favored a solemn and stately liturgy enhanced with vestments and ceremonies. He required the wearing of the surplice, and made the altar, not the pulpit, the center of the church by moving it to the traditional place at the east end. Charles had inherited from his father the conviction that kings are ordained by God to rule and instinctively distrusted Parliament as a time-consuming nuisance that infringed on his prerogatives as king. In turn the Puritans, many of whom were members of Parliament, held him in suspicion. When he married Henrietta Maria, sister of King Louis XIII of France who practiced her Catholicism publicly, their fears were confirmed. In 1642 Parliament passed the Grand Remonstrance, a long list of political and religious grievances against the king. It also recommended the convocation of a group of learned clergy and members of Parliament, the Westminster Assembly of Divines, to consider what should be the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.1 The king was adamant that Parliament had no authority to make such demands of him and informed its members that it was his responsibility to protect the Church from schismatics and separatists.2 As the country moved headlong toward civil war, Oliver Cromwell, a member of Parliament and a fervent Puritan, took charge of the anti-Royalist forces. He built up a well-trained and disciplined fighting force that met with great success on the field of battle. He also became convinced that the Puritan cause would never succeed without removing the king. Shortly after the Grand Remonstrance Charles left London and moved about the country seeking haven among supporters and rallying his troops. But his forces were no match for Cromwell, and in late 1647 his only choice was to flee England in hope of making his way to France. He ended up on the Isle of Wight, an island in the English Channel, where the governor was loyal to Parliament. The next summer, at the battle of Preston, Cromwell decisively trounced the Royalist forces, and his army demanded that the king be put on trial as “the grand author of our troubles” and the cause of

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the bloodshed. On January 20, 1649, Charles was brought before a special high court of justice in Westminster Hall and charged with “high treason” and other crimes against the realm of England. Charles refused to recognize the legality of the court; a king, he said, “cannot be tried by any higher jurisdiction on earth.” Nevertheless, he was found guilty and executed on the morning of January 30, 1649. The next day John Owen, a Puritan divine, statesman, and educator, a man of wide learning and theological depth, was asked to preach the sermon before the Houses of Parliament.

John Owen John Owen was born in 1616 in Sadhampton, Oxfordshire, and received his BA at Oxford University in 1632 and his MA in 1635.3 Shortly after ordination he took up residence as chaplain in the homes of a series of several wealthy noblemen, a customary practice. In 1642 he moved to London where he published his first book, a critique of Arminianism, a Dutch movement favored by Archbishop Laud that opposed Calvinist theology. He accepted a position as rector in the village of Fordham in Essex where he married Mary Rook. She would give birth to ten children, though only a daughter survived. As a parish pastor Owen devoted himself to pastoral duties and wrote several spiritual works, among them The Duty of Pastors and People and The Principles of the Doctrine of Christ, which included a short catechism for children and a fuller one for adults. But like other churchmen, he was drawn into the political conflict. In 1648 after the siege of Colchester, a decisive battle between the Royalists and the Puritans led by Lord Fairfax, Owen was asked to preach the sermon on a day of thanksgiving for the Puritan success. His interpretation of the victory as a sign of divine protection commended him to the Puritan military leaders and led to an invitation to preach before members of Parliament the day after the execution of King Charles. In his sermon he condemned the House of Stuart for supporting a false religion and tyranny; when the sermon was published he appended a substantive—though torturously long and labyrinthine—essay, Discourse about Toleration and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate about Religion.4

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With the death of the king, the people of England looked out on a new religious as well as political landscape. Since the time of Elizabeth the Church of England had been a national body that maintained control of ecclesiastical affairs: bishops ordained the clergy, issued licenses to preach, oversaw the schools, and had jurisdiction over marriage. Civil and ecclesiastical power worked hand in hand to enforce religious uniformity, often by force. But the rise of confessional churches had weakened the national Church by giving people a religious identity independent of the historic Church. The consequence was an impassioned debate over the extent of civil interference in the affairs of religious societies. Owen feared that the zeal of the religious parties, of whatever stripe, to institute a new form of Church government was likely to lead to a godly authoritarianism that would be as much a threat to freedom as the evils of prelacy. The Presbyterians wanted an ecclesiastical polity made up of presbyters (lay elders and clergy); the independents believed in “gathered” churches, intentional communities free of the parish structure; the Royalists hoped for the restoration of an established Church. Each wanted to impose its way on others.5 So Owen wrote a treatise opposing nontoleration, which he called “the opinion of the many,” especially those “enjoying the countenance of authority,” who bring forward the example of kings of ancient Israel and biblical prohibitions against idolatry.6 They believe that unity was an essential mark of the Church and marshaled strong arguments against toleration based on scriptural texts, for example, Philippians 1:27: “Stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” Nowhere in the Scriptures, they said, did the saints of old tolerate error. Owen has nothing but scorn for their argument: it is willful ignorance, he wrote, to “inwrap heretics” within the range of idolatry. Idolatry in ancient Israel has no relation to the differences among Christian groups in England.7 Once he has dismissed the nontolerationist invocation of the Old Testament, he deftly shifts the discussion to the parallel between the rationale for persecution of dissenters offered by Christians in England and that of the ancient Romans, wryly observing that “the wisdom of punishing dissenters was not born with us.”

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The Romans had an ancient law that no one should have gods to himself unless they be publicly approved. As the Roman historian Dio Cassius put it: “Worship the divine power thyself according to the constitutions of thy country . . . and compel others to honour it.” Initially, wrote Owen, Christians did not use force to oppress heretics, but as the centuries passed they adopted Roman ways, for example, executing Jan Hus and in more recent times the killing of thousands of Protestants in the Netherlands by the Spanish general Duke D’Alva. “I thought it not amiss,” writes Owen, “to cautionate those enjoying truth and authority, that, if it be possible, they not walk in their steps and methods.”8 But Owen’s more substantive argument is theological: religious faith is a matter of inner conviction, not ritual gestures. In the early centuries Christian teachers, he wrote, put forth an understanding of liberty that is “more generous than is pleaded for today.” In his Apology Tertullian had written: let it not happen that “religious liberty” be taken away and “choice in divine matters” prohibited. And in his treatise Ad Scapulam he said it was a person’s ius humanum (human right) and potestas naturalis (natural capability) to worship whatever he wishes. “It is no part of religion to coerce religious practice.”9 These passages were of course familiar from the dossier of texts deployed by advocates of religious liberty. But Owen, who knew the ancient writings at first hand, adds another trenchant citation from Tertullian’s Apology. You must know, Tertullian tells his Roman readers, that “I have chosen to be a Christian,” and you can do nothing to harm me that I do not will. You can condemn me only if I choose to be condemned, that is, to confess my faith. “Anything you wish to do to me is dependent on my will, it is in my power [potestas] not yours.” Do not rejoice in the mistreatment of Christians; it is we who should rejoice, for “we much prefer to be condemned by you than apostasize from God.” This, says Owen, is why Lactantius said: “Who can put on me the necessity of believing what I do not believe, or to will what I do not believe.” And as a kind of grace note he mentions the ironic remark of Gregory the Great: beating a person to faith with stripes “is a new kind of preaching.” Owen does not develop the argument here, but these passages were fixed in his mind, and almost two decades later

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he will return to them in an astute exposition of freedom of conscience.10 Even under Christian rule, Owen observes, the authorities did not use corporeal means to punish dissenters. Constantine said that “liberty of worship is not to be denied; and therefore the Christians and others, should have liberty to keep the faith of their religion and heresy.”11 Of course Owen knew full well that this policy lasted but a short time; his aim in citing Constantine, however, was to show that the principles underlying freedom of choice in religion went back to the earliest days of Christianity. The “nontolerationists,” however, had a rebuttal ready at hand. Stability and prosperity of the state require uniformity in religion. “What is the issue of this discourse? Do you, then, leave everyone at liberty in the things of God? Hath the magistrate nothing to do in or about religion?”12 Roger Williams had answered that question in the affirmative: religion and temporal affairs have to be kept apart. But Williams was an outlier, and his Bloudy Tenent was burned by order of the House of Commons. Few could envision a commonwealth in which there was no common profession of faith. At this point Owen was among that company. He held to a modified form of the corpus Christianum and hoped that with the death of the king it would be possible to institute government supportive of Christian faith that nevertheless granted freedom for nonconformists to practice their form of Christianity. Owen does not, however, rule out coercion, which, under certain circumstances, could be a tool of persuasion. Even the great Augustine, he reminds his readers, called on Roman officials to quell violence against Catholic bishops by militant Donatists. His example shows there is a legitimate role for temporal rulers to put down civil unrest inflamed by religious zealotry. Nevertheless, says Owen, it is a “very strange and unlimited arbitrariness” for magistrates to control the lives and conditions of men. That is God’s prerogative, and the magistrates, like wise husbandmen, should allow the tares to grow among the wheat until the harvest. For Owen what counted was not what the magistrate “must do,” but what he “may not do.” The present disputes about “church society” between Presbyterians and independents cannot come under the magistrates’ “cognizance.”13 Still, there are boundaries. Magistrates cannot allow

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“erroneous worship,” superstition, crosses, pictures, and relics. As Constantine shut down pagan temples, so the magistrates can remove “outward monuments, papist images, the mosques of Turks, and the service books of prelates.” When I first read Owen’s treatise Discourse about Toleration, I was reminded of the famous scene in Giovanni Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard, a melancholy tale of changes advancing across Sicily during the Italian Risorgimento in the nineteenth century. At one point Tancredi, a young man, says to his uncle Prince Fabrizio, the principal character in the novel: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” In some ways this fits John Owen as seventeenth-century England coped with civil strife bred by religious differences. He wished to hold on to the good received from the past, a nation united by a common religion and respectful of tradition, yet he knew that English society was inescapably divided into “confessional” churches. The dream of one Church for all people had been shattered; so he opts for a noninstitutional form of Christianity defined by a core body of beliefs, for example, the Apostles’ Creed, but with independent churches holding differing views on church order, worship, and discipline. He had lost confidence in Christianity as an overarching institution that bound people together under a single jurisdiction. Christianity was now made up of “gathered” Churches, and religious freedom was the beneficiary of this new reality. In 1653 the army dissolved Parliament and drew up a new constitution, the Instrument of Government, appointing Cromwell the lord protector, who “cast the kingdom old / Into another mold,” as the contemporary poet Andrew Marvel had it.14 Cromwell thought freedom of conscience should be granted to “Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, and all,” thereby granting much greater freedom than under Charles.15 Noticeably absent are the Muslims, a significant minority in the country. The Instrument recognized Christianity as the public profession of the four nations comprising the commonwealth (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland), but did not establish a national church. Religious groups were allowed to practice what they believed and were assured of protection as long as they caused no public disturbance. No such freedom was extended to “Popery or Prelacy.”16

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Restoration of the Church of England But Cromwell died in 1658, and after his death the regime he established unraveled. The commander of the army in Scotland, General George Monck, marched south to London, to be met with an enthusiastic reception. Everyone knew that the monarchy would be reinstated. On May 8, 1660, a “convention parliament” declared Charles II king. Soon it was evident that Charles intended to restore the Church of England, uniformity of religion would be imposed, and the Book of Common Prayer made the basis of worship in the parishes. In 1662 the Act of Uniformity required all clergy in the Church to be ordained by bishops. The Conventicle Act of 1664 prohibited any meetings in private homes or elsewhere of more than five persons (other than the household). The return of the monarchy moved Owen decisively into the camp of the independents and his writings on toleration took a sharp turn. Dissent was the only choice, and he responded with several new essays. Some prominent churchmen had stepped up to defend the Church of England, most flamboyantly Samuel Parker, archdeacon at Canterbury, later bishop of Oxford, and an intransigent Royalist. His book had a predictably long title: A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, Wherein the Authority of the Civil Magistrate over the Consciences of Subjects in Matters of External Religion Is Asserted: The Mischiefs and Inconviences of Toleration and All Pretences in Behalf of Liberty of Conscience Are Fully Answered (1670). In his view, “indulgence and toleration” lead inevitably to anarchy. There is nothing so unruly, he wrote, as conscience; it is a potentially dangerous kind of special pleading. Parker had been a Puritan, but when Charles II came to power he turned against his friends, lacing his polemic with bitterness. Why, he wrote, should anyone listen to this “wild and Fanatique Rabble” that strips religion of its “outside”? The poet Andrew Marvell lampooned Parker as an ecclesiastical blusterer, a champion of intolerance whose extravagant prose made him a fit subject of ridicule. John Owen’s Truth and Innocence Vindicated (circa 1670) offered a substantive critique of Parker.17 Since the establishment of Christianity among the English, asserts Parker, the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction has belonged to the kings of England. The supreme magistrate was vested with the

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authority to “govern and conduct the consciences of subjects in affairs of religion.” He grants that the magistrate has no power over the “inward thoughts and persuasions of the mind,” but it is within his authority to determine the “outward worship” of the nation. “Liberty of conscience” has to do with mental judgments, not with practices. Owen was appalled. These “crude and undigested” notions give no relief in the matter before us—how one is to worship God. The Crown has no mandate to impose uniformity in ceremonies, forms of prayer, the order for the administration of sacr­a­ ments—in others words, public worship. One must obey God not only in one’s thoughts but in the “exercise of one’s outward worship.”18 The issue, as Owen saw it, was not the beliefs of individuals, but whether religious communities could worship God in accord with the Scriptures as they understood them. All would agree, he wrote, that one’s thoughts are “naturally free from outward compulsion.” That was not in dispute. But how can Parker imagine that what someone conceives to be his duty does not carry an obligation to act, as though conscience has to do only with one’s inner convictions? What kind of liberty is it that “a man may think, judge or conceive such or such a thing to be his duty” and have “no obligation put upon him to perform it”?19 Owen had read deeply in Thomas Aquinas and he revives arguments drawn from Aquinas to demolish Parker’s view of conscience.20 For Aquinas conscience is the “application of knowledge to some special act.” It is neither a habit—that is, an acquired disposition—nor a power—that is, a capability. Conscience “designates the act itself,” for it is an act of judgment that leads one to do something. For this reason conscience is said to prod or urge or bind.21 Owen puts it this way: “Conscience is the practical judgment that men make of themselves and their actions . . . with reference to the future judgment of God.” The territory of conscience is not confined to “man’s thoughts.” Were this true, “the whole nature and being of conscience . . . is utterly overthrown.” Conscience imposes an “antecedent obligation” to act according to the Word of God. Its commands “are of the same extent with the commands of God.” By mandating obedience to edicts that violate God’s laws, the magistrate invades God’s right of governing the souls of men.22

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In ancient times, wrote Owen, no one thought that matters of religion and the worship of God should be a “right of subjects.” But some of the ancients wrote that the worship of God is “of natural right and equity” and “that every one should worship God as he would himself.” Early Christian teachers—Tertullian, Origen, Arnobius, Lactantius—“openly pleaded for a Liberty in Religion, as founded in the Law of Nature,” and held that “faith” is inconsistent with “compulsion.”23 Though Owen mentions several writers, it is clear he has in mind the passage from Ad Scapulam 2. Tertullian’s words were “human right” (humanum ius) and “inborn capacity” (naturalis potestatis), and Owen conflates the two phrases to mean “natural right and equity.” But what is most striking is that he interprets Ad Scapulam 2 to be a statement about conscience. Tertullian had said nothing about conscience, but Owen takes the passage to mean that “liberty of conscience is a natural right.” This freedom, he wrote, is irrevocable, based not on the laws of society but on the “law of nature”; men cannot be “divested of it.”24 Tertullian’s Ad Scapulam had been cited by many writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But Owen’s deep knowledge of the Christian theological tradition and his sophisticated intelligence, as well as his immersion in the religious controversies of his day, allowed him to discern something in the passage that was not apparent to others. Most had highlighted the obvious sense of Tertullian’s words: religion cannot be coerced. But for Owen the terms ius and naturalis were too rich, too weighty, to be rendered only with the plain sense. He understood them not so much in light of what they may have meant, but what they had come to mean. This, of course, is what Christian theologians had been doing for centuries. Owen wished to show that liberty of conscience was a natural consequence of human freedom. Samuel Parker had said that Christian liberty was a privilege; Owen retorts: “Liberty is necessary unto human nature.”25

William Penn William Penn was born in 1644 to Sir William Penn, an admiral in the English navy, and Margaret Jasper, daughter of a Dutch merchant of Rotterdam. His father was a Presbyterian and his mother

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a Dutch Calvinist, but after the restoration of King Charles II to the English throne in 1660 his father was confirmed in the Church of England. Like others of his social class, William received his early schooling at home; when he reached eleven years he was enrolled in the Chigwell Academy. From there he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he probably received instruction in Greek from John Locke and came under the influence of John Owen, who was vice chancellor, effectively the administrator of the university.26 Oliver Cromwell was the chancellor. At Oxford Penn chafed under the rigid regulations requiring conformity to the Anglican rituals and made friends with nonconformist students who absented themselves from chapel. He later said he had “been a great Sufferer” for his religion at the university and was expelled in 1662. He returned home, and while he was there his father discovered a letter from Owen to his son. The elder Penn was much perturbed by what he read and told Samuel Pepys, the legendary diarist who chronicled the foibles of the age. According to Pepys, Penn’s father thought his son was “much perverted in his opinion” because of Owen and “that hath put Sir William so long off the hookes.”27 So he decided to send William abroad to France, where he adopted a French style of dress and attended the court of Louis XIV. During his stay in France he spent a year at the Huguenot school at Saumur as a student of Moses Amyraut, the Calvinist theologian. From Amyraut he gained a deep understanding of the theological basis of personal liberty and the integrity of the human person. He returned to England in 1664 and for a time studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, but in 1666 he sailed to Ireland to oversee his father’s estates at Shanagarry Castle in County Cork. One day while shopping in Cork he learned that the Society of Friends, the Quakers, were having a meeting in the city. Thomas Loe, a Quaker evangelist, was scheduled to speak. Once his father had invited Loe to speak at his family home; young William had been captivated by his person and his soul was awakened by Loe’s words. Again he was deeply affected by Loe and began to weep. “It was at this time,” Penn wrote later, “that the Lord visited me with a certain sound and a testimony of his eternal word.” That night he stayed in the home of one of the Friends and in the coming weeks and months

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began to follow the Quaker meetings. When Penn returned to England, Pepys said that “Mr. William Penn, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing.” His father could not understand how his son, trained to be a courtier or ambassador, could turn away from his family. But the young man felt a “serenity and peace of conscience” walking in the light. “ ’Twas in obedience to the manifestation of God in his own conscience,” he wrote.28 The Quaker movement had begun in the mid-1640s in En­ gland when George Fox, a shoemaker in Leicestershire, began to experience an inner light and stopped attending the parish church. His spiritual magnetism and moral earnestness attracted followers and the movement spread, but local authorities took pleasure in harassing Quakers. Once at a meeting in Ireland a soldier broke in to disrupt the Quakers while they prayed, and Penn picked him up by the collar and carried him out the door. As the son of a patrician, Penn was outraged at being treated so roughly. When the soldier returned with the mayor, Penn and a group of Quakers were arrested for being part of a “riotous and tumultuary assembly.”29 Seeing how well Penn was dressed, however, the mayor realized his mistake and quickly released him. In England the authorities were not so forgiving, especially when Penn began to write pamphlets in defense of the Quakers, branding all Christian “confessions” apostate. In one tract, Truth Exalted: To Princes, Priests, and People, he called the Catholic Church “that Romish whore who has corrupted the nations.” After the publication of another tract, The Sandy Foundation Shaken, he was arrested and confined to Newgate Prison. While there he wrote The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, a substantive discussion of religious liberty. Written by a member of a persecuted minority, the book is a plaintive and urgent personal cry “from a prisoner for conscience-sake.” He ends the introduction with the words Vincit qui patitur (Who suffers conquers). On the first page he calls attention to the “Cruel Sufferings,” “Nasty Prisons,” and “Confiscation of our Goods” that have been the lot of the Quakers in England.30 As an apologist for his religious society, the “poor despised Quakers,” Penn had as his aim winning for them the right to practice their form of religion freely. If our “Principles” are inconsistent

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with the civil government, let us have a hearing. If the allegations are proven, then will be the time to impose penalties. But we hold that there is nothing inconsistent in our way of life with the “En­ glish government”; indulging dissenters is not only “Christian and Rational, but Prudent also.” His defense is not, however, narrowly sectarian and in large measure moves across familiar terrain. But new laws, for example, the Conventicle Act that prohibited meetings in private houses of more than five persons, endangered the existence of groups like the Quakers. Such laws had made Penn into “a very hearty dissenter from the establish’t worship of these Nations” by restraining persons “from the free Exercise of their Consciences, in Matters of Religion.” How can free men promise to conform to a “National Religion” of which they are not “clearly persuaded”?31 Like Owen, Penn knew that liberty of conscience had to include public worship. He puts it this way: “By liberty of conscience we understand not only a meer Liberty of Mind, in believing or disbelieving this or that Principle or Doctrine, But the Exercise of our selves in a visible Way of Worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands.” Liberty of conscience meant that the Quakers would not be prohibited “from meeting together to perform those Religious Exercises which are according to our Faith and Perswasion.” Penn’s principal interest was the rights of religious communities.32 William Penn was not a theologian, yet his Great Case is deeply theological. Denial of liberty of conscience, he writes, is “an affront to God,” for it “invade[s] the divine prerogative, and Divest[s] the Almighty of a Right due to none beside himself.” If those in authority should try to restrain us from practicing what we believe, they usurp God’s authority and “invade his incommunicable Right of Government over Conscience.” Those who force men to believe what they do not will to believe enthrone “man as King over Conscience” and deprive God of his “just claim and privilege” as Creator.33 As the argument in the Great Case progresses, Penn moves from scriptural and theological arguments to arguments about the nature of political authority. The role of the state is to maintain an “External Order of Justice” within society, to adopt just laws that

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treat all men fairly. It is futile to punish people for religious behavior that is not criminal. Depriving someone of liberty perverts the order of Nature and robs a person of that which is an essential part of himself. “Force may make a Hypocrite: ’tis Faith grounded upon Knowledge and Consent that makes a Christian.” It is an invasion of justice for temporal authority to meddle in what belongs to another rule; the two must be kept separate, he writes, because the conscience is “an Inward Principle of the Divine Life by which men do Govern their actions.”34 Like others, Penn had access to a body of passages from “ancient and modern times.” The list of authors is similar to what is found in John Murton’s Humble Supplication, but it is more diverse. He calls Tertullian “that Learned and Judicious Apologist” and cites the key sentence from Ad Scapulam 2: “ ’Tis not the Property of Religion to Compel or Persecute for Religion.” Religion should be accepted for “her Self, not for Force.” He uses a passage from Lactantius to show that persuasion is a work of the understanding, which alone is able to bring people to religious conviction. If one defends one’s “Worship” with the sword, that is, “with blood,” writes Lactantius, religion “shall not thereby be defended but polluted.” But Penn also mentions John Wycliffe, the reformer, his contemporary Jeremy Taylor, and a person “too great to be named now” who said that “Liberty of Conscience is every Man’s natural Right.”35 Penn had a firm grasp of the theological truths undergirding religious freedom as they had been formulated over the centuries and proclaimed by a “whole cloud of Famous witneses.” At the head of the list of truths he placed “reverence due to God.” But as a Quaker he had a keener sense than others that religious freedom was more than a matter of respecting the rights of religious believers. It was also based on the “principle of reason” and the “Justice, Prudence, and Felicity of Government.” It is “our undoubted Right by the Law of God, of Nature, and of our own Country.” Without religious freedom there could be no just and equitable society. The nature of government, he wrote, lies “in a fair and equal retribution” of all citizens, even those whose religious practices are alien to the established religion.36 Only someone with William Penn’s experience could speak so authoritatively about religious freedom.

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John Locke John Locke was an older contemporary of William Penn, born twelve years earlier in 1632. He grew up in a Puritan home with Presbyterian sympathies, but was sent to Westminster School in London, a Royalist institution, where he was given a firm foundation in the classical languages. From there he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a student during the years John Owen was dean. Locke was “no very hard student” and found the lectures and scholastic debates tedious; he was said to prefer the company of witty friends and reading romances. He took the baccalaureate degree and after a short interlude returned to Oxford to begin work for the MA. By then his intellectual interests leaned to medicine, natural philosophy, and chemistry under the influence of Robert Boyle, sometimes considered the father of modern chemistry. Medicine and natural science would be lifelong interests, and each morning he dutifully took meteorological measurements.37 After receiving his master’s degree, he remained at the university as censor, that is, tutor, of moral philosophy, but was drawn into the great debate in England over the role of religion in public life. A colleague at Christ Church and a Westminster graduate, Henry Stubbe, had given him a copy of a book he had written, Defense of the Good Old Cause; or, A Discourse concerning the Rise and Extent of the Power of the Civil Magistrate in Reference to Spiritual Affairs.38 Like John Owen, the dean of the college, Stubbe opposed any imposition of religious practices by civil authorities, and it was said that all of Owen’s students, among whom was Locke, promised to defend “liberty of conscience.”39 Locke read the book “with infinite satisfaction,” but he had welcomed the restoration of the Church of England under Charles II and believed that civil order and social peace required religious uniformity. About the same time another colleague, Edward Bagshaw, wrote a pamphlet, The Great Question concerning Things Indifferent in Religion, dealing with whether the civil magistrate may lawfully impose the use of indifferent things (vestments, making the sign of the cross, kneeling for Communion) that were neither expressly commanded nor forbidden in Scriptures. In his view people should be free to follow their “inward consciences.”40

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Bagshaw’s book was being read widely, and Locke thought it called for rebuttal. Within six weeks he had written what came to be known as the First Tract on Government (1660).41 Locke claimed to take up his pen reluctantly, because he had often accused “the pens of Englishmen of as much guilt as their swords,” but thought recent events had shown that freedom in religious matters leads only to the “tyranny of religious rage” and anarchy.42 Men need order and authority, and if “free exercise of religion [is] allowed,” they “are apt to grow wanton and know not how to set bounds to their restless spirits.” Only a strong monarch with an “absolute command over all the actions of men” can form a bulwark to ensure peace and order.43 Locke reasoned that religion was a spiritual matter and outward observances were of secondary importance. “The great business of Christian religion lies in the heart,” not in external behavior. Tellingly, he cites the words of the psalmist: “All that God looks for in his worship . . . is the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart” (Psalms 51). God can be worshipped in “any place or posture,” and outward actions have nothing to do with the “substantial parts of religion.”44 Because conscience had to do with judgments and beliefs held in the mind, not outward observances, it mattered little whether uniform ceremonies were imposed from above.45 In a second tract, this one in Latin, he asserted that in its fundamental sense divine worship is about “actions of inner virtue,” love, reverence, and faith. But now he acknowledges that worship of God was more than an affair of interior devotion; it also consisted of public prayers, singing psalms, participation in the sacraments. These, however, God “in his great wisdom and beneficence” has relinquished to the “discretion of the magistrates.”46 The shift is significant, for it prepares the way for his mature view that a distinctive feature of religious communities is that they offer “public” worship to God. In 1665 Locke left the university to go abroad as secretary to Sir Walter Vane on an embassy to the elector of Brandenburg in Cleves. Though he spent only three months there, his stay in Germany got him to thinking it was possible for people to live together peacefully without religious uniformity. At Brandenburg Locke discovered a broad policy of toleration that included

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Lutherans, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics, though Anabaptists were not tolerated publicly. He was surprised at the good relations among the different confessions and the willingness of people to tolerate religious differences. They “quietly permit one another to choose their way to heaven,” and “I cannot observe any quarrels or animosities amongst them on account of religion.”47 On his return to England he was invited to take up residence in the home of Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury and founder of the Whig Party, as secretary, speechwriter, and personal physician. Shaftesbury was an advocate of the rights of dissenters and was skeptical about all forms of clerical authority. How much Locke’s thinking was influenced by his association with Shaftesbury is debated, but during this period he began to work on another tract on the religious question, An Essay concerning Toleration, which charted a new direction in his thinking.48 In his earlier writings he had stressed the breadth of the magistrate’s authority to impose religious uniformity; now he stresses its limits. Theological beliefs, what Locke calls speculative opinions, “have an absolute and universal right to toleration” because they do not “come within the magistrate’s cognizance.” They neither disturb the state nor inconvenience the neighbor. “Unlimited toleration” must be given to the “place time and manner of worshipping my god.” Public worship is “above the reach and extent of politics and government.” By extending toleration to observance, Locke restricts the jurisdiction of magistrates in religious matters. “The whole trust power and authority of the magistrate is vested in him for no other purpose, but to be made use of for the good, preservation and peace of men in that society over which he is set.”49 In 1675, for reasons of health, Locke sailed to the continent for an extended stay in southern France. On his return three and a half years later, he again joined Shaftesbury’s household. At the time Shaftesbury was suspected of being part of a plot against the king’s “absolute and arbitrary regime” and was imprisoned in the Tower of London, charged with high treason.50 Several months later he was released and fled to the Netherlands, but he died soon after arrival. At the time Locke was working on his Two Treatises on Government and he realized that his ideas, most notably that civil authority was based on the consent of the governed and that kingship

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was not divinely instituted, were politically explosive.51 Fearful that his chambers in Oxford would be searched, Locke “cunningly stole away from us,” a friend reported.52 Realizing it could become very uncomfortable for him, if not dangerous, if he remained in En­ gland, he made plans to flee to the Netherlands.

Letter concerning Toleration He landed in Rotterdam in September 1683 and over the next few years lived in various parts of the country. The first winter he occupied himself with medical studies, but he was also “much in my chamber alone” by the fire, reading or writing home to friends. When a close friend, Philip Von Limborch, asked him his views on toleration, Locke responded with a long essay entitled Epistola de Tolerantia. Written in Latin, it was addressed to a European audience, partly in response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV in October 1685.53 The letter was printed anonymously, translated into English by William Popple, and published in 1689 without Locke’s knowledge as A Letter concerning Toleration. For almost three hundred years only the English version was known; the Latin was not republished until 1961.54 Locke begins with a kind of homiletic admonition on the mutual toleration of Christians “in their different Professions of Religion.” Toleration, he writes, “is the chief Characteristical mark of the True Church.” Christians should never be destitute of “Charity, Meekness, and Good-will,” even to those who are not Christians. Listen to the words of the Savior: “The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them . . . but ye shall not be so” (Luke 22:25). How is it, then, that some among us prosecute others with “fire and sword”? And for what? Dissenting from ecclesiastical decisions or separating themselves from public worship? Love, not force, is the way of Christians, and nothing is more agreeable to the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” as well as to the “general reason of mankind” than toleration.55 Then he turns to the commanding conception that frames the entire discussion: the civil and religious realms must be kept distinct. “I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the Business of Civil Government from that of Religion, and to settle the just Bounds that lie between the one and the other.” If

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the two are not kept separate, there will be no end to the “controversies” that bedevil our society. The one realm has “a Concernment for the Interest of Mens Souls, and on the other side, a Care of the Commonwealth,” that is, life, liberty, health, money, lands, property, and the like. The magistrate’s charge extends only to temporal things such as peace and security; it can have nothing to do with the “Salvation of Souls.” Only when religion threatens the public good must the magistrate intervene.56 Locke’s description of the two realms is similar to what Calvin had written in his Institutes: man is under a twofold government; one sphere has to do with spiritual matters, “the life of the soul,” and the other with “outward behavior,” that is, order, safety, food, housing, the needs of the present life, laws that allow human beings to live together. “These two realms . . . are always to be viewed apart from each other.”57 Though Locke was raised in a Puritan home, there is no evidence that he had actually read Calvin.58 But the concept of the distinction between the ends of government and the ends of religion was widespread in the seventeenth century. Henry Care, a Whig dissenter, had this to say: each realm is “distinct from the other” and their respective claims must be confined within “their distinctive spheres . . . without encroaching upon the other.” Because religion is not the concern of civil government, there is no reason why all the subjects of the king must be “of one and the same religion.” There must be a “distinct sphere” of authority in which “a liberty for every man’s exercise of his religion according to the dictates of his conscience” is not restrained by any “human law.” The exercise of the power of natural and civil rulers is of one sort, that of ecclesiastics of another. “Each of these do best in their distinct kinds, when they keep a due Decorum within their respective bounds.”59 Another contemporary, Robert Ferguson, put things more pointedly. Toleration is “a right settled upon mankind antecedent to all civil government and human laws, having its foundation in the law of Nature, which no prince or state can legitimately violate and infringe.” Political authority is directed to “things of a civil and inferior nature” and has nothing to do with conscience or religious belief. “God has reserved the empire of conscience to himself.”60 Locke’s thinking on the ends of government and of religion moves along a well-trodden path.

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After discussing the distinction between the civil and spiritual spheres, Locke takes up the matter of belief and why religion cannot be governed by the same means used in other areas of society. “All the Life and Power of true Religion consists in the inward and full perswasion of the mind; and Faith is not Faith without believing.”61 Because faith is a firm adherence to God, “it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force.” Confiscation of one’s property, imprisonment, or torture cannot force men to change the “inward judgment” they have of things. Hence a magistrate is powerless to rule in spiritual matters. Concretely, this means he has no authority to establish “Articles of Faith, or Forms of Worship.” Spiritual matters and outward forms of worship require that they be “thoroughly believed by those that so profess and practice.” To do otherwise is to force people to “oppose the Dictates of their own consciences.” Only “light” and “evidence” are capable of changing the minds of men.62 In An Essay concerning Understanding, Locke explained that faith is a “settled and sure principle of assent and assurance” that leaves no room for doubt or hesitation.63 Its certainty has its origin in revelation; yet one must be sure that what is believed is indeed “divine revelation” and that we “understand it right.” Faith is a “firm assent of the mind,” but if someone believes without having good reason for his belief, he is easily seduced and may fall “in love with his own fancies.” Such a person neither seeks “truth” nor “pays . . . obedience to his Maker.” Without the firm hand of reason as guide, some are bewitched by the “extravagancy of enthusiasm,” asserting as biblical truth what are merely “opinions.”64 It was inevitable that the divisions among Christian groups in England on matters of belief and practice led some to label as “opinion” what others considered matters of faith. Jeremy Taylor, an older contemporary of Locke, had written a book, Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying, to show that it was unreasonable to persecute people who hold “differing opinions.” By opinions Taylor has in mind Christian teachings that go beyond the fundamental articles of faith found in the Scriptures and in the Apostles’ Creed. Religious opinions, says Taylor, must be “judged by human understanding upon the best grounds and information it can receive.” In matters of “prophesying,” by which he means religious teachings, we cannot

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impose our views on others, for these are “matters of conscience.” Now we “know in part,” he writes, citing the apostle Paul, and “see through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Because there is a “variety of human understandings,” no man should be too forward in pressing his views on others. By presenting faith as opinion, Taylor tends to empty faith of its transcendent dimension, a move Locke does not make; he is firm in asserting that faith is adherence to God and salvation.65 “Everyone should do what he in his Conscience is perswaded to be acceptable to the Almighty, on whose good pleasure and acceptance depends [one’s] eternal Happiness. For Obedience is due in the first place to God, and afterwards to the Laws.”66 What had roiled English society, however, was not the heretical beliefs of individuals but the public practice of “free” churches, independent communities of believers. So after setting forth the limits of civil government and the nature of religious belief, Locke turns to a discussion of churches. “Let us now consider what a Church is,” he says. “A Church then I take to be a voluntary Society of Men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the publick worshipping of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the Salvation of their Souls.”67 A church is an intentional society of active believers who freely join together with others to serve God. Freedom of religion, then, must include the freedom of religious societies to worship God as they see fit.68 “Public” worship does not encompass simply gathering for corporate prayer; it includes the believers’ right “to own to the world that they worship God” and by “Holiness of Life” draw others to their fellowship—that is, the freedom to engage in activities proper to a religious society, for example, education and works of mercy.69 In adopting the model of the “gathered” church, Locke abandons the traditional understanding of the Church as a corporate body extending across society. For him church is a local community, a “particular church”—he uses Roger Williams’s term—that is “free and spontaneous” with the right of making its own laws and ordering its life.70 Some had objected that such associations cannot be true churches, for they have neither bishops nor presbyters. To which Locke counters: show me where Christ has imposed such a law upon his Church. What he said was “Wheresoever two or three are

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gathered together in his Name, he will be in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). The consequences of this view of church are quite radical, and Locke does not shrink from drawing out the implications. There is no difference between the national Church and “separated congregations.” Even if a magistrate joins himself to “any Church,” the Church remains as it was before: “a free and voluntary society.”71 This was surprising language coming from someone who had held for decades a position at Oxford, a Royalist university, and had been closely associated with establishment figures. By embracing the idea of the church as a “voluntary” society, Locke aligns himself with the separatists. It would be strange, he writes, to think that men owe “their eternal Happiness or misery to the place of their nativity.” A church is a “thing absolutely separate and distinct from the Commonwealth.” Religion is neither territorial nor hereditary. “No body is born a member of any Church; otherwise the Religion of Parents would descend unto Children, by the same right of Inheritance as their temporal estates.”72 In a perceptive historical aside Locke explains that keeping the churches separate and distinct from the commonwealth is to the good of churches. The Church is more apt to be influenced by the court than the court by the church. The fortune of the Church in the fourth century under Arian emperors is well known, he writes. But closer to home, “our modern English history affords us fresh Examples” during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth: “How easily and smoothly the Clergy changed their Decrees, their Articles of Faith, their Form of Worship, everything according to the inclinations of those Kings and Queens.”73 It is of high significance, then, that Locke gave the churches a prominent role in his Letter concerning Toleration. From the beginning of the Reformation the nature of the Church shaped debates about religious freedom. Most of the new churches—Calvinist, Lutheran, Anglican—continued to hold that the Church was a national or territorial body aligned with civil authority. Hence the principle adopted at the Peace of Augsburg: Cuius regio, eius religio. But separatist thinkers pioneered the view that the “church” is a consensual community of committed believers. At first these religious associations were called “sects,” but by Locke’s day they were called churches, the nomenclature he uses. The idea that churches are voluntary

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associations had far-reaching implications for religious freedom: it explicitly recognized that there could be several churches within a Christian society, each with its distinctive presence. Locke’s Letter concerning Toleration aimed to show how the machinery of society can be managed to allow independent “churches” to practice their form of Christianity publicly. It is a political as well as a religious and philosophical treatise, concerned as much about the rights of religious communities as about the beliefs of individuals.74 To be sure, what he says about the freedom of churches rests on his understanding of the liberty of the individual conscience, but it runs against the spirit as well as the arguments of the Letter to take it primarily as a defense of the rights of individuals. Churches make it possible for human beings to do things that “cannot be done by each private man apart,” and religious societies should be free to offer public worship to God within a community whose life is ordered by a common discipline.75 There were, however, limits to what can be tolerated in society. For example, no opinions can be allowed by the magistrate that “manifestly undermine the Foundations of Society.” Locke puts the Catholics in this category; they arrogate to the pope the “power of deposing kings.” Catholics deliver themselves up “to the Protection and Service of another Prince.”76 Nor can atheists be welcomed, for they deny the “being of God. Promises, covenants, oaths, which are the bonds of humane society can have no hold upon an Atheist.”77 Locke discusses Quakers in this context because their associations were thought to be “nurseries of Factions and Seditions.” But he allows that they should be granted toleration: “liberty of conscience is everyman’s natural right.” This is the only time the phrase “natural right” appears in the Letter. In the original Latin version, however, that is not what Locke wrote. He used the Latin word tolerandi. “These accusations [against the Quakers] would cease at once if a law were passed granting tolerance to those to whom it is due . . . and that nobody should be coerced in matters of religion by any law or force.”78 It is possible that Popple, Locke’s translator, assumed that “toleration” meant “natural right” and translated the sentence accordingly. The phrase is consonant with ideas developed in Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, and may offer a key to the interpretation of the Letter.79

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Something similar also occurs in Popple’s translation of a passage that deals with pagans, Muslims, and Jews. In the original Latin Locke wrote: “To speak the truth . . . neither Pagan nor Mahometan nor Jew should be excluded from the commonwealth because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing.” Popple inserts the phrase “civil rights” into the sentence: “Neither Pagan, nor Muhametan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his religion.”80 Locke seems to be reflecting the thinking of his youthful friend Edward Bagshaw, whose view of liberty of conscience he had criticized in his First Tract on Government. Bagshaw had written: “ ’Tis agreed that a Christian magistrate cannot force his religion on a Jew or on a Mahomedan, therefore much less can he abridge his fellow-Christian in things of lesser moment.”81 By the time Locke wrote the Letter concerning Toleration he had come around to Bagshaw’s view, and also to that of Helwys and Williams: liberty of conscience is no respecter of religion. In the final pages of the Letter Locke says that every man should enjoy the “same Rights that are granted to others.” If it is permitted to worship God in the “Roman manner,” why not in the “Geneva Form also?” If it is lawful for someone to kneel or clothe himself in white or black in his house, it should not be unlawful to “eat Bread, drink Wine, or wash with Water in the Church.” Whatever is left free by the laws of society should be left free to every church when it gathers for worship. That “unhappy Agreement” between the “Church and State” must come to an end. In its place each realm should keep within its own bounds, the one attending to the “Worldly Welfare of the Commonwealth,” the other to the “Salvation of souls.” Only then will there be no discord because of religion. Locke ends with a prayer: “God Almighty grant, I beseech him, that the Gospel of Peace may at length be preached,” and that civil magistrates grow “more careful to conform their own Consciences to the Law of God, and less solicitous about the binding of other mens Consciences by Humane Laws.”82 “Locke’s work on toleration,” writes Andrew Murphy, editor of the political writings of William Penn, “is significant not because it advances new or previously unheard-of arguments for toleration, but

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because it so concisely synthesizes nearly a century of ongoing debate on this vexing problem.”83 This is a fair assessment, though one might add that the debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were informed by theological ideas that reached deep into the Christian past. Locke stands in the same intellectual tradition that formed his contemporaries John Owen and William Penn. Yet he differs from them in one notable respect. Locke does not quote Christian “authorities.” In his essay Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate about Religion, Owen drew extensively on earlier Christian writers such as Tertullian, Lactantius, and Gregory the Great. William Penn did the same in his The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience. But these names make no appearance in Locke’s Letter. He does quote some passages from the Scriptures, and at one point he uses a saying of Jesus to support the view that a church need not have bishops or presbyters to be a genuine church. The Church Fathers and later Christian thinkers, however, are absent. And yet, there are places where a careful reader may wonder whether words from an early Christian writer lie below the surface. Toward the end of the Letter Locke gives an example of the limitation of the magistrate’s authority. He cannot forbid the preaching of any “speculative opinions” in any church. To wit: if a Roman Catholic believes that bread on the altar is the body of Christ, and someone else says it is mere bread, “he does no injury thereby to his Neighbour.” This sentence reads like a paraphrase of what Tertullian had written in Ad Scapulam: “The religious practice of one person neither harms nor helps another.” The similarity may be coincidental, but it is likely Locke knew the original. Locke’s ideas on religious freedom cannot be understood without reference to Christianity. The Letter concerning Toleration is, however, the work of a philosopher informed by Christian thinking, not a theological treatise. No doubt that is one reason it came to be held in such high regard in the generations after Locke’s death. In his hands ideas first advanced by Christian thinkers came to be seen as reasonable without reference to their origins.

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f the many persons who make an appearance in this book, as I looked back, one who stands out is Thomas Helwys, the English Baptist, whose Mystery of Iniquity was a vigorous critique of the alliance of throne and altar in seventeenth-century England. He wished to show that the Church of England was as evil as the Church of Rome, because its bishops and archbishops make laws and decrees that bind men’s consciences. In the midst of arguments against England’s national Church, however, he momentarily steps back to assert that the freedom he was seeking for his community should be granted to all, no matter what their beliefs. He thought that Roman Catholics were idolatrous, but nevertheless the Roman religion should not be suppressed. Kings have no more authority over Catholics’ consciences than over others’. But Helwys goes further: liberty of conscience was also a right of Jews and Muslims. “Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews or whatsoever. It appears not to earthly power to punish them in the least measure.” Helwys’s claim that Catholics, Muslims, and Jews should, like nonconformist Christians, have the right to practice their religion freely was remarkable. In the seventeenth century even prominent defenders of religious liberty like John Milton and John Locke were not willing to grant liberty of conscience to all, and in particular not to Catholics. Helwys had the clearness of mind to discern that liberty of conscience was a natural endowment, not a concession by the 180

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government. He understood with exemplary theological lucidity the reasoning that supported freedom of conscience: religious faith is a free act, and political authorities have no jurisdiction over matters of conscience. Only God has imperium over the soul. Some defenders of liberty of conscience had set limits on how far toleration could be extended. Helwys wipes away any qualifications. Liberty of conscience means freedom of religion for all. Though he does not use the phrase “natural right,” that is the burden of his argument. If Thomas Helwys stands out for his perspicacity, the most memorable passage cited in the book is what a Frenchman wrote to a friend in the mid-sixteenth century: “Would you have ever thought in your youth,” he wrote, “that you would see something so extraordinary that two different religions would be practiced in the same city, and even in the capital of France?” His astonishment is understandable. For over a thousand years, the institutions, beliefs, rituals, and calendar of Catholic Christianity gave form to religious life in Western countries and to some regions in the nearer East, Poland, for example. The shock of having friends and neighbors adopt a different form of Christianity gave rise to a protracted debate about the nature of religion and its relation to public life. It is often thought that religious freedom has to do with the rights of individuals, and that is true. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries what vexed religious and political leaders were the rights of dissenting communities. Of course, many individuals were persecuted for their beliefs, the most famous being Michael Servetus, who was executed by the syndics of Geneva. But the presence of independent religious associations in cities and towns was of a different order altogether. By refusing to participate in the customary rituals, they offended the piety of the people and fractured the unity of society. The situation was particularly acute in France, where the growth of Huguenot churches challenged the ancient axiom “One faith, one law, one king.” Michel de l’HÔpital, the chancellor of France, had struggled to implement a policy to keep peace in the country, but he finally decided the only way forward was to remove the government from oversight of religious affairs. As chancellor, it was not his charge to make judgments about matters of religion. The task of the government was to maintain the republic, not to maintain religion. The principle that had guided

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French society for centuries, that the king was a defender of the Church, had to be modified and a way found for the two religions, Catholicism and Protestantism, to coexist in peace. Most were unpersuaded and resisted giving up the traditional belief that the Church and society were coextensive. But l’HÔpital had a point and others had made a similar argument. Martin Luther spoke of “two kingdoms,” one temporal and the other spiritual, and John Calvin had written that man is under a twofold government, one concerned with piety and duty toward God, the other with safety, law, and the things of this life. In different forms the distinction between the purposes of civil society and the ends of religion provided the intellectual framework that eventually made freedom of religion acceptable. Within society there must be a sphere in which men can exercise their conscience without the intrusion of government. Of no less importance in the rise of religious freedom was the emergence of a new understanding of “church.” In the Middle Ages no one chose to be a Christian. One entered the Church by baptism as an infant, and membership in the Church was coterminous with membership in the civic community. In the sixteenth century Thomas Hooker could say there is no one who is a member of the Church of England who is not also a member of the commonwealth, and no one is a member of the commonwealth who is not a member of the Church of England. That claim could not be sustained in the seventeenth century. Church membership had become a matter of choice. As a consequence, churches came to be understood as voluntary associations composed of believers who held the same “faith.” Inevitably they began to be called by names that reflected their unique identity: Presbyterian, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Quaker, Church of England, and the like. If the national Church is a voluntary society like other churches, only those who choose to belong are bound by its discipline. Herbert Butterfield, the English historian, once argued that toleration of different forms of Christianity arose out of the exhaustion brought about by the conflicts of the Reformation era. Only when it was evident there could be no settlement of religious differences did the possibility of political solutions come into view.1 But this gets things backward. Any account of the rise of religious

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freedom must give a large place to the spiritual passion and intellectual energy of Christians. Men and women of faith knew, as Tertullian had written in the third century, that religion cannot be imposed from without. The events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a catechesis on the nature of faith. God can be honored only if one gives something from within. That conviction, embodied in the lives of those who were persecuted and given voice in the writings of their champions, taught others there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God.

Epilogue

Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. —tho m a s p a i n e

in colonial virginia in May 1771, an Anglican clergyman on horseback broke up a Baptist camp meeting in Caroline County. He ran a horsewhip into the mouth of the preacher, and with the help of the local sheriff dragged him into a field and flogged him. A year later a large group of Separate Baptists held a general convention at Blue Run Church in Orange County, a few miles from the home of James Madison.1 It was the largest crowd ever assembled in Virginia—some four to five thousand—and Madison certainly knew of the gathering. He also had firsthand knowledge of the persecution of Baptists close to his home. In a letter to his college friend William Bradford he mentioned that in neighboring Culpeper Country five or six “well-meaning men” were in jail “for publishing their religious sentiments.” Angered by the persecutions, he beseeched Bradford “to pity me and pray for Liberty of Conscience to revive among us.”2

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The Great Awakening had burst upon the American colonies in the 1730s and quickly spread to the South. By the 1750s Baptists from the North were preaching revivals in Anglican Virginia, and thousands responded to the call for inner conversion. In Virginia, however, religious affairs were governed by the English Toleration Act of 1689, which granted freedom of worship to nonconformists only under certain conditions. Regular attendance at church services was mandated, and Presbyterians and Baptists were fined if they absented themselves. Anglican clergy had the exclusive right to consecrate marriages, and vestries of the local churches collected taxes to support the clergy and maintain the parish church. In the 1760s religious dissenters (from Anglicanism) had moved into the Piedmont east of the Blue Ridge. As their numbers mounted, it became apparent that the growth of independent Churches was not a passing phenomenon. Their presence led to a serious debate in the colony on religious liberty. In 1774, Madison was elected (with his father) to the Orange County Committee, the effective government of the county. He was on the way to becoming an actor, not just an observer, of events. In the spring of 1776 he was chosen as delegate from Orange County to a revolutionary convention to be held in Williamsburg. Many thought the time had come for Virginia to declare formally that the Old Dominion was not ruled by Britain and to give shape to the new government. The convention also established a committee to prepare a “declaration of rights” that included Patrick Henry, George Mason, and the very junior James Madison. He was twentyfour years old. Though he had a minor role on the committee, when the article on religion came up he was stirred to action. The original draft of the article, written by George Mason, read as follows: “That as Religion, or the Duty which we owe to our divine and omnipotent Creator, and the Manner of discharging it, can be governed only by Reason and Conviction, not by Force or Violence, and therefore that all Men should enjoy the fullest Toleration in the exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”3 Madison was dissatisfied with the wording of the text and wrote another draft with a significant alteration: he struck out the word toleration and in its place wrote that “all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of religion according to the

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dictates of conscience.” By eliminating the offending word toleration and adding entitled, Madison strengthened the phrase “free exercise” to make liberty of conscience a right, not a favor bestowed by the government. Late in life Madison explained that he had proposed the change with the particular view of expressing “an absolute and equal right of all to the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.”4 In the spring of 1784, some Anglican politicians proposed a bill to support “teachers of the Christian religion by a general tax.” Their champion was Patrick Henry. The idea was to provide funds for all religions in Virginia with monies collected by a statewide tax. Virginians were given the choice to which “society of Christians” the money was to be paid. In effect the bill reintroduced a modified establishment of religion that included other Christian denominations besides the Anglicans.5 Madison vigorously opposed Henry, arguing, on principle, that any form of regulation of spiritual matters by the state compromised the natural right of liberty of conscience. To build support for opposition to Henry’s proposal Madison agreed to write Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessment. George Mason had it printed in Alexandria and distributed throughout the state. Madison wrote that it is a fundamental and undeniable truth “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” The religion of every man “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.” The duty to render homage to God “is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.” The magistrate has no jurisdiction over religion, for religion is “wholly exempt from the cognizance” of civil authority.6 Madison had studied under John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian clergyman and president of the College of New Jersey, the center of the English dissenting tradition in North America.7 He had read English writers such as John Milton, Adam Ferguson, Joseph Priestley, Algernon Sidney and, of course, John Locke. At college he read Locke’s Two Treatises on Government and heard President Witherspoon discuss Locke’s ideas in his lectures on moral philosophy.8 Later he read An Essay on Toleration written in 1783 by

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Philip Furneaux (1726–83), a minister of several independent congregations in England and a very public voice on behalf of the rights of nonconformists.9 For Furneaux and for many others, John Locke was the canonical authority on religious liberty. Because of his Letter concerning Toleration, wrote Furneaux, “religious liberty” has been “generally received among us.” To every “attentive mind,” it carries an “irresistible conviction.” In the years since his letter was written, the “same doctrine” had been presented by other writers and its ideas embraced. Furneaux highlights two themes: the nature of religion and the ends of civil government. Of the first he says that religion is a “concern between God and a man’s own conscience” arising out of an “inward conviction.” The principle of all true religion is “obedience to the authority of God.” Of the second he says that religion is not part of the social contract; it is subject only to the “universal Sovereign and Judge” and should enjoy “absolute liberty.” God has not given the magistrate, “directly or indirectly,” authority over the “consciences of men.” The “free protection and exercise of religion” is a “right essential to our nature.”10 Furneaux and Madison, each in his own way and in different countries, drew on a common fund of ideas circulating in eighteenth-century England and colonial America. These ideas did not have their origin in the eighteenth century, nor in the writings of John Locke. They were part of an older inheritance. Neither Madison nor Furneaux use explicitly Christian language, and their intellectual horizon was shaped by the Enlightenment. Yet the provenance of their thinking is unmistakable. It was early Christian teachers who first set forth ideas of the freedom of the human person in matters of religion; it was Christian thinkers who contended that conscience must be obedient only to God; and it was the dualism of political and spiritual authority in Christian history that led to the idea that civil government and religious beliefs must be kept separate. The process by which the meditations of the past become the certainties of the present is long and circuitous. But by the eighteenth century ideas on religious liberty advanced by earlier thinkers had become the property of all, “consonant to reason” as well as “agreeable to humanity,” as Furneaux wrote. Liberty of religion belongs to us as “reasonable creatures.”

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Appendix Thomas Jefferson and Tertullian

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n his notes on the State of Virginia, query XVII, “The Different Religions Received into That State?” Thomas Jefferson discusses the history and present state of religions practiced in colonial Virginia. Anglicans were in possession of the country for a century, he wrote, and when other opinions began to “creep in,” the laws weighed heavily on them. He briefly surveys Virginia laws on heresy, in particular one from the Virginia Assembly in 1705 on punishments for persons who deny the existence of God or the doctrine of the Trinity. Such laws, says Jefferson, are indications of the “religious slavery” under which people have lived. They presume that “operations of the mind” as well as “acts of the body” are subject to coercion by law. Rulers can have authority, says Jefferson, only over those “natural rights” that have been submitted to them. “The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.” In matters of conscience we are answerable only to God. “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Jefferson’s personal copy of the Notes is now held in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. At the bottom of the page where Jefferson says that one 189

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person’s religion does not harm another, he had written in Latin the passage from Tertullian and identified it as Ad Scapulam 2: “Tamen humani iuris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere; nec alii obest aut prodest alterius religio. Sed nec religionis est cogere religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat, non vi, cum et hostiae ab animo libenti expostulentur” (It is only just and a privilege inherent in human nature that every person should be able to worship according to his own convictions. For one person’s religion neither harms nor hurts another. Coercion has no place in religious devotion, for it is by free choice not coercion that we should be led to religion. Offering a sacrifice must spring from a willing mind; it cannot be forced).1 It is unlikely Jefferson knew the passage from Tertullian when he wrote the Notes. He probably learned about it years later, though from whom and when is not known. But after he learned of it, the words became fixed in his mind. In July 1814 Jefferson wrote to a friend, Louis H. Girardin, who had prepared a catalogue of books he was selling from his library.2 Jefferson was interested in several volumes: Tertullian, Pierre Charron, Joseph Virey, Thomas Simpson, and a modern Greek-Italian dictionary. The title page of the Tertullian volume read: Q. Septimii Florentis tertulliani, Apologeticus et ad Scapulam Liber (Cambridge, 1686).3 Jefferson purchased the book, and it is now in the Jefferson collection of the Library of Congress, where I read it. When the book was brought up from the stacks, I held in my hand a small leather-bound volume published in Cambridge, England, in 1686. As I turned the pages and came to chapter 2 of Ad Scapulam, to my astonishment, I saw that Jefferson had underlined the passage and put a large X in the margin. There are no other markings in the text, so I assume that Jefferson did not come across this passage in the course of reading the book. It is unlikely he spent winter evenings at Monticello reading Tertullian’s apologetic writings. He knew what he was looking for, and when the book arrived, he turned to the place that interested him, marked the passage, and wrote it in his copy of the Notes. I do not think that Tertullian had any direct influence on Jefferson’s views on religious freedom. Like Madison’s, Jefferson’s ideas were informed by reading John Locke, Philip Furneaux, and others.

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But Jefferson was endlessly curious and had a lively interest in religious matters. What Tertullian had written centuries ago confirmed his own views and he wanted to read for himself what Tertullian had written. We can only speculate as to what he thought of Tertullian. It seems likely that what caught his attention was the similarity between Tertullian’s words “One person’s religion neither harms nor hurts another” and his own “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God.” However one judges Jefferson’s relation to Tertullian, that the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom cared enough about an early Christian writer who wrote, “Coercion has no place in religious devotion” to cite several sentences from him in his copy of the Notes on the State of Virginia is a serendipitous grace note on which to end this book.

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Notes

Introduction   1. John Witte and Frank S. Alexander, eds., Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (New York, 2010), 13–14.   2. William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, act 4, scene 1,   3. John Plamenatz, Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Social and Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx (London, 1963), 2:50–51.

Chapter One.  Endowed with Freedom   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.

  8.   9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Histories 4.53. Aeneid 3.85. Livy, History of Rome 39.18. Histories 5.13. Pro Flacco 69. Josephus, Antiquities 14.264. The account of the Scillitan martyrs and of Apollonius is available in English translation in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford, 1972), 86–105. Pliny, Letter 10.96. Tertullian may have had a hand in the written account of their death, The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, one of the most famous acts of the martyrs. Apology 1, 4, 10, 17. Ibid., 14. Fides (good faith) was a Roman goddess symbolized by a pair of covered hands. Her temple was on the Capitol where the Roman Senate met. In Egypt goats were worshipped because of their virility. Apology 24.

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15. Ibid., 28. 16. Rebellious claimants to the throne during the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211). 17. Apology 38. 18. Ibid., 39. 19. Ibid., 42. 20. Ad Scapulam 3. 21. Ibid., 2. In Tertullian’s Latin: “Tamen humani iuris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere; nec alii obest aut prodest alterius religio. Sed nec religionis est cogere religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat, non vi, cum et hostiae ab animo libenti expostulentur.” Text in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 1 (Turnholt, 1954), 1127. 22. See Charles Donahue Jr., “Ius in Roman Law,” in Witte and Alexander, Christianity and Human Rights, 75–79. Also Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights (Grand Rapids, 1997), 13–42. Neither, however, discusses the passage in Tertullian’s To Scapula. 23. Paradoxa Stoicorum 34. 24. First Principles, pref. 5. 25. Against Marcion 2.5–6. 26. De idololatria 15. 27. Scorpiace 14, citing Matthew 22:21 and 1 Peter 2:17. 28. De idololatria 15. 29. Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, in Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 89. 30. Peter Garnsey, “Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity,” in “Persecution and Toleration,” ed. W. J. Sheils, special issue, Studies in Church History 21 (1984): 16. 31. “Conscience” occurs only a few times in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament: Ecclesiastes 10:20 and Wisdom of Solomon 17:11. In Hebrew the closest approximation is “heart.” See 1 Samuel 24:5; 2 Samuel 24:10; Job 27:6. 32. Seneca, Moral Epistles 43.4–5; also 25.4–6 and Vita beata 20.4. 33. Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 2.9, trans. Thomas P. Schreck (Washington, DC, 2001), 131. Later these two senses would be called the “judicial,” judging one’s past moral actions, and the “legislative,” dictating what should be done. See Eric D’Arcy, Conscience and the Right to Freedom (New York, 1961), 4–8. 34. Apology 28–29. 35. De testimonia animae 2. 36. Ibid., 5. 37. On other early Christian writers, see Timothy Shah, “The Roots of Religious Freedom in Early Christian Thought,” in Christianity and Freedom: Historical Perspectives, vol. 1, ed. Timothy Samuel Shah and Allen D. Hertzke (Cambridge, 2016), 33–61.

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38. Letter 58.10. 39. For discussion of Porphyry’s critique of Christianity, see Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, 1984), 126–63. 40. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, trans. Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey (Liverpool, 2003). The relevant section is at 5.19–20, pp. 319–24. 41. Ibid., 5.2.12. 42. Ibid., 5.19.1, 20, 11. 43. Epitome to the Divine Institutes: “Poterant enim leges delicta punire, conscientiam punire non poterant” (par. 59). 44. Other examples: when Lactantius asks, “how will God love the worshipper if he himself is not loved by him?” the words of Jesus lie in the background: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Luke 10:27). His statement that in offering sacrifices Roman worshippers “bring nothing from within, nothing of their own,” reads like a paraphrase of “Behold thou desirest truth in the inward being” (Psalms 51:5). 45. In the Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) of Vatican Council II, Lactantius is the first early Christian writer to be mentioned. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, S.J. (Washington, DC, 1990), 1006–7n8. 46. Lactantius, On the Death of the Persecutors 34; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 8.17. 47. Lactantius, Death of the Persecutors 48; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 10.5.3–14. 48. Lactantius, Death of the Persecutors 48.

Chapter Two.  A Christian Society   1. Andrew Pettegree, “Politics of Toleration in the Free Netherlands,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge, 1996), 198.   2. Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, 215.   3. Theodosian Code 2.8.1, trans. Clyde Pharr, in The Theodosian Code and Novels: And the Sirmondian Constitutions (Princeton, 1952).   4. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.51–53, 2.44–45.   5. Ibid., 2.60.   6. See the Theodosian Code 16.2.2, 4, 10, 12; 16.5.8, 20, 29, 34, 38, 40, 41.   7. Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews (Berkeley, 1983), 116.   8. For the treatment of Jews in Roman law, see Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit, 1999).   9. Theodosian Code 16.8.5; 8.6; 8.9, 21, 24. 10. Scott Bradbury, Severus of Minorca: Letter on the Conversion of the Jews (Oxford, 1996). For other instances of forced baptism, see Marcia Colish,

196

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

Notes to Pages 30–38 Faith, Fiction, and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates (Washington, DC, 2014). For the treatment of Jews in Christian Spain, see Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400–1000 (New York, 1983), 128–43. For the text of the canon from the Council of Toledo, see Olivia Remie Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia, 1997), 21–23. Letter 1.35 and 1.45. Letter 13.1, 3.37, 2.45. Letter 93.17. Letter 93.5 and 173.10. In the eighteenth century Pierre Bayle wrote a long “philosophical commentary” critical of what he calls the “literal” interpretation of Luke 14:23 with extensive discussion of Augustine’s writings: A Philosophical Commentary on These Words of the Gospel, Luke 14:23, “Compel Them to Come in, That My House May Be Full,” ed. John Kilcullen and Chandran Kukathas (Indianapolis, 2005). Tractates on John 26.2. The Barbarian Conversion (New York, 1997), 215. Letter 113 in Epistolae Karolini Aevi, ed. Ernestus Duemmler, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Berlin, 1895), 2:164. See also Alcuin of York, c. 732–804: His Life and Letters, trans. Stephen Allott (York, 1974), 72–74. Alcuin is quoting Augustine. See the life of Abbot Wala by Radbertus, Vitae Adalhardi et Walae 2:548; also Allen Cabaniss, Charlemagne’s Cousins: Contemporary Lives of Adalhard and Wala (Syracuse, 1967), 151. Letter 20. Text in John B. Morrall and Sidney Z. Ehler, eds., Church and State through the Centuries (Westminster, MD, 1954), 11. Oratio Edgari Regis, in Patrologia Latina 138:515–516a. On Consideration 4.3.7, in Five Books on Consideration, trans. John D. Anderson and Elizabeth T. Kennan (Kalamazoo, 1976), 118. “Both belong to Peter, the one by his command, the other by his hand, whenever it is necessary to unsheathe it” (Bernard, ep. 256; Patrologia Latina 182:463– 64). On the two swords in medieval Christianity, see I. S. Robinson, “Church and Papacy,” in Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, 1988), 300–305. In his De monarchia, book 3, Dante offered a critique of the hierocratic interpretation of the two powers. Gregory the Great, Letter 13.12. See Edward Synan, Popes and Jews in the Middle Ages (New York, 1967), 231–32. See letter of Innocent III to the archbishop of Arles, in A Source Book for Medieval History, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York, 1905), 231. Text in E. Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici (Graz, 1960), 2:646. Summa theologiae II-II, q. 10, a. 12.

Notes to Pages 38–45 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

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Ibid., II-II, q. 10, a. 8. Ibid., II-II, q. 104, a. 5 Quaestiones disputate de veritate q. 17, a. 5. ST I, q. 79, a. 13. On the appeal to conscience in the medieval university, see Ian Christopher Levy, “Tolerance and Freedom in the Age of the Inquisition,” in Shaw and Hertzke, Christianity and Freedom, 1:149–75. David Burr, “Olivi and the Limits of Intellectual Freedom,” in Contemporary Reflections on the Medieval Christian Tradition, ed. G. H. Shriver (Durham, 1974), 189. Ibid., 194. On the identification of ius and potestas in Olivi, see Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, 39–42. Quodlibet 7, 18, in Les quodlibet cinq, six, sept de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. M. de Wulf and J. Hoffmans (Louvain, 1914), 402–5. See also Ian Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 2012), 179–81. On “erroneous conscience” in Aquinas, see D’Arcy, Conscience and the Right to Freedom, 100–112. Friedberg, Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2:286–88; see also Levy, “Tolerance and Freedom in the Age of the Inquisition,” 1:162–63. For a full discussion of Las Casas, see David Lantigua, “Idolatry, War, and the Rights of Infidels: The Christian Legal Theory of Religious Toleration in the New World” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2012). De las Casas’s theory of toleration “was wedded to a doctrine of natural rights for believers and unbelievers alike, provided a compelling justification for what came to be understood as the most important of human freedoms—immunity from coercion in religious matters” (preface). Lantigua, “Idolatry, War, and the Rights of Infidels,” 392, 173, 305; ST I, q. 82, a. 1; ST II-II, q. 10, a. 10. Lantigua, “Idolatry, War, and the Rights of Infidels,” 555ff.; ST I-II, q. 19, a. 5. Bartolomé de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, trans. Stafford Poole (Dekalb, IL, 1992), 69–70. David Lantigua, “Faith, Liberty and the Defense of the Poor: Bishop Las Casas in the History of Human Rights,” in Shaw and Hertzke, Christianity and Freedom, 1:201. Letter 13.13.

Chapter Three.  The Two Swords   1. For a useful overview of current historical understanding of the sixteenthcentury reformations, see the preface to Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650 (New Haven, 2016), vii–xviii.

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Notes to Pages 47–57

  2. My discussion draws on Gerald Strauss, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century (Hoboken, NJ, 1966).   3. Bernd Moeller, Imperial Cities and the Reformation, trans. C. Erik Midelfort and Mark U. Edwards Jr. (Philadelphia, 1972), 66.   4. Gottfried Seebaas, “The Reformation in Nuremberg,” in The Social History of the Reformation, ed. Harold John Grimm, Lawrence Buck, and Jonathan Zophy (Athens, 1972), 22.   5. See Andrew Pedigree, Brand Luther (New York, 2016) on the invention of the printing press and the rapid distribution of Luther’s writings.   6. Caritas Pirckheimer, A Journal of the Reformation Years, 1524–1528, trans. Paul A. MacKenzie (Cambridge, 2006).   7. Ibid., 14, 24, 25, 26, 28.   8. Ibid., 36, 56.   9. Ibid., 39. 10. Ibid., 26, 48. Thomas Brady, a historian of the German Reformation, observes that in Pirckheimer’s diary the roles of the parties ae reversed: what moved the sisters was not clerical corruption or the sins of the papacy but the “claims of conscience.” German Histories in the Age of the Reformation (Cambridge, 2009), 174. 11. Pirckheimer, Journal, 103, 68. 12. Ibid., 92. 13. Ryan Sayre Patrico, “The Catholic Nuns of Lutheran Wuerttemberg, 1534–1609” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2017), 75–77. 14. Ibid., 113–27. 15. Ibid., 150. 16. James Martin Estes, ed. and trans., Whether Secular Government Has the Right to Wield the Sword in Matters of Faith: Five Documents Translated with Introduction and Notes (Toronto, 1994), 36. 17. Ibid., 41. 18. Ibid., 44, 47. 19. On the use of the parable, see Roland H. Bainton, “The Parable of the Tares as the Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Church History 1 (1932): 67–89. 20. Estes, Whether Secular Government Has the Right, 43. 21. English translation in Luther’s Works, vol. 45, trans. Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia, 1962), 91–92; 110–11. On Luther’s understanding of the two kingdoms, see W. D. J. Cargill-Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Brighton, UK, 1984), 36–41. The Greek of Romans 13:1 has “soul,” but in the context the best translation is “person,” as in the Revised Standard Version. 22. Luther’s Works, 45:109–10. See Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörter-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1867), 1:1697, under “Glaube,” no. 38; also 5:1352, no. 176; Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliani 2.184: “Ad fidem quidem nullus est cogendus invitus” (Patrologia Latina 43:315).

Notes to Pages 57–67

199

23. Estes, Whether Secular Government Has the Right, 38. 24. Ibid., 55. 25. See Heinz Schilling, Early Modern European Civilization and Its Political and Cultural Dynamism (Waltham, MA, 2008); and John M. Headley et al., eds., Confessionalization in Europe, 1550–1700 (Burlington, VT, 2004). 26. Estes, Whether Secular Government Has the Right, 60, 68. 27. Ibid., 76–77, 83, 91. 28. Ibid., 93–95. 29. Melanchthon was one of the examiners sent by the City Council to the Franciscan convent. Pirckheimer describes him as a fair-minded man who was offended that the sisters were being “subjected to force.” “He was more moderate in his speech than any Lutheran I had heard,” she wrote. However, the City Council ignored his advice. Pirckheimer, Journal, 141. 30. Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes, 1555, trans. Clyde L. Manschreck (New York, 1965), 335–38. 31. Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21 32. Nikolaus Paulus, Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16. Jahhundert (Freiburg, 1911), 13; D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung Briefwechsel (Weimar, 1930), 4:28 (February 1526). 33. John Neville Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (New York, 1960), 84.

Chapter Four.  Custodians of Both Tables   1. The Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto, 1976), 3:244.   2. In Hieremian prophetam, preface, in Huldrici Zwingli Opera, ed. M. Schuler and J. Schulthess (Zurich, 1836), vol. 6, part 1, p. 6.   3. Zwingli Opera, 4:58–60.   4. Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002), 71. Zwingli was a sharp critic of the Anabaptists because of their rejection of infant baptism, but also because their independent societies “dissolved the sacred ties of the Christian commonwealth” (George Hunston Williams, The Radical Reformation [Louisville: 1962], 304–5).   5. Charles Gilliard, La conquête du Pays de Vaud (Lausanne, 1935), 83–84.   6. See Michael Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground (Dordrecht, 2005), 147ff. For the text of Barbey’s statement, see Peter Rueck, “Un récit de la captivité du Chapitre de Lausanne en février 1537,” Revue historique Vaud 78 (1970): 62–64.   7. A similar case is documented in the neighboring city of Orbe, where priests and religious refused “to renounce their religion.” See n. 64, p. 150 of Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground. For an account of the impact of the Reformation on a community of religious women in Geneva, similar to Caritas Pirckheimer’s journal of the closure of her

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  8.   9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

Notes to Pages 67–70 community in Nuremberg, see Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle: A Poor Clare’s Account of the Reformation in Geneva, trans. Carrie F. Klauss (Chicago, 2016). Writing to the syndics of Geneva, Sr. Jeanne says: “We do not want any innovation of religion or law or to turn away from divine service, but we are determined to live and die in our holy vocation here . . . praying to our Lord . . . if your lords will agree to preserve and protect us all here as your ancestors have” (47). Eventually they were forced to abandon the convent and move to Annecy, France, to live in an abandoned monastery. Andrew Johnson, The Protestant Reformation in Europe (Harlow, UK, 1991), 61. For Calvin’s life, see the biography by Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven, 2009). The first edition was translated by Ford Lewis Battles, Institution of the Christian Religion (Atlanta, 1975). I cite the 1559 edition, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, 1960). The title Institutes was used by the Roman writer Quintillian and the Christian Lactantius (Gordon, Calvin, 57–58). Institutes 3.19.15; see also Calvin’s commentary on Romans 13 in his Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, trans. Ross MacKenzie (Grand Rapids, 1976), 286. See John Witte Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge, 2007), 43ff.; Josef Bohatec, Calvins Lehre von Staat und Kirche mit besonderer Berüchsichtigung der Organismusgedanken (Aalen, 1961), 581–610. Institutes 4.20.3. Ibid., 4.10.1. Calvin’s thinking on spiritual liberty echoes themes in late medieval writers. For example, Jean Gerson (1363–1423) criticized the Church for setting “snares” that crushed Christian liberty. To remain free one needed “an innate power or faculty by which [one] could discern [God’s] law and fulfil it” (Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, 228). Institutes 4.10.2; 4.10.8. Ibid., 4.10.3. The phrase “forum of conscience” (forum conscientiae) comes from Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 89, a. 7, obj. 3. Institutes 3.19.15; 4.10.13. For Calvin conscience is a natural endowment of all human beings. “While the whole world was shrouded in the densest darkness of ignorance, this tiny little spark of light remained, that men recognized man’s conscience to be higher than all human judgments. Although they afterward indeed cast away what they confessed in one word, God still willed that some testimony of Christian freedom appear even then, to rescue consciences from the tyranny of men” (Institutes 4.10.5). This passage suggests that Calvin’s argument for freedom of conscience is grounded in

Notes to Pages 70–77

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

201

natural law as well as in the Scriptures. The topic has been debated among Calvin scholars, and the consensus seems to be that Calvin was influenced by late medieval thinking on natural rights. In this view natural rights were conceived of as an endowment that was pre-political. For a survey of the debate over “natural rights” in Calvin, see David Little, “Calvin and Natural Rights,” Political Theology 10 (2009): 411–30; for full documentation of Calvin’s views on the “natural rights of freedom,” Bohatec, Calvins Lehre von Staat und Kirche, 12–26. Institutes 4.10.5. Ibid., 4.10.6 Ibid., 4.20.9 Gordon, Calvin, 156. Ibid., 214. Institutes 4.20.9–10. Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneier, ed., Corpus Reformatorum (Halle, 1841), 8:362. For arguments defending the execution of heretics in the sixteenth century, see Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 82–96. Declaratio orthodoxi fidei. Latin text in Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, ed. A. Cunitz, G. Baum, and E. Reuss (Braunschweig: 1863), 8:30. Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, ed. G. Baum, A. Cunitz, and E. Reuss (Braunschweig, 1876), 15:19-22. Concerning Heretics: Whether They Are to Be Persecuted and How They Are to Be Treated; A Collection of the Opinions of Learned Men Ancient and Modern, trans. Roland Bainton (New York, 1935), 126. On Castellio, see Hans R. Guggisberg, Sebastian Castellio, 1515–1563: Humanist and Defender of Religious Toleration in a Confessional Age, trans. Bruce Gordon (Farnham, UK, 2003). Concerning Heretics, 141–53; Castellio also included two passages from Calvin, no doubt to provoke him (202–3). Ibid., 156–57, 136–40. Ibid., 153, 157, 170, 180–82, 208–9. See L. A. Panizza, “Lorenzo Valla’s De vero falsoque bono: Lactantius and Oratorical Skepticism,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978): 76–107. Concerning Heretics, 197–99. Contra Libellium Calvinum (Amsterdam, 1612), in section Calvinus 77, p. E. When someone is unable to vanquish an opponent in a dispute, he calls him a heretic. “This is not to vanquish a heretic, but to kill a man” (Hoc vero non est haereticum vincere, sed hominem occidere). No page number; in section “Ex annotationibus in secundam ad Corinth. Cap. 10.” Guggisberg, Sebastian Castellio, 218–32, 269–70. On Beza, see Witte, Reformation of Rights, 81–141. Joannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, 15:97.

202

Notes to Pages 77–87

38. Witte, Reformation of Rights, 93. 39. Traité de l’autorité du magistrat en la punition des hérétiques (Geneva, 1560), 311–12; see Robert Kingdon, “The First Expression of Theodore Beza’s Political Ideas,” Archiv fuer Reformationsgeschichte 46 (1955): 90–91. 40. Concerning the Rights of Rulers over Their Subjects and the Duties of Subjects toward Their Rulers, trans. Henri-Louis Gonin (Cape Town, 1956), question 10, pp. 82–83. 41. It is a principal duty of a most excellent and pious ruler, writes Beza, that he should use whatever authority and power has been granted him by God, “that God may truly be recognized among his subjects and may, being recognized, be worshiped and adored as the supreme king of all kings” (ibid., 85).

Chapter Five.  Two Religions in One City   1. Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1973), 34. The statement comes from Walenty Kuczborski and Peter Skarga.   2. Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 48–50.   3. Thomas Traherne, Selected Poems and Prose, ed. Alan Bradford (New York, 1991), 112.   4. Les oeuvres d’Estienne Pasquiers (Amsterdam, 1723), 2:89.   5. On Rouen, see Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge, 1981).   6. Ibid., 80.   7. The origin of the term Huguenot is uncertain. In official French documents the reformers were referred to as réligion prétendue reformée, “socalled reform religion.” Huguenot may derive from the word Eidgenossen, confederates in Geneva bound by oath, Gallicized as eigenotz.   8. Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion, 52.   9. Joseph Bergin, The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France (New Haven, 2014), 23. 10. Oeuvres complètes de Michel L’Hospital, chancelier de France (Paris, 1824), 1:322–23. 11. Ibid., 1:394–402. 12. Des États Généraux et autres assemblées nationales (Paris, 1789) 10:356, 360–61. 13. Ibid., 12:234. 14. Ibid., 12:235. 15. See chapter 1, p. 21. 16. Pasquier’s authorship is disputed. 17. Memoires de Condé (Paris, 1743), 2:616–17. 18. Ibid., 2:624–26.

Notes to Pages 88–96 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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Ibid., 2:624–26. Ibid., 2:633–44. Advice to a Desolate France (Shepherdstown, WV, 1975), 1. Ibid., 3, 7, 47. Receuil général des anciennes lois françaises (Paris, 1829), 14:110. See SeongHak Kim, Michel de L’Hopital: The Vision of a Reformist Chancellor during the French Religious Wars (Kirksville, MO, 1997), 67–68; N. M. Sutherland, The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition (New Haven, 1980), 127–28. On the colloquy, see Donald Nugent, Ecumenism in the Age of the Reformation: The Colloquy of Poissy (Cambridge, MA, 1974). https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/colloquy-at-poissy-a-religious-conference-royalty-free-illustration/897324566. Besides those representing the Catholics or Huguenots, some sought “concord,” a compromise between the two confessions. Mario Turchetti, “Religious Concord and Political Toleration in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22 [1991]: 15–25). For an account of the most vocal exponent of concord, François Bauduin, see Turchetti’s exhaustive study, Concordia o tolleranza? François Bauduin (1520–1573) e i “Moyenneurs” (Milan, 1984). Baudouin had written a book on the legislation of Emperor Constantine, Constantinus Magnus, in which he claimed that Constantine, whom he called auctor concordiae, was an example of how to preserve unity and stability in the Christian world (Turchetti, Concordia o tolleranza? 104–5). Bauduin urged concord on the basis of the Scriptures and the vestigia of the early Church (264–67), but he was trusted by neither the Catholics nor the Calvinists. Nugent, Ecumenism in the Age of the Reformation, 100ff. Oeuvres complètes de Michel l’Hôpital, 1:452. David Potter, The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents (New York, 1997), 33. Geoffrey Treasure, The Huguenots (New Haven, 2013), 173. Jean Bodin, The Six Books of a Commonweale, facsimile reprint of the En­ glish translation of 1606, ed. Kenneth Douglas McRae (Cambridge, 1962), 84. On Bodin, see Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978), 2:287–300. Bodin, Six Books, 535. Ibid., 536, 361, 379. Ibid., 380. Ibid., 381–82. Ibid., 644–45. The passage is from Lactantius’s Epitome, quoted in chapter 1, p. 94. Ibid., 382. Ibid., 539. Ibid., 539. Text in Mémoires de la Ligue (Amsterdam, 1758) 1:178–82.

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Notes to Pages 96–102

41. Bergin, Politics of Religion, 52. 42. Chronologie novennaire, February 27, 1594, in Joseph-François Michaud and Jean-Joseph-François Poujoulat, Nouvelle collection des mémoires (Paris, 1881), 12:557. 43. Article 6; Elie Benoist, The History of the Famous Edict of Nantes (London, 1694), 1:529. 44. L’Edit de Nantes devant le Parlement de Paris (1599), in Bulletin historique et littérature (Societé du Protestantisme Français) 48, nos. 3–4, (1889): 128–35. 45. J. Lecler, S.J., Toleration and the Reformation (New York, 1960), 2:143–44. In a letter to King Henry, Cardinal Arnaud d’Ossat reported that Pope Clement VIII was greatly exercised over the edict. “Liberty of conscience,” he said, “was the worst thing in the world.” Lettres du Cardinal D’Ossat, ed. M. Amelot de la Houssaie (Amsterdam, 1732), 318–19. 46. See Mario Turchetti, “Henri IV entre la concorde et la tolerance,” in Henri IV, le roi et la reconstruction du royaume: Volumes des actes du colloque Pau-Nerac, 14–17 Septembre 1989 (Pau, 1990), 296. 47. See Diethelm Klippel, Geschictliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1990), 6:108n65. 48. A tract written in 1599 read: “The different confessions which indeed spoil the harmony of the Church need not on that account disturb the peace of temporal kingdoms and principalities. We know well that in what concerns the bare preservation of the peace, the rules of religion and those of the State are different and often have nothing to do with each other.” Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2:149–51.

Chapter Six.  Freedom of Worship   1. He wrote a long letter to the rector of the University of Louvain in October 1520 defending himself. The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1122–1251, 1520 to 1521, trans. P. G. Bietenholz and Eleanor M. Thompson (Toronto, 1987), 68–70.   2. Alastair C. Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (Burnley, UK, 1990), 31–34.   3. Williams, Radical Reformation, 529–30.   4. Ibid., 541.   5. Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2:192.   6. Williams, Radical Reformation, 589.   7. William G. Naphy, ed., Documents of the Continental Reformation (New York, 1996), 81.   8. It was not only exiled Calvinists who had an impact on religious life in the Netherlands; many Catholics were forced to flee the northern provinces as Calvinists took control of cities. They played a key role in the restoration of Catholicism in the southern provinces. See Geert H.

Notes to Pages 103–110

  9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

205

Janssen, The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2014). H. G. Koenigsberger, “Orange, Granvelle and Philip II,” Bijdragen en Medelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 99 (1984): 591. M. Gachard, Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, Prince d’Orange, ed. M. Gachard (Brussels, 1850), 2:224. Philip II to the duchess of Parma, October 17, 1565, document 1 in Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, ed. E. H. Kossmann and A. F. Mellink (Cambridge, 1974), 55. Kossmann and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 3, p. 61. Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1550–1590 (Cambridge, 1992), 83–84. Part of A Brief Discourse is translated in Kossmann and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 2, p. 56. Kossman and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 2, pp. 57–59. Correspondencia diplomatica entre Espana y la Sante Sede durante el pontificado de S. Pio V, ed. Luciano Serrano (Madrid, 1914), letter no. 122, p. 316. Martin van Gelderen, ed. and trans., The Dutch Revolt (Cambridge, 1993), 20. Ibid., 74–75. Kossmann and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 14, p. 96. Van Gelderen, Political Thought, 217. Kossmann and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 32, p. 157. Herbert H. Rowen, ed., The Low Countries in Early Modern times: A Documentary History (New York, 1972), 102. Jeremy D. Bangs, “Dutch Contributions to Religious Toleration,” Church History 79 (2010): 6. Kossmann and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 36, pp. 163–64. Ibid., document 43, pp. 191–96. Ibid., document 43, p. 195. Coornhert also wrote a book, Synod on the Freedom of Conscience (Amsterdam, 2008), an account of an imaginary dialogue between Catholic and Reformed thinkers on the topic of religious freedom. It discusses major topics that were at issue in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth century, for example, constraint in religion, authority of magistrates in religious matters, public exercise of a dissenting religion, and the like. Een goede vermaninghe aen de geode borgers von Bruessele (Ghent, 1597), 13. Text online at http://books.google.com/books?id=u4FbAAAAQAAJ&pg=

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27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Notes to Pages 110–116 PT9#v=onepage&q&f=false. I am grateful to Richard Bishop for a translation of the passage. Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, 232. Jean Gerson, De vita spirituali animae, in his collected works, Oeuvres complètes de Jean Gerson, ed. Mgr. Glorieux (Paris, 1965), 3:144; see also Jean Gerson, On Mystical Theology 1.14, in Jean Gerson: Early Works, trans. B. P. McGuire (Mahwah, NJ, 1988), 279. Van Gelderen, The Dutch Revolt, 185. Ibid., 207–8. Ibid., 209. Van Gelderen, Political Thought, 228. Kossmann and Mellink, Texts concerning the Revolt in the Netherlands, document 62, pp. 264–67. A similar argument appears in another tract dealing with the Pacification of Ghent. Liberty of conscience, wrote the anonymous author, consists of two parts, inner attachment to God and outward profession by mouth. Inner freedom cannot be taken away because it rests in the soul, but public profession is vulnerable to the will of rulers. Liberty of conscience must include both: the right to hold that religion one believes to be true, and the right to make public profession in ceremonies. Each is a natural right. Discours contenant le vray entendement de la Pacification de Gand, 30–34 (https://books.google.com/ books?id=SCBEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA13-IA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v= onepage&q&f=false). On the schuilkerk, see Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 173–83. Kaplan also discusses the practice known as Auslauf, in which Protestant communities in a Catholic country would gather in the home of a wealthy member outside the city to worship (144–71). On Althusius, see Witte, Reformation of Rights, 143–207; and Jesse Chupp and Cary J. Nederman, “The Calvinist Background to Johannes Althusius’s Idea of Religious Toleration,” in Jurisprudenz, Politische Theorie, Politische Theologie (Berlin, 2004), 243–60. Politica methodice digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata. Reprinted by Harvard University Press (1932), with introduction by Carl Joachim Friedrich. Partial translation by Frederick S. Carney, The Politics of Johannes Althusius (Boston, 1964); chapter xxviii, par. 52 (Friedrich, p. 270) Ibid., chapter xix, par. 28 (Friedrich, p. 94). Ibid., preface (Friedrich, p. 7). Ibid., chapter xxviii, par. 49 (Friedrich, p. 269). Ibid., chapter xxviii, pars. 53–56 (Friedrich, p. 270). Ibid., chapters xxviii, pars. 58–60 (Friedrich, p. 271), chapter xxviii, par. 62 (Friedrich, p. 272). Ibid., chapter xxviii, par. 63 (Friedrich, p. 272). Ibid., chapter xxviii, par. 66 (Friedrich, p. 273).

Notes to Pages 116–126

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44. Dicaeologicae libri tres (Frankfurt, 1618), book 1, chapter 138, par. 29, p. 497; and 1.25.8. The Latin expressions are publicum exercitium religionis and libertas conscientiae. 45. Witte, Reformation of Rights, 172.

Chapter Seven.  Sturdy Piety   1. Subtitled Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992).   2. For a comprehensive history of the English Reformation, see Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven, 2017).   3. Defense of the Seven Sacraments in English History in the Making, ed. William Sachse (1967), 1:182–83.   4. Lacey Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty (Boston, 1971), 101.   5. For discussion of More’s thought, see Eamon Duffy, Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England (London, 2017), 19–99. For More’s condemnation of heretics, see Marshall, Heretics and Believers, 186–87.   6. The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. F. Rogers (Princeton, 1947), 493–94.   7. Decretum magistri Gratiani, D. 96, c. 5, Friedberg, Corpus Iuris Canonici, 1:338.   8. Torrance Kirby, “Lay Supremacy: Reform of the Canon Law of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I (1529–1571),” Reformation and Renaissance Review 8 (2006): 354.   9. William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More, in Two Early Tudor Lives, ed. R. S. Sylvester and D. P. Harding (New Haven, 1962), 236–37. 10. More’s statement is based on a letter he wrote to his daughter Margaret Roper. See The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, 501–7. 11. Dom Lawrence Hendricks, The London Charterhouse: Its Monks and Its Martyrs (London, 1889), p. 123. For an account of Fisher’s appearance before the commission and his trial, see E. E. Reynolds, Saint John Fisher (Wheathampstead, UK, 1972), 222–28, 268–71. 12. For Catholics who outwardly conformed but inwardly remained Catholic (“church papists”), see Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists (Woodbridge, UK, 1993). 13. Elliot Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth I and James I (New York, 1975), 38, 60. 14. Jesse Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England (Oxford, 2014), 31; J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559–1581 (1953), 213–14. 15. On the “English Mission,” see John Bossey, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London, 1975), 11–76.

208

Notes to Pages 126–132

16. Before his execution Campion said: “In that faith have I lived and in that faith do I intend to die. And if you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty. As for any other treason, I never committed, God is my judge.” Ernest Edwin Reynolds, Campion and Parsons: The Jesuit Mission of 1580–51 (London, 1980), 200–201. 17. Childs, God’s Traitors, 85; J. Bruce, “Observations upon Certain Proceedings in the Star-Chamber against Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, et al.,” Archaeologia 30 (1844). 18. Childs, God’s Traitors, 86; S. Kaushik, “Resistance, Loyalty and Recusant Politics: Sir Thomas Tresham and the Elizabethan State,” Midlands History 21 (1996): 37–72. 19. His name is sometimes spelled Parsons. 20. Victor Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Per­ sons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610 (Aldershot, UK, 2007), xii. 21. Text of Brief Discours online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A09094.0 001.001/1:2?rgn=div1;view=fulltext. 22. Ibid., fols. 45v, 47r, p. 17. 23. The story can be found in Tertullian’s De corona, chapter 1. 24. Brief Discours, p. 18. 25. Text is available online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=e ebo;idno=A56469.0001.001. 26. Ibid., 15, 33. 27. Houliston, Catholic Resistance, 141. 28. Ibid., 143. 29. Bellarmine: the oath “denies the power [of the pope] to excommunicate the king and the Apostolic primacy in the universal Church, and it opens up the way to build the king’s primacy in spiritual matters.” On Bellar­ mine and the oath of allegiance, see Stefania Tutino, The Empire of Souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth (Oxford, 2010), citation on p. 133. See also Harro Hoepfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540–1630 (Cambridge, 2004), 339–465, on the potestas indirecta of the pope. 30. The Judgment of a Catholicke English-man Living in Banishment for His Religion (1608), facsimile reproduction with an introduction by William T. Costello, S.J. (Gainesville, FL: 1957). 31. Ibid., 19–20. 32. Ibid., 38–39. 33. Ibid., 50–51. 34. Ibid., 53. See Augustine on Psalm 124: if Julian (an unbelieving Roman emperor) ordered Christian soldiers to deploy into battle formation, they obeyed him at once. They drew a clear distinction between the “eternal Lord and their temporal master, but they subjected themselves to their temporal master for the sake of their eternal Lord.” Exposition of the Psalms, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for

Notes to Pages 132–139

209

the 21st Century, III:20, trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B. (Hyde Park, NY, 2004), 64. 35. Apology 33. He mentions Tertullian’s Ad Scapulam but does not cite the relevant passage. 36. Paolo Prodi, Il sacramento del potere: Il giuramento politico della storia costizionale del’Occidente (Bologna, 1992), 275.

Chapter Eight.  Seeking Faith’s Pure Shrine   1. Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I,” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 171.   2. Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. John Bruce Thomas and Thomas Thomason Perowne (Cambridge, 1853), 223–27.   3. B. R. White, The English Separatist Tradition (Oxford, 1971), 26.   4. “Churches,” in Traherne, Selected Poems and Prose, 116.   5. White, English Separatist Tradition, 56–60.   6. Lancelot Andrewes, dean of Westminster under James, wrote: “God and the King are so in league, such a knot, so straight between them, as one cannot be the enemy to the one, but he must be to the other.” Ninety-Six Sermons (Oxford, 1841), 4:3–14.   7. See David Norton, The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today (New York, 2011), 84. The king was displeased with marginal notes that suggested disobedience to the king was acceptable, for example, 1 Kings 20:8–9.   8. On the English separatists who fled to the Netherlands discussed below, see Nicholas P. Miller, The Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State (Oxford, 2012), 32–39; also Paul Hartog, “The Modern Legacy of Tertullian and Lactantius on ‘Religious Liberty,’ ” Fides et Historia 50 (Summer 2018): 1–17.   9. Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (1611/1612), ed. Richard Groves (Macon, GA, 1998). 10. Mystery of Iniquity, xxiv. 11. Documents Illustrative of English Church History, ed. Henry Gee and W. J. Hardy (London, 1914), 1:512–13. 12. The Revised Standard Version translates the Pauline phrase “mystery of iniquity” as “man of lawlessness.” 13. Mystery of Iniquity, 11–12. 14. Ibid., 14. 15. Ibid., 41, 17–18. 16. Ibid., 26, 33–34. 17. Ibid., 35, 37, 47. 18. On the “believer’s church,” see Donald F. Durnbaugh, The Believer’s Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism (Scottsdale, PA, 1985).

210

Notes to Pages 139–147

19. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon (Louisville, 1992), 461–65, 993–94. 20. Mystery of Iniquity, 102. 21. Ibid., 53. 22. Ibid., 53. 23. See Denise Spellberg, “Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights from Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson,” in The Lively Experiment: Religious Toleration in America from Roger Williams to the Present, ed. Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (London, 2015), 85–100. 24. Text in Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, 1614–1661, ed. Edward Bean Underhill (London, 1846); reprinted by the Baptist Standard Bearer (Paris, AR, 2016), 15–16. 25. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity viii.1.2, in The Works of Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble (Oxford, 1888), 3:330. 26. Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 17–18. 27. Ibid., 20, 23. 28. Ibid., 51, 28–30. 29. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 2:56, 60. Translated by Averill Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford, 1999), 113–14. The phrase translated “persuasion of their conscience” in Eusebius’s Greek is “the desire of one’s soul.” 30. For a discussion of other separatists, see Hartog, “Modern Legacy of Tertullian and Lactantius.” 31. Religion’s Peace, in Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 11. 32. Essayes or Observations Divine and Morall (London, 1938), 87–88; 43, 423. 33. Text in Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 189–231. 34. Ibid., 210. 35. On Twisck, see Bangs, “Dutch Contributions to Religious Toleration,” 595– 600. Original Dutch version, Religions Vryheyt, published in 1609, can be found in the library of Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA. 36. The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (Eugene, OR, 1963), 3:28–39. This work is hereafter cited as CWRW. 37. William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York, 2001), 257. 38. Ibid., 257. 39. Both texts can be found in CWRW, vol. 1. 40. Ibid., 1:347. 41. On the self-understanding of the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, see David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (New York, 2011), 106–15. 42. CWRW, 1:326–327. 43. Ibid., 1:335. 44. Ibid., 1:392–93. 45. Ibid., 1:356, 393. Significantly, Williams seldom uses the term church to speak of churches as part of a corporate body; his most familiar locution is “particular churches.”

Notes to Pages 148–156

211

46. Journal of the House of Commons, vol. 3, 1643–1644 (London, 1802), 584– 86. 47. CWRW, 3:3–4. 48. See Spellberg, “Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights,” in The Lively Experiment, ed. Beneke and Grenda, 89; and Teresa M. Bejan, “The Bond of Civility: Roger Williams on Toleration and Its Limits,” History of European Ideas 37 (2011): 409. 49. CWRW, 1:47. On the basis of passages such as this, Sumner Twiss argues that for Williams freedom of conscience is a “subjective natural right created by God.” “Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience and Religion as a Natural Right,” in Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, Ethics, ed. Sumner B. Twiss, Marion Gh. Simion, and Rodney L. Peterson (Cambridge, 2015), 45–76. 50. CWRW, 3:32. Luke 9:54; Mark 12:17; 2 Corinthians 10:4. 51. CWRW, 3:51–53, 36. 52. Ibid., 3:62–63. 53. The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloody (CWRW, 4:442). 54. CWRW, 3:184, 62. 55. Ibid., 3:249–51. 56. Ibid., 3:241. 57. Ibid., 3:347–48. 58. Ibid., 3:184, 62, 200, 66. “The Church or company of worshippers (whether true or false) is like unto a Body or Colledge of Physicians in a Citie; like unto a Corporation, Society of Company of East-Indie or Turkie-Merchants, or any other Societie in London” (CWRW, 3:73). 59. Ibid., 3:401, 395, 384. 60. Ibid., 3:35. 61. On the libraries of the New England Puritans, see Anne-Stephane Schaefer, Auctoritas Patrum? The Reception of the Church Fathers in Puritanism (Bern, 2011); citation of Cotton Mather on 112. Schaefer shows that colonial churchmen treasured the writings of the church fathers and thought that John Calvin stood in the theological tradition formed by their thought. 62. CWRW, 3:49. 63. Ibid., 3:197–98. 64. Ibid., 3:384.

Chapter Nine.  Liberty Necessary unto Human Nature   1. The assembly adopted what came to be known as the Westminster Confession, which set forth a Presbyterian profession of faith. Amid articles on Christian doctrine it includes the sections “Of Christian Liberty” and “Liberty of Conscience.” The latter includes the statement: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to His Word;

212

  2.

  3.   4.

  5.

  6.

  7.   8.   9. 10. 11.

Notes to Pages 156–160 or beside it, in matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also” (article XX). John Milton was a severe critic of the monarchy and its alliance with the bishops. In a series of tracts written in 1641–42 he argued that the Church should not be “pliant to civil authority.” People cannot be forced to profess what is against their consciences. The civil magistrate should look only upon the “outward man” and the “wel-fare of the Commonwealth.” In a later work he wrote that the “gospel should not be made a matter of compulsion.” It is impious for people to take part in public worship in which they do not believe; he cites Proverbs 15:8, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination of the Lord” and other biblical texts, for example, Psalm 50:16–17. See his Of Reformation in England, The Reasons of Church Government, and On Christian Doctrine, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven, 1953), 1:573, 600, 836; 7:798–99. For a thorough study of John Milton and religious freedom, see Witte, Reformation of Rights, 209–48. On John Owen’s life, see Peter Toon, God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen, Pastor, Educator, Theologian (Grand Rapids, MI, 1973). John Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled on January 31 . . . with a Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate about Religion, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (New York, 1851), 8:163–207. For discussion of some of the players in debates over toleration, see Andrew R. Murphy, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (University Park, PA, 2001), 95–122. For arguments of those opposed to toleration, see John Marshall, John Locke, Tolerance and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge, 2006), 94–137. Owen, Discourse about Toleration, 8:165–66. Ibid., 8:174–75, 177–79. Owen cites the ancient texts in Greek and Latin: ibid., 8:183–84. Tertullian, Apology 49; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.19; Gregory the Great, Letters, Book 3.53. Owen, Discourse about Toleration, 8:185. Owen freely cites the so-called Edict of Milan from Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History 10.5. In his book The Necessity of Toleration in Matters of Religion, published in 1647, Samuel Richardson, an English clergyman, cited the entire text of the letter of Constantine and Licinius as a preface. He introduces it as follows: “A Copy of the Imperial Constitution of Constantius and Licinius, Containing the reasons that moved them to grant unto all their subjects free

Notes to Pages 160–168

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

213

liberty in matters of religion, which is worthy of the view, and consideration of all men, especially those in authority.” Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 249–53. Owen, Discourse about Toleration, 8:187ff. Ibid., 8:193. The term is used in the same sense by John Locke in his Letter concerning Toleration and by James Madison in his Memorial and Remonstrance. Andrew Marvel, “An Horation Ode,” in The Norton Anthology of Poetry (New York, 1970), 487. David Lee Smith, A History of the Modern British Isles, 1603–1707: The Double Crown (Oxford, 1998), 189. Text in C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, eds, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London, 1911), 2:821–22. Text in Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (New York, 1852), 13:344. For discussion of the debate over Parker’s book, see Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s “Two Treatises on Government” (Princeton, 1986), 41ff. Works of John Owen, 13:370–72. Ibid., 13:441. See Christopher Cleveland, Thomism in John Owen (Farnham, UK, 2013). ST I, q. 79, a. 13; De veritate 17. Works of John Owen, 13:441, 443, 465–67. Indulgence and Toleration Considered, in Works of John Owen, 13:563. Works of John Owen, 13:443. Ibid., 13:444. Penn refers to Owen a number of times in his writings, calling him in one place “the great Doctor of Independency.” See Stephen Angell, “William Penn’s Debts to John Owen and Moses Amyraut on Questions of Truth, Grace and Religious Toleration,” Quaker Studies 16 (2012): 160. Catherine Owens Peare, William Penn: A Biography (Philadelphia, 1957), 37. Ibid., 61–64. Letter to Orrery, November 1667, in The Papers of William Penn, ed. Mary Dunn and Richard Dunn (Philadelphia, 1981), 1:51. The Political Writings of William Penn, ed. Andrew Murphy (Indianapolis, 2002), 79–80. Ibid., 81–86. Ibid., 85–86. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 92, 49. Ibid., 106, 108–10. The person too great to be named may be Oliver Cromwell. See Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, ed. Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1871), 4:61: “Liberty of conscience is a natural right.” Political Writings of William Penn, 112–14, 96.

214

Notes to Pages 169–172

37. For an account of Locke’s intellectual development within the context of seventeenth-century English political life, based on written as well as manuscript sources, see the study of Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics. 38. “The Good Old Cause” was a name for Cromwell’s New Model Army. 39. Roger Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge, 2007), 32. 40. John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994), 12. Marshall’s book is a substantive discussion of the development of Locke’s political and religious thought. 41. Not to be confused with the First Treatise on Government. 42. John Locke, Two Tracts on Government, ed. Philip Abrams (Cambridge, 1967), 119–21. 43. Ibid., 129, 169. 44. Ibid., 122, 138. 45. Locke does not seem aware of John Owen’s defense of conscience as an “act.” 46. Locke, Two Tracts, 214–16. 47. Letter 175, in The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford, 1976), 228. 48. An Essay concerning Toleration and Other Writings on Law and Politics, 1667– 1683, ed. J. R. Milton and Philip Milton (Oxford, 2006). To be distinguished from the Letter on Toleration. 49. Ibid., 271–72. 50. John Dryden’s poem Absalom and Achitophel uses the biblical account of Absalom’s rebellion against his father King David (2 Samuel 13–18) as an allegory of the conflict between the Earl of Shaftesbury and King Charles II. David stands for King Charles and Achitophel, who urged Absalom to kill his father the king, represents the Earl of Shaftesbury, who plotted against the king. Achitophel (Shaftesbury), wrote Dryden, “was a name to all succeeding ages cursed” (l. 150). 51. See, for example, The Second Treatise on Government, 4.22: “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what the legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it . . . under the will . . . of man but with only the law of nature for [our] rule” (Two Treatises on Government, ed. Mark Goldie [London, 2004], 125–26). 52. Woolhouse, Locke, 193. 53. In 1686, Pierre Bayle, the French philosopher and historian, wrote a defense of universal toleration, A Philosophical Commentary on These Words of the Gospel, Luke 14:23, “Compel Them to Come in, That My House May Be Full” (Pierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary: A Modern Translation and Critical Interpretation, ed. and trans. Amie G. Tannenbaum [New York,

Notes to Pages 172–174

54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61. 62.

215

1987]). Augustine had appealed to the words “compel them to come in” as a justification for coercion, and “convertists,” Bayle’s word for Catholic “persecutors” of Protestants in his day, had used the parable to justify their actions. Ostensibly the book is an interpretation of the words “Compel them to come in,” but in truth it is a long and substantive critique of all forms of coercion in religious matters. Bayle’s principal aim is to show that the “literal” interpretation of the words, that “compel” means coercion, is contrary to the natural light of reason and the spirit of the Gospel. A doctrine that authorizes forcing men to embrace a religion that someone else believes, he wrote, is an abomination (Tannenbaum, 17). Devotion to God consists of “acts of the mind,” that is, inner movements of “respect, fear and love” (35). Compulsion is incapable of giving rise to such movements of the soul. No body of men ever gave the sovereign a right over their consciences; kings have no power from God “to command their subjects to act against their consciences” (66–67). Bayle also cites several early Christian writers (Athanasius, the Venerable Bede) to show that “constraint is . . . opposed to the nature of religion” (74). He quotes several passages from Tertullian’s Apology, but not chapter 24, where Tertullian uses the phrase libertas religionis, nor does he mention Ad Scapulam 2. John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis, 1983). Latin text with modern English translation by Raymond Klibansky and J. W. Gough, John Locke: Epistola de Tolerantia; A Letter on Toleration (Oxford, 1968). I cite the Popple translation edited by Tully. Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, 23–25. Ibid., 16. Institutes 3.19.15. On this point, see Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, 3–6. Later in life Locke did read Calvin (Marshall, 411–13). He did have Castellio’s On Heretics in his library (John R. Harrison and Peter Laslet, eds., The Library of John Locke [Oxford, 1965], 102). Henry Care, Animadversions upon Mijn Heer Fagel’s Letter (London, 1688), 22–26. Robert Ferguson, A Representation of the Dangers Impending over Protestants in Great Britain, in Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, ed. Walter Scott (London, 1813), 9:350–51. Elsewhere in the Letter: “Faith only, and inward Sincerity, are the things that procure acceptance with God” (38). Ibid., 26–27. Ashcraft provides a number of passages from Locke manuscripts to support his view that every person must be a judge of what he is to believe: “I affirm that it is out of the power of any man to make another a representative for himself in matters of religion, much less can another make one for him, since nobody can give another man authority

216

63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

68. 69.

70.

71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Notes to Pages 174–177 to determine in what way he should worship God.” Political authority cannot “make a law that shall oblige every subject in matters of religion” (Revolutionary Politics, 494). John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Roger Woolhouse (London, 1997), IV.16.14, p. 589. Ibid., IV.17.24, p. 607. In his study of Locke, John Dunn argues that Locke’s views on religious freedom cannot be understood without reference to “a religion in which authentic belief is a precondition for valid religious worship and religious worship is a central duty for man” (The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Arguments of the “Two Treatises of Government” [Cambridge, 1969], 57). Letter, 48. In his notes on Locke’s Letter concerning Toleration, Thomas Jefferson noted Locke’s statement that the Church is a “voluntary Society of Men, joining themselves together of their own accord.” “It is voluntary because no man is by nature bound to any church.” “Notes on Locke and Shaftsbury,” in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, 1950), 1:545. Letter, 28, 30. Ibid., 39. Jeremy Waldron observes that what Locke says in the Letter about the Church he says about the commonwealth in his Second Treatise, par. 95 (God, Locke and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought [Cambridge, 2002], 212–13). It is striking, he writes, that only the Church is defined as “voluntary,” not the commonwealth. On the Puritan background of Locke’s thinking on toleration, see Winthrop Hudson, “John Locke: Heir of Puritan Political Theories,” in Calvinism and the Political Order (Philadelphia, 1965), 108–29; also Jason Whitt, “Religious Liberty, English Baptists, and John Locke,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 38 (2011): 427–42. Letter, 31, 39. Ibid., 28, 37–38. Ibid., 33. See Gordon J. Schochet, “John Locke and Religious Toleration,” in The Revolution of 1688–1689: Changing Perspectives, ed. Lois G. Schwoerer (Cambridge, 1992), 148. Letter, 39. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 49–51. For a thoughtful discussion of Locke’s refusal of toleration to atheists, see Waldron, God, Locke and Equality, 223–35. Klibansky and Gough, Epistola de Tolerantia, 134. See in particular Second Treatise, pars. 4, 57–58, 95. Ashcraft thinks that Popple’s translation is superior to any modern version (Revolutionary Politics, 499n127). Thomas Jefferson thought Locke did not go far enough.

Notes to Pages 177–190

80. 81. 82. 83.

217

In his notes on Locke’s Letter concerning Toleration, Jefferson wrote: “Where he stopped short [speaking only of toleration] we may go on.” “Notes on Locke and Shaftesbury,” 1:548. Klibansky and Gough, Epistola de Tolerantia, 144–45; Popple, Letter concerning Toleration, 54. See Spellberg, “Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights,” in The Lively Experiment, ed. Beneke and Grenda, 94–95. Letter, 52–56. Murphy, Conscience and Community, 126.

Conclusion   1. Herbert Butterfield, Toleration in Religion and Politics (New York, 1980), 4–8.

Epilogue   1. Rhys Isaac, “‘The Rage of Malice of the Old Serpent Devil’: The Dissenters and the Making and Remaking of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,” in The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences for American History, ed. Merrill D. Peterson and Robert C. Vaughan (New York, 1988), 150–51.   2. Letter to William Bradford, January 24, 1774, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. William T. Hutchinson and M. E. Rachal (Chicago, 1962), 1:106.   3. James Madison on Religious Liberty, ed. Robert S. Alley (Buffalo, 1985), 51–53.   4. Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlotesville, VA, 1990), 73.   5. In the Memorial and Remonstrance Madison uses the term denominations to refer to religious communities or “churches” (Alley, Madison on Religious Liberty, 57).   6. Ibid., 56.   7. On Witherspoon and Madison, see, most recently, Gideon Mailer, John Witherspoon’s American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2017), 327–64.   8. Dennis Thompson, “The Education of a Founding Father,” Political Theory 4 (1976): 523–29.   9. In a letter to his friend William Bradford in July 1775, Madison asked that he obtain a copy of Furneaux’s Essay and have it sent to him in Virginia. 10. Philip Furneaux, An Essay on Toleration (London, 1773), 9, 18.

Appendix   1. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London, 1787). The citation from Tertullian is on p. 265. Jefferson underlined the words “nec alii

218

Notes to Page 190

obest, aut prodest alterius religio” (one person’s religion neither harms nor hurts another).   2. Text of the letter: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson /03–07–02–0344. See also J. Jefferson Looney, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 7 (November 1813–September 1814) (Princeton, 2011), 458.   3. In his letter to Girardin, Jefferson gives the title in the nominative: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus Apologeticum. The actual title is in the genitive, as shown in the text.

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Index

Biblical citations are in a separate Index. Aglionby, Edward, 125 Agricola, Rudolph, 100 Alcuin, 32–33 Allen, William, 126 Althusius, Johannes, 113–17; on no coercion in religion, 115; on two tables of Ten Commandments. Ambrose (bishop of Milan), 34 American colonies, religious freedom in, 145, 184–87, 189 Amerindians, religious freedom of, 42–44, 145, 197n39 Amyraut, Moses, 165 Anabaptists, 54, 58, 101, 137, 140, 162, 171 Anastasius (emperor of Christian Roman Empire), 34 Andrewes, Lancelot, 209n6 Anglicans, 137, 165, 176, 185, 189 Apollonius, Christian martyr in Rome, 10, 193n7 Aquinas, Thomas, 24, 38, 40, 43, 163, 214n45 Arians, 34, 94, 114–15, 176 Arminianism, 157 Ashcraft, Richard, 215n62, 216n79

Augustine: Donatists and, 31, 146, 160; on no coercion in religion 31–34, 57, 160, 215n53 Bacchus, cult of, 8 Bagshaw, Edward, 169–70, 178 Baptists, 46, 101, 137, 184–85 Barbey, Michel, 66 Bauduin, Franc¸ois, 203n26 Bayle, Pierre, 196n15, 214–15n53 Bellarmine, Robert, 128, 131, 208n29 Bellius, Martin (pseud.), 74 du Belloy, Pierre, 98 Benson, William, 122 Bern, reformation in, 65–66 Bernard of Clairvaux, 36 Beza, Theodore, 77–79; on no coercion in religion,78 Bibles, differing versions of, 63, 67, 136 Bienassis, Jacques, 85–87 Blackwell, George, 131 Bodin, Jean, 92–95; no coercion in religion principle, 93–94 Boleyn, Anne, 120, 121, 122 Bonogratia of San Giovanni, 39

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Book of Common Prayer (1549), 123–24, 137, 138, 162 Boyle, Robert, 169 Brady, Thomas, 198n10 Brenz, Johannes, 57, 58–59, 60, 75, 149 de Brès, Guido: Confessio Belgica, 103–4 Browne, Robert, 135–36 Busher, Leonard, 141–43 Butterfield, Herbert, 182 Callistus II (pope), 37 Calvin, John, 67–72; on conscience, 69–71; Locke and, 153, 173; on natural rights, 201n18; Puritans and, 211n61; Servetus and, 73–74, 77; on spiritual freedom, 79, 200n14; on two realms, 4, 68–70, 71–72, 182; on two tables of Ten Commandments, 70–72 Calvinism, 45, 46, 102–4, 113, 116 Campion, Edmund, 126–27, 128, 133, 208n16 Care, Henry, 173 Cartwright, Thomas, 135, 136 Cassius Dio, 159 Castellio, Sebastian, 72–77; Advice to a Desolate France, 88–89 Catherine of Aragon, 120, 122, 124 Catholic League in France, 95–96 Charlemagne the Great, 32–33; Saxon Capitulary, 32 Charles I (king of England), 155–57 Charles V (Holy Roman emperor), 65, 100, 102–3, 120 Charles IX (king of France), 84–95 Chintilla (king of Visigoths), 30 Church, as voluntary association, 26, 93, 154, 175. Church Fathers, 2–3, 114, 118, 132, 153, 179 Cicero, 9, 14, 111 Clement VII (pope), and liberty of conscience, 120, 204n45 Clovis (king of the Franks), 85

confessional churches, 5, 45–46, 58, 59, 109, 155, 158, 161 confessionalization, 5, 199 conscience as source of spiritual knowledge, 4, 17–18, 39, 69–70, 110, 127, 163. Constantine: Lactantius and, 18; on no coercion in religion, 24, 27; Protocols of Milan (Edict of Milan) (311) and, 22–23; on religious freedom, 22–23, 27, 35, 143, 150, 160 Cooper, Anthony Ashley (earl of Shaftesbury), 171, 214n50 Coornhert, Dirck Volckerszoon, 108–9, 205n25 Cop, Nicolas, 67 corpus christianum, 36, 44, 58, 62, 114, 160 Cotton, John, 144–47, 149–50, 153 Cranmer, Thomas, 120, 121, 122 Cromwell, Oliver, 156–57, 161, 162, 165 Cromwell, Thomas, 120, 121, 122 Crusades (First, 1096–1099), 2, 37 cuius regio, eius religio (whoever rules, his will be the religion), 53, 176 cura religionis (authority to regulate religion), 54–58 Dante Alighieri, de Monarchia, 196n24 David (king of Israel), 151, 214n50 Diet of Worms (1521), 52 Dio Cassius, 159 Diocletian (Roman emperor), 19, 21 Disraeli, Benjamin, on Robert Persons, 128 Donata, Christian martyr, 16, 111 Donatists, 31, 146, 160 d’Ossat, Arnaud, and Pope Clement VII, 204n45 Dryden, John, 214n50 Duffy, Eamon, 119

Index Dunn, John, 216n65 Dürer, Albrecht, 48 Ebner, Katharina, 45, 52 Edgar (king of England), 35 Edward VI (king of England), 123, 176 Elizabeth I (queen of England), 45, 124–25, 134 England, 118–54; Act of Succession (1534), 122; Act of Supremacy (1534/1558), 121, 124; Acts of Uniformity (1532/1559/1662), 121, 124, 162; Catholicism in, 46, 118, 120–22, 124–26, 130–32, 133; Charles, execution of, 157–58; Grand Remonstrance (1642), 156; Gunpowder Plot (1605), 131; Hampton Court Conference (1604), 136; Instrument of Government (1653), 161; Judaism in, 140–41; Muslims in, 141; nonconformists in, 134–35, 155; Oath of Allegiance (1606), 131; other separatist voices in, 141–44; public duty to worship in, 125; Puritans in, 133, 134, 155– 56; recusancy laws, 123–27, 129, 131; Reformation in, 119–20, 133; Statute in Restraint of Appeals (1533), 121; Toleration Act (1689), 185; two swords doctrine in, 127, 131, 132 Erasmus, Desiderius, 63–64, 75, 100 Farel, Guillaume, 65 Ferdinand (king of Spain), 42 Ferdinand II (king of Aragon), 120 Ferguson, Adam, 186 Ferguson, Robert, 173 Fides (goddess), 193n12 First Crusade (1096–1099), 2, 37 Fisher, John, 120–23 Fletcher, Richard, 32 Fox, George, 166

229

France, 80–98; Calvinism in, 4, 46, 79, 81, 86, 92; Edict of Fountainbleau (1685), 98; Edict of Nantes (313), 95–98, 172; Huguenots persecuted in, 46, 86–89, 91, 96–98, 181; January Edict (1562), 88, 90; Peace of Monsieur (Edict of Beaulieu) (1576), 95; politiques in, 83–88; Reformation in, 46, 81–85; religious war in, 86, 89–92; two religions in, 4, 87, 90–91, 97–98, 182; two swords doctrine in, 182; une foi, un loi, un roi (one faith, one law, one king) principle, 4, 84, 91, 181 Francis I (king of France), 67 Francis II (king of France), 84 Frederick Barbarossa, 36 freedom, spiritual, 2, 50, 68, 69, 110 freedom of worship, 5, 99, 170, 185–86 Froelich, George: on Anabaptists, 3–4, 58; on corpus christianum, 58; on evangelical governments, 55; on new religious assemblies and, 58– 62; on no coercion in religion, 56; on two swords doctrine, 3–4, 55–56, 58, 60; on two tables of Ten Commandments, 60 Furneaux, Philip, 187, 190, 217n9 Galerius (Roman emperor), 21–22, 86 Gamaliel VI (Jewish patriarch), 29 Gansfort, Wessel, 100 Garnsey, Peter, 16 Gee, Edward, 130 Gelasius (bishop of Rome), 34–35 Geneva, reformation in, 67–72, 199n7 Gerson, Jean, 110–11, 200n14 Godfrey of Fontaines, 40 Good, William, 128 Good Admonition to the Good Citizens of Brussels (anonymous), 109 Gordon, Bruce, 65, 71 grace, 48, 64 de Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot, 103

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Great Awakening in American colonies, 185 Gregory the Great (pope), 30, 36, 37, 43–44, 159, 179 Gregory VII (pope), 36 Gregory XI (pope), 118 Gregory XIV (pope), 96 Helwys, Thomas, 134, 136–42, 178–80; on Jews 141; on Muslims, 141; on two swords doctrine, 140, 181 Henrietta Maria (sister of Louis XIII of France and wife of Charles I), 156 Henry, Catherine, 120 Henry, Patrick, 185–186 Henry (king of Navarre), 95–96, 97 Henry II (king of France), 82, 83, 108 Henry III (king of France), 95–96 Henry IV (king of England), 119 Henry IV (king of France), 96, 97 Henry VIII (king of England), 119–22, 151 Hilary of Poitiers, 149 Hooker, Richard, 142 Hooker, Thomas, 144, 182 Howlett, John (pseud. of William Persons), 128 Huguenots: growth of, 83; persecuted in France, 46, 86–89, 91, 96–98, 181; recognition of, 96–97; religious freedom and, 96–97; as state within a state, 96 Hus, Jan, 2, 159 inner conviction, religious belief as, 4, 11, 20–21, 37–39, 69, 104–5, 159, 215n53. See also specific theologians Innocent III (pope), 37–38, 41 Isabella I (Queen of Castile), 120 ius reformandi (legal basis for reform), 47

James VI and I (king of Scotland and England): Baptists persecuted by, 46, 102; on Geneva Bible, 136; Helwys and, 137, 139, 142; on national church, 136; Puritans and, 134, 136; recusancy laws and, 131 Jefferson, Thomas: influences on, 190; Locke and, 190–91, 216n67; on natural rights, 189; on no coercion in religion, 190; Notes on the State of Virginia, 189, 190; Tertullian and, 190–91 Johann the Elector of Saxony, 61 John Chrysostom (Church Father), 28, 75–76 Josephus, 9 Josiah (king of Judah), 33 Judaism and Jews: Althusius on, 114; Christianity and, 2, 9, 25, 28–30, 37; forced baptism of, 29–30, 37–38; negative portrayal of, 28–29; papal stance on, 30, 37–38; persecution of, 29–30, 37; toleration and, 29, 114 Junius, Francis (Francois Du Jon), 104, 105 Justinian (Eastern Roman emperor), 28 Kaplan, Benjamin, 206n34 kingdoms, temporal and spiritual. See two swords doctrine Lactantius (Church Father): as Cicero Christianus, 76; Constantine and, 18; importance of, 3, 18–19, 21, 22, 76; on no coercion in religion, 3, 20, 168; on religious belief as inner conviction, 21 Lampedusa, Giovanni: The Leopard, 161 de Las Casas, Bartolomé, 42–43, 197n39 Laud, William, 156, 157 de l’Hôpital, Michel, 4, 83–84, 89–90, 97, 127, 181–82

Index libertas religionis (first use of term), 11 liberty of conscience, 78, 99, 102, 109–12, 168, 177 Licinius (Roman emperor), 22, 23 Livy, 8 Locke, John, 169–79; Calvin and, 153, 173; church as voluntary association, 175–77; Jefferson and, 190–91, 216n67; on natural rights, 177; on no coercion in religion, 177; on Quakers, 177; on religious belief as inner conviction, 170, 174; on toleration, 76, 171, 172–73, 177–78 Loe, Thomas, 165 Lollards (followers of Wycliffe), 118–19 Louis XIV (king of France), 98, 165, 172 Louis the Pious (son of Charlemagne), 34 Low Countries. See Netherlands Luther, Martin: Diet of Worms (1521), 52; on no coercion in religion, 57; on religious belief as inner conviction, 57; on two swords doctrine, 56–57, 61–62, 75, 182 Madison, James, 184, 185–87, 190, 217n5, 217n9 Margaret of Parma, 103 Marshall, John, 214n40 Marsilius of Padua, 36 Martel, Charles, 32 Marvel, Andrew, 161–62 Mary Stuart (queen of Scots), 125 Mary Tudor (queen of England), 124–25, 134, 139, 176 Mason, George, 185, 186 Massachusetts Bay Colony, 145, 146, 154 Mather, Cotton, 153 Maxentius (Roman emperor), 22 Maximilian of Hapsburg, 99

231

de Medici, Catherine, 84, 89 medieval Christianity, 3, 4, 40, 41, 42, 44 Melanchthon, Philip, 60–61, 72, 73, 199n29 Mennonites, 101–2, 137 Mildmay, Walter, 126 Milton, John, 180, 186, 212n2 de la Mirandolas, Pico, 76 de Montaigne, Michel, 80 More, Thomas, 120–23; Utopia, 120 Mornay, Philippe Duplessis, 108 Muhammad, 143, 148–49 Murphy, Andrew, 178–79 Murton, John, 143–44; Humble Supplication, 149, 152, 168 Muslims, 2, 5, 37, 140–41, 143, 148–49, 161, 178 natural rights: Amerindians and, 42–44, 145, 197n39; historical development of, 14, 40, 110, 164; religious basis of, 40, 110–11; toleration and, 110, 177 Nebuchadnezzar, 16, 111, 132 Netherlands, 99–117; Act of Abjuration (1581), 107; Calvinism in, 46, 102, 103–5, 107, 113; Catholicism in, 107; civil discord in, 102–8; independence of, 106–7, 112; pluralism in, 143; public worship in, 112–13; reformation in, 100–102, 107, 117, 205n25; religious freedom in, 105, 112, 115–17, 132; seeking religious peace in, 108–13; Spain and, 102–3, 107; two churches in, 108; unity of, 99, 107 Nuremberg, reformation in, 47ff Olvi, Petrus Iohannis, 39–40 Origen of Alexandria, on freedom of choice, 14 Osiander, Andreas, 48, 49, 59–60 Ottoman Empire, 141

232

Index

Our Lord in the Attic (church), 113 Owen, John, 155–61; on no coercion in religion, 160; on conscience, 163–64; William Penn and, 213n26; on religious belief as inner conviction, 159–61; on Tertullian, 164; on toleration, 158–61, 162 Pacification of Ghent (1576), 107, 109, 206n33 Paine, Thomas, 184 Parker, Matthew, 134–35; Book of Advertisements, 135 Parker, Samuel, 162–64 Pasquier, Étienne, 87–88 Paul the Apostle: conscience in 16–17, 69–70, 129, 175; on obeying ruling authorities (Romans 13), 15–16, 57, 60, 69–70 Paul IV (pope), 103 Paul V (pope), 131 Peace of Augsburg (1555), 45, 53, 155, 176 Penn, William, 164–68; Owen and, 213n26; Quakers and, 165, 167; on religious freedom, 166–68; on Tertullian, 168; on two swords doctrine, 167–68 Pepys, Samuel, 165, 166 Persons, Robert, 118, 127–33; on no coercion in religion, 130, 131–32; on religious freedom, 131–32 Philip the Fair (king of France), 36, 108 Philip II (king of Spain), 99, 102–4, 106–8 Pirckheimer, Caritas: importance of, 127; on Melanchthon, 199n29; persecution of, 50–51; reformation and, 3, 50–51; religious freedom and, 3, 50–51; on spiritual freedom, 50; on two swords doctrine, 51 Pius V (pope), 126 Plamenatz, John, 6

Pliny the Younger, 10 Plowden, Edmund, 124–25 Pole, Reginald, 124 Popple, William, 172, 177–78 Porphyry, 19 potestas deponendi (papal spiritual power to depose a sovereign), 131 powers, temporal and spiritual. See two swords doctrine Praepositus, Jacques, 100 Protocols (Edict) of Milan (311), 21–23 Puritans: Admonition to Parliament, 135; Church Fathers and, 153; civil war and, 156, 157; efforts to separate from Church of England by, 135; Military Petition, 136; political threat posed by, 134–36, 155–56; surplices and, 124 Quakers, 165–67, 177, 182 Quintin, John, 85 Ramus, Peter, 89 realms, temporal and spiritual. See two swords doctrine Reccared (king of Visigoths), 30 recusancy laws (England), 129, 131 Reformation: humanism and, 63, 82, 100; natural rights and, 14; persecution during, 46, 49–53; two swords doctrine and, 55–60, 81 Regnans in excelsis (papal bull 1570), 125–26 religious belief as inner conviction, 4, 11, 20–21, 37–39, 69–70, 104–5, 159, 215n53 religious freedom: Amerindians and, 42–44, 145, 197n39; arguments for, 13–15; authority involved in, 41, 54; basis of, 18; Catholic Church and, 54, 131–32; certainty involved in, 39–42, 127; conscience, relation to, 16–18; corpus christianum and, 114; definition of, 4, 16–18; dimensions

Index of, 206n33; as domain of God, 150; historical development of, 1–6, 11; as humanum ius (human right), 13–14, 24, 159, 164; inner dimension of, 37–39, 69–70, 110, 163, 206n33, 215n53; intellectual framework for, 1–6, 182–83, 187; as natural right, 5, 25, 43, 109–12, 117, 168, 177, 186; public worship and, 5, 7–8, 11, 105, 112, 167; scriptural basis of, 3, 4, 14–16, 17, 194n31; Tertullian’s first use of term, 11–13, 24; toleration, contrasted with, 5, 59, 185–86 “render unto Caesar” (Matthew 22:21), 4, 15, 34, 108–9, 111 Rhenanus, Beatus, 3 Richardson, Samuel, 212n11 Richelieu (Cardinal) (Armand Jean du Plessis), 96 rights. See natural rights Robinson, John, 143 de Ronsard, Pierre, 89 Rook, Mary, 157 Rouen, France, Reformation in, 81–83, 92 rule, temporal and spiritual. See two swords doctrine Sachs, Hans, “Nightingale of Wittenberg,” 48 Sacramentarians, 100–101 de Saint-Aldegonde, Philip Marnix, 99, 105–6, 112 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), 78, 91–92, 109 St. Clare Franciscan community, Reformation and, 49, 58 St. John Lateran Basilica, 26 St. John the Baptist convent in Kirchheim am Teck, reformation and, 52–53 Savoy, House of, 67, 71 Saxons, conversion of, 32–33

233

Schaefer, Anne-Stephane, 211n61 Scheurl, Christoph, 48 Schleitheim Confession (document), 54 schuilkerk (clandestine church), 112–13 Seneca the Younger, 17, 67, 111 Septimius Severus, 129, 194n16 Servetus, Michael: Bellius, Martin (pseud.), 74; Calvin and, 73–74, 77 Shadrach, Meshach and Abendego (Daniel 3:1628), 16, 111, 132 Shakespeare, William, 135, 136 Simons, Menno, 101 Sixtus IV (pope), 47 Smyth, John, 136–37, 142 Society of Friends (Quakers), 165 Society of Jesus, 126, 128 sovereignty, temporal and spiritual. See two swords doctrine Spain: Amerindians and, 42, 43, 130, 145, 197n39; Jews in, 29; Netherlands and, 102–3, 107; religious freedom in, 111; Union of Arras (1579), 107; Union of Utrecht (1579), 119 Spengler, Lawrence, 57, 59 Staupitz, Johann, 48 Stephen (king of Poland), 149 Stephen (martyr), 29 Stubbe, Henry, 169 Switzerland, reformation in, 63, 65, 67, 68, 71, 73, 113 Tacitus, Gaius Cornelius, 7–8, 9 Taylor, Jeremy, 168, 174, 175 Ten Commandments and two tables of law of, 60–61, 66, 72, 77, 114, 146, 154 Tertullian of Carthage: importance of, 10, 16, 20–21, 143; Jefferson and, 190–91; on no coercion in religion, 11–12, 13–16, 18–21, 143, 153, 159; on religion as inner conviction, 1, 20 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 28

234

Index

Theodoric (king of Ostrogoths), 94 Theodosius I (Roman emperor), 27 Theodosius II (Eastern Roman emperor), 29 Thomas Aquinas, 24, 38, 40, 43, 163, 214n45 Tierney, Brian, 25, 110 du Tillet, Louis, 67 toleration: defense of, 104; degrees of, 115; Jews and, 114; limited, 155; natural rights and, 110, 177; no coercion in religion and, 183; religious freedom, contrasted with, 5, 59, 185–86; for the sake of peace, 115–16 Traherne, Thomas, 80–81, 135 traho (“drag,” John 6:44), 32 Tresham, Thomas, 126–27 Troeltsch, Ernst, 139 Twisck, Pieter, 144 Twiss, Sumner, 211n49 two swords doctrine: New Testament and, 54, 58, 139; scriptural basis of, 35, 55, 151; spiritual sword, 36, 61, 139, 150; temporal sword, 36, 56, 59, 61, 68, 150. See also specific theologians two tables of the Ten Commandments, 60–61, 66, 72, 77, 114, 146, 154

Vaux, William, 126–27 vinculum societatis (bond of society), 54, 80 Viret, Pierre, 65 Virgil, 8 Voluntary associations, 182 von Reuth, Margaretha, 53

une foi, un loi, un roi (one faith, one law, one king) principle, 4, 84, 91, 181 Urban II (pope), 37

Waldron, Jeremy, 216n69 Waugh, Evelyn, 128 Westminster Assembly of Divines, 146, 156, 211n1 wheat and tares parable (Matt 24: 13–30), 56, 75, 76, 108, 149, 160 Widikund (Saxon leader), 32 William of Orange, 106 Williams, Roger, 144–54; Calvin and, 146–47; on Constantine, 150; John Cotton and, 145–47, 149–50, 152, 154; on Muslims, 148–49; national church, opposition to, 150–51; on no coercion in religion,153–54; on nonconformists, 148; on religious freedom, 148–50; separatism of, 145; on Tertullian, 153; on two swords doctrine, 146–48, 150–52, 160; on two tables of Ten Commandments, 154 Winthrop, John, 144 Witherspoon, John, 186 Witte, John, 2, 116 Wolsey (Cardinal), 120, 121 Wycliffe, John, 118, 168

van der Laan, Niclaes, 108, 109 van Gelderen, Martin, 112

Zurkinden, Nicholas, 74 Zwingli, Ulrich, 63–65, 71, 75, 199n4

Index of Biblical Citations

Old Testament Genesis 1:26–27

15

2 Chronicles

33

27:6 199n31 60 60 72

7:9 44:21 50:16–17 51 51:5 124

120

Deuteronomy 5:6–21 30:15

199n31 14

Proverbs

1 Samuel

33 194n31

Ecclesiastes

33 214n50 194n31

Isaiah

24:5

2 Samuel 13–18 24:10

15:8 10:20 1:19–20 5:1–6

1 Kings 1:39 20:8–9

57 21 212n2 170 195n44 208n34 212n2 194n31 14 147

Daniel 33 209n7

3 4:28–29

2 Kings 13:1–4

194n31

Psalms

Leviticus 20:21

33

Job

Exodus 20:1–17 20:3 20:7 20:13

1 Chronicles

16, 132 111

Wisdom of Solomon 33

17:11

235

194n31

Index of Biblical Citations

236 2 Maccabees 7

132

New Testament Matthew 10:28 13:24–30 18:20 22:21 25:14–15

111, 115 56 176 15, 55, 57, 109, 139, 194n27 138 34 211n50 211n50 195n44 31, 196n15 172 35 142 142 32 151

Acts 1:24 6:8–8:1 15:20

57 29 64

Romans 2:14–15

10:1–6 10:29 13:12 1:12 10:4 3:28

151 17 175 17 211n50

17

9

Philippians 1:27

158

2 Thessalonians 2:7

John 3:3 3:8 6:44 7:38

1 Corinthians

Galatians

Luke 9:54 10:27 14:23 22:25 22:35–38

17 70 32 56, 132 15, 57, 198n21 60 69, 129, 139

2 Corinthians

Mark 12:13–17 12:17

2:15 2:15–16 10:10 13 13:1 13:4 13:5

138

1 Peter 2:9 2:13–14 2:13–17 2:17

152 139 16 111, 194n27

Revelation 1:12–13 13:1ff

147 138