Religious stalemate and precedence of political exit strategies
In 16th century Europe, religious toleration was almost unknown and another century and a half would pass before the reform had been assimilated, « absorbed »
. The oft-attempted quest for an accord, a re-union proved illusory in every country whose history we have surveyed. It followed from the universal failure of religious colloquia that religious peace would not be a theological peace but a political and civil affair. The use of force had proved useless. Before the extent of the damage, the social upheaval, the thousands of deaths, only one option was left open: a temporary solution must be brought about which would later be described as « civil tolerance »
. The people of the time saw these solutions as temporary: be it the Peace of Augsburg or the French edicts, all were drafted even « as we wait on God's pleasure to grant us the grace ... to unite all our subjects »
(Edict of Bergerac 1577). Three instances of the way this new Reformation-induced situation was managed have been presented:
The German principle of cujus region, ejus religio, a juxtaposition of small religiously homogenous states of different faiths that co-existed as best they could.
The French solution that regulated down to the last detail the cohabitation of two religions within one single state.
The partition into two henceforth enemy entities of the Low Countries – a bloc which, for not being very centralised, was no less endowed with a clear identity.
In each case in point, it fell to politics, and in no wise to theologians, to manage the situation. These very diverse settlements were all devised by lawyers at the behest of the political authorities and not by theologians who had grudgingly to accommodate them. Gradually, through conflicts that spread over two centuries, the idea that the State alone could come up with a solution to settle religious matters gained purchase. Lawyers became an indispensiable cog in State machinery as the legal processes set in place to endeavour to enforce peace grew in complexity and volume. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) was very broad; the Edict of Nantes (1598) contains a multiplicity of specific articles; the Treaties of Westphalia (1648) which dealt with the sequels of the Thirty Years War[1], the ultimate religious flare-up in the Empire would contain more still and would confirm the official partition of the Low Countries.
These solutions would be followed with far reaching consequences. On the one hand, politics was divorced from religious obedience in the cause of keeping the peace, which could only be achieved through the impartiality of those wielding power. Haltingly, fitfully, a kind of « secularism »
was beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, step by step, a religious, cultural, political and social equivalence between the religions and the states that were home to them was being reinforced, especially between 1550 and 1650. This phenomenon, called “confessionnalisation” contributed to the creation of the states' identity in a now polarised Europe where Protestant and Catholic states were in competition. In both camps, it comforted the role of the monarch and contributed to making them stand out from the mass of common humanity, be they Lutheran heads of both their church and state or the « most Christian »
or “most Catholic” kings, the defenders of the Catholic faith. It contributed to giving them this special role, this sacred aura, a « divine right »
: they had somehow been confirmed in their « sacred dimension »
by this evolution whilst the old medieval institutions essentially founded in feudal obligations fell away and were gradually replaced by modern forms of bureaucracy, by states with defined borders and by the concentration of political power in the hands of one single person or institution, generally a king or a prince.
Thus the breach of the Reformation has had an undoubted impact on state building in Europe. New political configurations came together which would lead to 17th century absolutism, the gradual secularisation of society and later the questioning of political regimes. It is indeed at that time that the main elements of what we call « modernity »
fell into place.
