5.2.5. THE NEW FAITH SHATTERED THEM

THE CORE PROTESTANT BELIEF: INDIVIDUALS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR SALVATION

These famous studies explore how that belief and money-making coincide:

• That philosophy leads to a serious view of life and to the "Protestant ethic" of honesty, work and austerity. 

• Moral and intellectual rigor, Church corruption, political factors, regional traditions of heresy, local issues and pastors' personal impact lets Protestantism cross class lines, but the emerging entrepreneurs dominate. Training, habit and self-interest predispose their acceptance of the new faith, in a way that is "sincere and based on calculation."

-- Citation: Balzac, The Calvinist Martyr

• Calvin says, "The rich are servants of the poor." But honesty, thrift and hard work are essential for launching a business, and material success becomes a sign of salvation. That poverty is due to laziness and hedonism and so a sign of damnation, follows.

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Sixteenth-century Protestants would have appreciated this couple, the opposite of the superhuman figures of antiquity and warriors that nobles glorify when capitalism expands and Protestants appear. 

American Gothic by Grant Wood, 1930 / zoom

Effects 

•  On culture: Austerity encourages plowing gains back into business and arts are those of costless grandeur. 

• In France, so powerful was Protestant addressing God directly by singing psalms that Catherine de Médicis and Charles IX would come to hear them. 

• In England, the language of the King James Bible is (in my opinion) far more compelling than later translations.


• New England's stark wooden churches.

Zoom

• On the poor: 

• In England, destroying the 800 monasteries and convents sends monks, nuns and lepers into the streets to beg, and provokes the most important rebellion of the Tudor period (the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1636).

• In France, towns under Protestant control manage charity competently. But instead of the Church helping all the needy, people with means condescendingly investigate the miserable, then patronize them or refuse aid.

No reference / zoom

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• On business: 

Living beyond the city wall frees craftspeople from guild restrictions and let them charge less for their excellent production. As well, imagine the feelings of Catholic employees who are obliged to work on the roughly 50 saints' days.  

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Innumerable movements against the corrupt Church and often unpopular clergy had sprouted up and failed. In France, Protestantism remained important for a century and a half  because it expressed the values of an emerging social class.

Besides looking down on everyone, humiliating the poor, forcing Catholic employees to work when their friends celebrated, Protestants were formidable business rivals.

Of course they were hated.

Sixteenth-century engraving (detail), private collection

End of this section.

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Next section,

5.3. 

Monarchs seize the reins