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The Age of Confessional Division M16_LEVA2848_03_SE_C15.QXD 1/2/10 12:58 PM Page 456 15 The Age of Confessional Division ᭿ The Peoples of Early Modern Europe ᭿ Disciplining the People ᭿ Hunting Witches ᭿ The Confessional States ᭿ States and Confessions in Eastern Europe ON JULY 10, 1584, CATHOLIC EXTREMIST FRANçOIS GUION, assassin—the use of deception to gain access to the WITH A brace of pistols hidden under his cloak, sur- victim, the vulnerability of leaders who wish to min- prised William the Silent, the Prince of Orange, as gle with the public, the lethal potential of easily con- he was leaving the dining hall of his palace and cealed pistols (a new weapon at that time), the shot him at point-blank range. William led the corruption of politics through vast sums of money, Protestant nobility in the Netherlands, which was and the obsessive hostility of zealots against their in revolt against the Catholic king of Spain. Guion perceived enemies. The widespread acrimony masqueraded as a Protestant for seven years in among the varieties of Christian faith created a cli- order to ingratiate himself with William’s party, and mate of religious extremism during the late six- before the assassination he consulted three teenth and early seventeenth centuries. Catholic priests who confirmed the religious merit Religious extremism was just one manifesta- of his plan. Spain’s representative in the Nether- tion of an anxiety that pervaded European society lands, the Duke of Parma, had offered a reward of at the time—a fear of hidden forces controlling 25,000 crowns to anyone who killed William; at the human events. In an attempt to curb that anxiety, moment of the assassination four other potential the European monarchs formulated their politics assassins were in Delft trying to gain access to the based on the confessions of faith, or statements Prince of Orange. of religious doctrine, peculiar to Catholics or the The murder of William the Silent exemplified an various forms of Protestantism. During this age of ominous figure in Western civilization—the reli- confessional division, European countries polarized giously motivated assassin. There had been many along confessional lines, and governments perse- assassinations before the late sixteenth century, but cuted followers of minority religions, whom they those assassins tended to be motivated by the desire saw as threats to public security. Anxious believers to gain political power or to avenge a personal or everywhere were consumed with pleasing an family injury. Religion hardly ever supplied a motive. angry God, but when they tried to find God within In the wake of the Reformation, killing a political themselves, many Christians seemed only to find leader of the opposing faith to serve God’s plan the Devil in others. became all too common. The assassination of The religious controversies of the age of con- William illustrated patterns of violence that have fessional division redefined the West. During the since become the modus operandi of the political Middle Ages, the West came to be identified with 456 M16_LEVA2848_03_SE_C15.QXD 1/2/10 1:00 PM Page 457 PROCESSION OF THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE During the last half of the sixteenth century, Catholics and Protestants in France formed armed militias or leagues. Bloody confrontations between these militias led to prolonged civil wars. In this 1590 procession of the French Catholic League, armed monks joined soldiers and common citizens in a demonstration of force. the practice of Roman Catholic Christianity. The so in eastern Europe because it did not create Renaissance added to that identity an apprecia- confessional states. During the late sixteenth and tion of pre-Christian history going back to Greek seventeenth centuries, governments reinforced and Roman Antiquity. The Reformation of the religious divisions and attempted to unify their early sixteenth century eroded the unity of peoples around a common set of beliefs. How did Christian Europe by dividing the West into the encounter between the confessions and the Catholic and Protestant camps. This division was state transform Europe into religiously driven especially pronounced in western Europe, but less camps? 457 M16_LEVA2848_03_SE_C15.QXD 1/2/10 1:00 PM Page 458 458 CHAPTER 15 The Age of Confessional Division THE PEOPLES OF EARLY MODERN The sudden swell in human numbers brought EUROPE dramatic and destabilizing consequences that contributed to pervasive anxiety. ᭿ How did the expanding population and price revolution exacerbate religious and political tensions? The Population Recovery During a period historical demographers call During the tenth century if a Rus had wanted the “long sixteenth century” (ca. 1480–1640), to see the sights of Paris—assuming he had the population of Europe began to grow con- even heard of Paris—he could have left Kiev sistently again for the first time since the late and walked under the shade of trees all the way thirteenth century. As shown in Figure 15.1, to France, so extensive were the forests and so European Population, in 1340 on the brink of sparse the human settlements of northern the Black Death, Europe had about 74 million Europe. By the end of the thirteenth century, inhabitants, or 17 percent of the world’s total. the wanderer from Kiev would have needed a By 1400 the population of all of Europe had hat to protect him on the shadeless journey. dropped to 52 million or 14 percent of the Instead of human settlements forming little world’s total. Over the course of the long six- islands in a sea of forests, the forests were by teenth century, Europe’s population grew to then islands in a sea of villages and farms, and 77.9 million, just barely surpassing the from almost any church tower the sharp-eyed pre–Black Death level. traveler could have seen other church towers, Figure 15.2, European Population, 1500– each marking a nearby village or town. At the 1600, depicts some representative population end of the thirteenth century, the European figures for the larger European countries during continent had become completely settled by a the sixteenth century. Two important facts dynamic, growing population, which had emerge from these data. The first is the much cleared the forests for farms. greater rate of growth in northern Europe com- During the fourteenth century all of that pared with southern Europe. England grew by changed. A series of crises—periodic famines, 83 percent, Poland grew by 76 percent, and the catastrophic Black Death, and a general even the tiny, war-torn Netherlands gained economic collapse—left the villages and towns 58 percent. During the same period Italy grew of Europe intact, but a third or more of the population was gone. In that period of desola- tion, many villages looked like abandoned movie sets, and the cities did not have enough 80 people to fill in the empty spaces between the central market square and the city walls. Fields 60 that had once been put to the plow to feed the hungry children of the thirteenth century were 40 neglected and overrun with bristles and bram- bles. During the fifteenth century a general 20 European depression and recurrent epidemics kept the population stagnant. 0 In the sixteenth century the population 1340 1400 1480 1640 began to rebound as European agriculture shifted from subsistence to commercial farming. FIGURE 15.1 European Population in Millions M16_LEVA2848_03_SE_C15.QXD 1/2/10 1:00 PM Page 459 The Peoples of Early Modern Europe 459 25 1500 1550 20 1600 15 10 Population in Millions 5 0 England Germany France Netherlands Belgium Italy Spain Austria- Poland (Spanish Bohemia Netherlands) Country FIGURE 15.2 European Population, 1500–1600 Source: Jan de Vries, “Population,” In Handbook of European History 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 1: Structures and Assertions, (eds.) Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (1994), Table 1, 13. Copyright © 1994 by Brill Academic Publishers. Reproduced with permission of Brill Academic Publishers via Copyright Clearance Center. by only 25 percent and Spain by 19 percent. almost entirely to the landlord as feudal dues These trends signal a massive, permanent shift and to the church as tithing—the obligation to of demographic and economic power from the give to God one-tenth of everything earned or Mediterranean countries of Italy and Spain to produced. Peasant families lived on the edge of northern, especially northwestern, Europe. The existence. During the sixteenth century, subsis- second fact to note from these data is the over- tence agriculture gave way to commercial whelming size of France, which was home to crops, especially wheat, which was sold in about a quarter of Europe’s population. Once town markets and the great cities such as France recovered from its long wars of religion, London, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, its demographic superiority overwhelmed com- Venice, and Barcelona. As commercial agricul- peting countries and made it the dominant ture spread, the population grew because the power in Europe, permanently eclipsing its chief rural population was better fed and more rival, Spain. prosperous. What explains the growth in the popula- The amount of land available, however, tion? To a large extent, the transformation could not provide enough work for the grow- from subsistence to commercial agriculture in ing farm population. As a result, the landless certain regions of Europe made it possible. were forced to take to the road to find their Peasants who practiced subsistence farming fortunes. These vagabonds, as they were consumed about 80 percent of everything they called, exemplified the social problems that raised, and what little was left over went emerged from the uneven distribution of M16_LEVA2848_03_SE_C15.QXD 1/2/10 1:00 PM Page 460 460 CHAPTER 15 The Age of Confessional Division THE RISE OF COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE During the sixteenth century commercial agriculture began to produce signifi- cant surpluses for the expanding population of the cities.
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