Religious Thought on Social and Economic Questions in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries
R. H. Tawney
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 5. (Oct., 1923), pp. 637-674.
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RELIGIOUS THOUGHT ON SOCL4L AND ECONOMIC
QUESTIONS I N THE SIXTEEKTH AND
SEVEXTEEXTH CENTURIES
11. THE COLLISION OF STANDARDS
Lord Acton, in an unforgettable passage in his inaugural lec-
ture on the study of history, has said that "after many ages per-
suaded of the headlong decline and impending dissolution of
society, the sixteenth century went forth armed for untried experi-
ence and ready to watch with hopefulness a prospect of incalcu-
lable change." His reference was to the new world revealed by
learning, by science, and by discovery. But his words offer an ap-
propriate text for a discussion of the change in the conception of
the relation between religion and what would today be regarded
as secular affairs, which took place in the same period, and which
had as an inevitable consequence the emergence, after a prolonged
moral and intellectual conflict, of new lines of economic thought.
Its results are not fully apparent for a century and a half after
the Reformation. But their range, when finally disclosed, is
immense. There is a sense in which the most momentous of all
revolutions in political thought is that which substitutes for a
supernatural criterion of society one version or another of social
expediency, and-a natural corollary-places religion among the
private interests which have their places in the social order, but
which must not overstep it. By the middle of the seventeenth
century that change is in England far on the road to completion.
In the sphere of philosophical thought, a naturalistic theory has
replaced that which found the ultimate sanction of the social
order in religion, and the ground is prepared for the doctrine
which sees the foundation of society in individual rights and
security for its well-being in the spontaneous play of economic
interests. In the sphere of ecclesiastical organization the time
is approaching when the idea of a church civilization, embracing
all sides of life, will give way to that of the church as a voluntary
society, concerned with what are conceived to be things of the
R. H. TAWNEY
spirit. This is not the place for a discussion of the larger aspects
of that movement. But one result of i t was a radical change in
the conception entertained both previously and later of the rela-
tion of religion to the common business of life. I t is certain
aspects of that change-the struggle of the traditional social
philosophy with the new forces and ideas which germinated in
the sixteenth century-which form the subject of this, and of
the following, article.
The strands in this movement were complex, and the formula
which associates the Reformation with the rise of economic
individualism is, as I shall hope to show, no complete explana-
tion. Systems prepare their own overthrow by a preliminary
process of petrifaction. The traditional social philosophy was
static, in the sense that i t assumed a body of class relations
sharply defined by custom and law, and little afiected by the ebb
and flow of economic movements. I t s weakness in the face of
novel forces was as obvious as the strain put upon it by the revolt
against the source of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, the partial dis-
credit of the Canon Law and of ecclesiastical discipline, and the
rise of a political science equipped from the arsenals of antiquity.
But it is not to underestimate the effect of the religious revolution
to say that the principal causes making the age a watershed from
which new streams of social theory descend lay in another region.
Mankind does not reflect upon questions of economic and social
organization until compelled to do so by the sharp pressure of
some practical emergency. The sixteenth century was an age
of social speculation for the same reason as the early nineteenth
-because i t was an age of social dislocation. The practical
implications of the social theory of the Middle Ages are stated
more clearly in the sixteenth century than even in its zenith,
because they are stated with the emphasis of a creed which is
menaced. The retort of conservative religious teachers to what
seems to them the triumph of Mammon produces the last great
literary expression of the appeal to the average conscience which
had been made by an older social order. I t is the cry of a spirit
which is departing, and which, in its agony, utters words that
are a shining light for all periods of change.
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 639
The character of the change in the economic environment
can only be indicated. On the heels of the commercial revolution
which depressed Venice and made &4ntwerp, came the economic
imperialism of Portugal and Spain, the outburst of capitalist
enterprise in commerce and banking which had its headquarters
in South Germany and its front in the Low Countries, the shatter-
ing of customary standards by the rise in prices, the development
of capitalist organization in textiles and mining, the rise of the
new systems of public finance needed by the new centralized
states, and the reaction of all these together on the traditional
rural organization, enhanced by the mania of land speculation
which followed the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Eng-
land felt the effects of the last three changes; but till the later
years of the century she stood outside the main stream. Ger-
man politics and literature are full of them. If one figure is
more typical of the age than another, it is that of the South Ger-
man financiers, the Imhofs, LITelsers, Hochstetters, above all the
Fuggers, who play in the world of finance the part of the con-
dottieri in war, and represent in the economic sphere the renais-
sance morality typified in that of politics by Macchiavelli's
Prince. Naturally the city interest is all-powerful. Political
pamphleteers might write that the new Messiah was the Prince,
and reformers that the Prince was Pope. But behind Prince
and Pope alike, financing impartially English, French, and Ital-
ians, the Pope, the Emperor, Francis I, and the King of Portugal,
stands in the last resort a little German banker, with agents in
every city in Europe. And the financial classes are fully con-
scious of their power. The head of the firm of Fuggerl advanced
the money to Albrecht of Brandenburg, which made him Arch-
bishop of Mainz, sent his agent to accompany Tetzel on his
financial campaign to raise money by indulgences and took half
the proceeds in payment of the debt; provided the funds with
which Charles V bought the imperial crown after an election
conducted with the publicity of an auction and the morals of a
gambling hell, browbeat him when the debt was not paid, and
For an account of the international transactions and influence of that firm,
see Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger.
640 R. H. TAWMEY
died in the odor of sanctity, a count of the empire, and a good
Catholic who hated Lutheranism, having seen his firm pay 54;
per cent for the preceding sixteen years, and having built a
church and endowed an almshouse for the aged poor in his
native town of Xugsburg.
The revolution in the economic environment-large scale
commerce and finance, monopolies controlling supplies and prices,
commercialized land tenure and competitive rents-inevitably
gave rise to passionate controversy; and inevitably, since both
the friends and the enemies of the Reformation associated it with
social change, the leadels in the religious struggle were the pro-
tagonists in it. In Germany, where social revolution had been
fermenting for half a century, it seemed a t last to have come.
From city after city terrified councils, confronted with demands
for the destruction of the money-lender, consulted universities
and theologians as to the lawfulness of usury. Luther1 and
Melanchthon-to mention no others-replied to them; Bullinger2
produced a classical statement on the subject in his Decades,
dedicated to Edward VI; Calvin3 wrote a famous letter on it.
Luther preached and pamphleteered against extortioners and
monopolists and said that it was time "to put a bit in the mouth
of the holy company of the Fuggers." Above all the Peasants'
Revolt, with its touching appeal to the Gospel and its frightful
catastrophe, not only terrified Luther, who had seemed a t first
not unsympathetic, into the notorious outburst of his pamphlet
"Whoso can, against the thieving and murderous bands of peasants
. . . . strike, smite, strangle, or stab, secretly or publicly.
. . . . " "Such wonderful times are these that a prince can
merit Heaven better with bloodshed than another with prayer,"
but stamped into Lutheranism a distrust of the common people
and an almost servile reliance on the secular authority.
In England there was less violence, but not less agitation.
The land question produced one flood of sermons and pamphlets;
For citations see Neumann, Geschichte des TVuchers iw Dez~tschla~zd,pp. 479-92.
Third Decade, first and second sermons (Parker Society).
3 Epist. et Responsa, p. 355; see also Sermon LXXXIV in Vol. XXVIII of
Opera.
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 641
the rise in prices another; the question of capital and interest a
third; the discovery that the dissolution of the monasteries and
the confiscation of part of the gild property had not produced
the golden age of losv taxation, learning, piety, and poor relief,
foretold in the state-conducted propaganda of Henry and Crom-
well, a fourth. Latimer, Ponet, Becon, Lever, Crosvley under
Edward VI, Sandys, Jewel and Wilson under Elizabeth-to
mention no others-all contributed to the discussion.' A clerical
pamphleteer2 a t the beginning of the seventeenth century issued a
catalogue of six bishops and ten doctors of divinity, apart from
unnumbered humbler clergy, svho had written on the subject of
usury alone. Starkey3 put into the mouth of Pole a program
of conservative reconstruction drafted for Henry VIII. Bucer4
prepared a radical one for his pupil, the pathetic child called King
Edward VI. Latimer supplied the moral doctrine which the ill-
fated Somerset tried to apply when he set out on his attempt-
which cost him his head-to undo the economic changes of tsvo
generations by throwing down the gentry's enclosures. What-
ever the social practice of the sixteenth century may have been,
it did not suffer for lack of social teaching on the part of men of
religion. If the world could be saved by sermons and pamphlets
i t would have been a Paradise.
The mark of nearly all this body of teaching, alike in Germany
and in England, is its conservatism. Where questions of social
morality are involved, men svhose names are a symbol of religious
revolution, stand with hardly an exception in the ancient ways,
appeal to medieval authorities, and reproduce in popular lan-
guage the teaching of the schoolmen. There is a familiar view
of the social history of the sixteenth century which represents
Latimer, Sermons; Ponet, A n Exhortation, or rather a TL7arftt'ng to the Lords
and Commons; Becon. Jewel of Joy (Parker Society); Lever, Sermons i n the Shrouds
of St. Paul's (Arber's Reprints); Crowley, The TL7ay to TL7ealth and Epigrams
(E.E T.S ); Sandys, second, tenth, and eleventh o f Ser~nons (Parker Society);
Jewel, TYorks, fourth part, p. 1293 (ibid.), Wilson, A Discoicrse upon ZTszlry by way
of Dialogile and Oration.
The English ZTsirrer, or Vsury Coftdemfted by the Most Learfted aftd Famous
Divines of the Church of England, b y John Blaaton, 1634.
3 Dialogue beheen Pole and Lupsel (E.E.T S.). 4 De Regrto Christi.
the Reformation as the triumph of an individualist capitalism
over the traditional social ethics of Christendom. I t is of respect-
able antiquity. As early as 1540 Cranmer wrote to Oziander
protesting against the embarrassment caused to reformers in
England by the sanction to immorality, in the matter alike of
economic transactions and of marriage, alleged to be given by
reformers in Germany.' Even before the plunder of the religious
houses by the Crown and its hangers-on was completed, the
reformers who had hoped great things for learning and religion
mere disillusioned and the cry was raised that it meant not only
sacrilege, but the exploitation of the peasantry by an odious
class of nou-deaux riches." In the seventeenth century an Eng-
lish pamphleteer, in a partisan sketch of the history of opinion,
could write that i t was well known that "usury was the brat of
heresy,"3 and Bossuet4 taunted Bucer and Calvin with being the
first theologians to defend extortion. That the revolt from Rome
synchronized, both in Germany and in England, with a period of
acute social distress, is undeniable. No long argument is needed
to show that both in motive and in effect it had its seamy side.
In England the policy of giving everyone who counted a solid
material interest in the new order was openly avowed, and the
intention of floating the Reformation as a land syndicate with
favorable terms for all who came in on the ground floor was not
concealed. Having invested in the Reformation when i t was a
gambling stock, the landed gentry nurse the security with a solici-
tude which title deeds have done more to inspire than the New
Testament and are zealous to lay up for themselves treasures in
Heaven as the best security for the treasures they have already
accumulated on earth.
I t is a mistake, no doubt, to see the last days of monasticism
through rose-colored spectacles. In Germany revolts were
* Gairdner, L. and P. Hen V I I I , Vol. XVI , p. 351.
a See, e.g., The Sermons of Lever.
3 Brief Survey of the Gowth of Usury in England, with the mischiefs Attending
It (1673).
4 Bossuet, Trait6 de 1'1~s1~re; for a discussion of his views see Favre, Le Pr6t d
inter& duns l'ancienne France.
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 643
nowhere more frequent or more bitter than on the estates of
ecclesiastical land-owners. In England a glance a t the pro-
ceedings of the courts of Star Chamber and of Requests is
enough to show that holy men reclaimed villeins, turned copy-
holders into tenants a t will, and (as more complained) converted
arable land to pasture. But i t is hardly doubtful that the trans-
ference of great masses of property, with a capital value in our
money of ~30,000,ooo to £~O,OOO,OOO, from conservative cor-
porations to sharp business men like Gresham-the largest1
single grantee of monastic estates-followed as it was by a decade
of land speculation, pressed cruelly on many of the peasantry.
The lamentations of the preachers and men of letters receive
detailed confirmation from the bitter struggles which can be
traced between tenants and some of the new landlords-the
Herberts who obtained the lands of the Abbey of Wilton and
enclosed a whole village to make their park a t Washerne, the
St. John's a t Abbots' Ripton, or Sir John Yorke, third in the line
of speculators in the lands of Whitby Abbey, whose tenants
found their rents raised from £28 to £64 a year, and for nearly
twenty years were besieging the government with petitions for
r ed re~s .~
What is sometimes suggested, however, is not merely a
coincidence of religious and economic changes, but a logical
connection of economic conduct and religious doctrine. I t
is implied that the bad social practice of the age was the inevi-
table expression of its religious innovations, that one order of
social ethics was consciously abandoned and another introduced,
and that, if the Reformers did not explicitly teach economic
individualism, individualism was, a t least, the natural corollary
of their teaching. In the eighteenth century, which had as little
love for the commercial restrictions of the ages of "monkish super-
stition" as for their political theory, that view was advanced as a
eulogy. In our own day, the wheel has come full circle. What
was then a matter for congratulation is often now a matter for
I Savine, quoted Fisher, The Po l i t i~a l History of England 148j-1547, App. ii,
and in Oxford Social and Legal History Series, Vol. 11.
Leadam, Select Cases i n the Court of Requests.
criticism. The Reformation is attacked as inaugurating a period
of unscrupulous commercialism, which had previously been held
in check, it is suggested, by the influence of the church.
The question raised is obviously fundamental. An attempt is
made in a subsequent article on the "Social Ethics of Puritanism "
to show the effect of one branch of the reformed religion upon so-
cial theory, and, through it, upon conduct. But, if i t is true that
the Reformation gave an impetus to a change in the attitude of
religious thought to economic issues, it did so without design
and against the intentions of most reformers. To think of the
abdication of religion from its theoretical primacy over economic
activity and social institutions as synchronizing with the revolt
from Rome is to antedate a movement which took another cen-
tury and a half to accomplish, and which owed as much both to
changes in economic organization and in political thought-in
particular to the impact upon social theory of the mathematical
and physical sciences-as to changes in religion. I n the sixteenth
century the time had not yet come when religious teachers would
cease to search both the Bible and the Corpus Juris Canonici for
light on practical questions of social morality. Even in the mid-
dle of the seventeenth century in Holland, the most advanced
commercial country of the age, the development of banking was
to give rise to a storm of theological controversy. Even in 1673,
in the England of joint stock companies and high finance, Bax-
ter was to write a Christian directory setting out a detailed
casuistry of Christian conduct in the manner of a medieval
sztmnza. Naturally, therefore, as far as the first generation of
reformers was concerned, there was no intention among either
Lutherans or Calvinists or Anglicans, of relaxing the rules of
good conscience which were supposed to control economic trans-
actions and social relations. If anything, indeed, though there
are exceptions,
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