Religious Thought on Social and Economic Questions in the Sixteenth and

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. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3808%28192310%2931%3A5%3C637%3ARTOSAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F The Journal of Political Economy is currently published by The University of Chicago Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucpress.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Sat Jul 21 14:07:51 2007 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,