Deviance and Nonconformity, Term 2, Week 8

The Reformations and Deviance

Naomi Pullin n.r.wood@warwick.ac.uk

Aims of today

• Understanding what the Reformation was• Assess whether it represents change or

continuity• Examine its impact on concepts of deviance• Consider the experiences of religious

minorities• Ask whether ‘disenchantment’ and atheism

were the consequences of the Reformation

‘Ecclesia semper reformanda est’: The church is always reforming

Pope Innocent III

Link between consolidation of Church power and rise of ‘heretics’ in Middle Ages:• Innocent III’s reforms (1198-

1216)• Fourth Lateran Council (1215)• > persecution of heretics incl.

Cathars, Waldensians, Franciscans, Jews and Muslims

What is the Reformation?

• Not a specific event that can be given a precise date: a long and complex process.

• Closely linked to the humanist agenda of C15th and C16th.

• Humanists sought true message of God, through study and re-translation of the Bible

Desiderius Erasmus(1466-1536)

Martin Luther31 October 1517 - 95 Thesis nailed on door of Wittenberg Cathedral

Key reforms: • Solafidianism – by faith alone• rejection of sale of indulgences• reduces the number of sacraments

from 7 to 2 (baptism and the Eucharist remain)

• rejection of purgatory• rejection of clerical celibacy• abolition of monasteries.

Martin Luther(1483-1546)

Consequences of the Reformation: Divided States

• It suited many countries to break with Rome• Countries like England and France in

constant state of flux• Most rulers agreed that religious diversity

was dangerous > persecution• Thirty Years War (1618-1648) has strong

religious ideology

Bloody Mary

• Restored Catholicism to England in 1553

• Reintroduced the Heresy Acts

• 300+ Protestants burned as heretics.

Mary I Queen of England (1553-1558)

John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563)

Godly Martyrs in Coventry (1555)

Anne Askew (1546)

Elizabeth I• Restored Protestantism

to England in 1558• 189 people executed for

Catholic beliefs• Catholics hanged for

treason and not burnt for heresy

• Spectacles of punishment, e.g. Margaret Clitherow crushed to death Margaret Clitherow

(1556-1586)

St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572)

• Reformation creates conditions for a multi-confessional society

• People can openly question and debate nature of salvation

• Groups have social/political as well as theological basis for appeal

Radical Reformers

Münster Rebellion(1534-5)

• First leader: Jan Matisse – very popular and charismatic

• Jan of Lieden takes over late 1534 – tyrant who advocates polygamy and executes anyone who disobeys is authority

• Protestant and Catholic authorities unite to end siege

English Civil Wars (1640s/1650s)

Thomas Edwards (1646)

Uses sectarian excess as propaganda against religious toleration

England has become a land of the “many headed monstrous Hydra of Sectarism, ... this land is become already in many places a Chaos, a Babel, another Amsterdam [and he refers to Amsterdam here, because it is the first country in Europe to adopt religious Toleration]; but worse than Amsterdam, is the fact that the English nation is on the highway to Münster”.

Thomas Edwards: Gangraeana

Religious Radicals: England

• Rise of new Protestant sects from 1640s: incls. Levellers, Seekers, Ranters, Diggers, Adamites, Quakers, Muggletonians, and Fifth Monarchists.

• Distinctly social component to their persecution

The Ranters

• Christ within more important than historical Christ

• Didn’t need outward help to assist salvation

• Believed that all actions – good or sinful– determined by God’s will

• Leaders: Abiezer Coppe and Lawrence Clarkson

• The Ranters Monster (1652): Mary Adams

The Quakers

• Begins with George Fox, c.1652

• Doctrine of the ‘Light Within’ open to all

• Reject social hierarchy and paid preaching

George Fox (1624-1691)

‘a man, a Quaker, came naked through the [Westminster] Hall, only very civilly tied about the privates to avoid scandal, and with a chafing-dish of fire and brimstone burning upon his head ... crying, ‘Repent! repent!’

Samuel Pepys Diary 29 July 1667:

James Nayler (1656)

Quaker Sufferings records names of over 12,000 sufferers:

Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers (2 vols, 1753)

With the face of brass this woman that you see

most Impudently doth afirm, that shee

The mind of God, in all poynts, more doth know

them from the Sacred Scriptures, ere could flow

Presumptious wretch it were more fitt that shee

at home showld keepe, and mind her housewifery

And if noe meanes to live on, worke for bread

than idlye gossip with hir magot head.

Atheism and Deism

Lucien Febrve, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (1942).

‘Atheist’ Etienne Dolet (1509-1546)

Conclusions

• Reformation creates an ‘age of confessions’• Persecution of religious minorities linked to a

struggle for power – new forms of piety and new forms of persecution

• Reformation does not introduce toleration• More of a social agenda attached to

persecution of religious minorities post-Reformation

• Reformation creates new types of unbelievers, but not until C17th that we see emergence of ‘atheism’