?Rather Than Establishing Unity And Harmony, Religious Developments Have Caused Division And Conflic Essay, Research Paper

??????????????? In order to answer this

question successfully, one must first understand what is meant by

"religious developments" and also to define and concentrate on the

"chosen period of study". In the context of the question, one must

understand religious developments to be the progressive changes made in the

area of theology by prolific thinkers, biblical humanists and also the period’s

most powerful rulers. This could mean whole new movements, such as Calvinism,

or the slight change in religious policy, such as the different approaches to

the matter of convivencia and the Conversos and Moriscos. The period that I shall concentrate upon in this analysis

will be the whole of the sixteenth century, including the important events that

took place in the time leading up to, and away from, this area of history. ??????????????? Religion,

to the people of the sixteenth century, was a very important issue which

governed their lives. The parish priest had more direct effect on an ordinary

person?s life than any government official. The church would have been the most

substantial building in the village, apart from perhaps the manor house, and so

would have been an imposing presence to all who lived near it. At the top of

the church there lay the splendour and power of the church in Rome. In the

renaissance, many people, biblical humanists, philosophers and monks, began to

think about the state of the church and whether it should be changed. This led

to a great surge of activity which spawned many changes in the religious

activities of the 16th Century. The first real religious developments

that were introduced in this period, were perpetrated by Ferdinand and Isabella

of Spain. For 250 Spain had been the host to three different religions;

Catholicism, Judaism and Islam. These three religions had coexisted since long

before the Catholic Kings came to the throne, in a condition known as convivencia. ?Christianity was the dominant faith but the other two minority

religions had managed to integrate themselves successfully into the fabric of

Spanish society, especially in Aragon. However, the twilight years of the 15th

Century, during Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign saw this situation change

drastically, along with the fluctuating social and economic conditions. ??????????????? The

Jewish religion had always been a minority, and so, like most minorities, it

was likely to be attacked at times of unrest. However, the Jews had been

relatively untouched in Spain, with only a few anti-Semitic riots breaking out

periodically. Indeed, Isabella herself had proclaimed in 1477, "All Jews

in my realms are mine and under my care and protection". However, things

were to change. The growth of the false Conversos

Jews (Jews who had embraced the Catholic faith in order to be eligible for

full civil liberties and equal opportunities) was a worry to Catholics. This

anxiety came to a head with Alonso de Hojeda’s report of the widespread problem

of false converts, said to be rife throughout Castile, which lead to the

introduction of the Castilian Inquisition in 1480. The anti Conversos feeling and unstable political

climate of the 1470s also encouraged anti-Semitic demonstrations in Toledo,

Cordoba, Seville and Avila. All this activity unfortunately marked the

beginning the persecution of the Conversos.

?The Inquisition, under the command

of Dominican Friars set about its work with zeal, and in time, most Spaniards

came to support its work, especially as an inquisitor was murdered by angry Conversos in 1485. ??????????????? Many

oppressive policies were approved throughout the 1480, such as forcing all Jews

to wear distinctive yellow badges and to live in ghettos called aljamas, banning Jewish families from

buying food during working hours, subjecting Jews to heavy taxation and even

some towns evicting Jewish families. The Inquisition compounded the hardship by

holding trials for suspected false Conversos

and having them imprisoned, or even killed. The killing of the Conversos was most prolific in the 1480s

with thirty people burnt in a single day in Ciudad Real in 1484, 700 burnt and

7,000 punished in Seville alone in 1488. All this vicious activity was taking

time and attention, time and attention that the monarchs could not afford to

devote with the Granadan crusade going on. So a decree was issued in 1492 that

all Jews had until 31 July to convert to Christianity or emigrate.? This was a severe step, one which, in the

words of an Aragonese Inquisitor, was "a mistake". It divided

families, caused a lot of pain and also removed many "industrious and

hardworking" people which would have brought the country money. The decision

also compounded the problem of false converts, as only 3% of the Jewish

population left the country, meaning that not all of the ones who remained

could be sincere about their new religion. This left the same problem for later

monarchs to deal with. The situation worsened after the decree, with the use of

torture, arrests without trial and the numerous executions by the inquisition

becoming more acceptable. Indeed, Charles V first Cortes of 1518 declared

"Many innocent and guiltless have suffered death, harm, oppression, injury

and infamy". The Jews were the victims of a bloody and divisive conflict

caused by religious developments prompted by the religious fervour of the

Catholic Kings. The Jews were not the only minority group to fall foul of

the religious developments of the Ferdinand and Isabella. The Spanish Muslims

were to become the victims of persecution too. The genesis of the persecution

of these people can be identified as the Granada crusade, instigated by

Isabella once she had secured her place on the throne. Castilian and Aragonese

armies invaded Granada in 1482, starting off a ten year campaign which claimed

many lives, created great economic strain and prompted pressure on the Spanish

people, what with increased taxes.? The

crusade came to a glorious climax for the Catholic Kings with the fall of the

city of Granada in 1492. In the course of the conflict, 100,000 Muslims had

died, or been enslaved, and of the remaining 400,000, half chose to immigrate

to north Africa. The following decade was in general, a period of recovery and

compliance with the traditional spirit of convivencia.

Talavera, the new archbishop of Granada, persuaded Isabella that it would be

best to keep the inquisition out of the province. Instead, the Muslims were

introduced gradually to Christian practices and beliefs. However, this peaceful

existence did not last for long, as there was a growing fear of the Mudejar ?Moors, as they were in constant contact with the Northern African

Moors. Certainly, for Cisneros, the Moors were to great a problem to be treated

so gently. In 1499, he began to enforce conversions on the Mudejar and persuaded Isabella to introduce the Inquisistion. It

was only a matter of time before the pressure was moved up a notch and the

moors were well and truly persecuted. Indeed, in 1500, he persuaded Isabella to

force all Mudejars to convert and

become slaves because they would be ?better Christians?. So, between 1500 and

1501 many of these Moors were forced to convert or emigrate from Granada, and

later, in 1502, Isabella extended the policy to cover the rest of the Moors

throughout her kingdom.? The vast

majority chose to convert and become Moriscos,

and thus convivencia came to an end

and the Inquisition had a new quarry to persecute. The situation for the Moors

had become no better than it was for their fellow minority, the Jews. In

Aragon, the king made them live in aljamas,

avoid sexual relations with Christians and wear distinctive blue clothing.

However, none of these measures succeeded in solving the Muslim question, and

the problem remained into Charles’ reign, when he expelled them all from his

eastern kingdoms in 1526. ??????????????? The

religious policies of Ferdinand and Isabella, were inconsistent and undid years

on convivencia, leaving the people

instead with religious and social intolerance, and an unpopular inquisition.

During their reign, they started to remove two whole peoples, peoples who, by

their own admission, had much to offer the country. The Moors of Aragon were

superb landsmen and had for years played and important part in the Spain’s

economy, and had even remained loyal throughout the Granada war. The religious

developments, did indeed, cause much division and conflict. ??????????????? Towards

the end of Ferdinand?s reign, there was maturing in Germany one of the most

famous religious figures of the 16th Century; Martin Luther. This

was a man who would start the first religious movement to successfully defeat

and break away from the Catholic Church. There would, however, be a lot of

conflict and controversy along the way. By 1520, Luther had clarified many of

his early ideas, such as sola scriptura,

sola fide, two sacraments,

consubstantiation, utraquism, combined church, priest of all believers and

spoke out against indulgences. All of

these ideas were considered very controversual and made Luther very unpopular

with the Catholic church he was trying to reform. They prompted heated debate

amongst the biblical humanists, such as Eck and Erasmus. These ideas offended

the church so, due to their radical nature and also because of the threat they

presented on the hold Rome had over the German people and their means of

income. If Indulgences were to be ceased then it would remove a lucrative

income for the church. If the princes did take up Lutheranism, as he was

pleading with them to, then they would cease to receive taxes from that

princedom. These ideas also seemed to the church to encourage sin. If, as

Luther was preaching, one could get to heaven by simply believing, without

confessing, or buying an indulgence, then it would allow people behave as they

wished with no fear of punishment (it was precisely this argument which

prompted some people to convert to Lutheranism). The Pope was even prompted to

call him a heretic and issued a Bull

Exsurge Domine in July 1520 that gave him 60 days to recant on 41 points or

face excommunication. Luther did not recant and was eventually excommunicated

in 1521. ??????????????? His

excommunication did not stop Lutheranism from spreading around the north of

Germany. While his ideas repelled some good Catholics due to their heretical

nature, they also appealed to other sectors of society for other reasons. The

four main classes Luther appealed to were; Peasants, Towns, Knights and

Princes. In each of these areas of society there were people who took up

Lutheranism, either because they genuinely believed in the theology, or because

they believed there was something in it for them to gain. All four of them

manifested their belief in Luther with violence. ??????????????? The

Knights were an old class which was in decline, lesser noblemen living in

castles on small estates. They were suffering from a deteriorating standard of

living and resented the Princes’ power and influence. There were amongst them,

a number of educated people, biblical humanists who understood and supported

Luther’s ideas. However, they also saw his theology as a way of increasing

their power and as a way of attacking the Princes. The Knights had two

particularly outspoken men who were prepared to lead a movement against the

church. They were Von Hutten and Sickingen. They led an attack by the Knights

on the Bishops and Archbishops in Germany in 1522, as they believed them to

epitomise corruption in the church. It was a bloody revolt in which several

Bishops died, including the Bishop of Trier. It was put down by the forcibly

princes and in response Luther produced a pamphlet on "Secular authority

and to what extent it should be obeyed". This went some way in restoring

the Princes’ view of Luther, but also caused the Knights to decline even faster

and to lose their faith in Luther as a religious leader. ??????????????? The

Peasants were also responsible for a revolt, this time in 1524-25. They,

however, did not even understand Luther’s ideas correctly. They had got hold of

his ideas by the means of woodcuts, specifically made "for the sake of the

simple folk". However, due to the imprecise and ambiguous nature of these

woodcuts, the ideas were not clearly enough conveyed, and instead of seeing

Luther as a positive teacher of new religious ideas, they saw him as a kind of

"holy man" and the Catholic Church as the bringer of evils; the force

which had kept them suppressed for so long. This situation was not helped by

the "peasant messiah" myth that was present in Medieval Germany. The

peasants saw Luther as the great peasant leader who would lead them out of

hardship and into greatness. One man in particular did a lot to spread this

peasant movement. His name was Muntzer. He, or some of his associates published

the Twelve Articles of Memmingham, a document which listed twelve peasant grievances,

and which clearly held references to Lutheran ideas. In an attempt to calm

things down, Luther published his "Friendly Criticism of the Twelve

Articles" in 1525, but he could not control the disturbances which had

been set in motion by mounting peasant grievances. All this disturbing activity

finally erupted into a bloody revolt in 1524, with peasants all over Germany

involved in killing and pillaging priests and churches. In response, Luther

published his paper "Against the Thieving, murdering Hordes of

Peasants" in 1525, in which he encouraged the Princes to destroy the

peasants and to show no mercy until they had submitted. The Princes obliged.

They came down very hard on the marauding peasants, killing hundreds. In

publishing this paper, Luther was showing himself to be not all the peasants

thought him to be; thus he lost the support and trust of a whole generation of

working Germans. ??????????????? Lutheranism

also had a role to play in the lives of the townsfolk. Indeed, it was possibly

the towns people who were the most responsive to his ideas. This was due to the

fact that the towns held the most concentrated amounts of learned people,

people who could go to the universities and exchange views and ideas with

others of the same mental calibre. In the towns too, it was easiest to make the

public aware of Luther’s ideas, by the use of pamphlets and woodcuts which

could be sold or given out in the public areas of the towns, and by evangelism

too. The network of traders that made their way from town to town also aided

the spread of Luther. In this way, the people of the towns in Northern Germany

began to take up Lutheran ideas. However, there were certain ways in which they

could personally benefit from converting. They believed (wrongly) that Luther

encouraged the practice of usury, the Protestant work ethic allowed them to

earn money more days of the week, in cutting themselves off from Rome, they

were removing the need to pay so many taxes. Indeed, the fact that the support

in towns was popular (in Ulm, 1530, when citizens were asked to vote on whether

to maintain the reformation or return to Catholicism, 87% of the voters were in

favour of reform) shows that religious consciences were not the only factor in

town’s conversion. In fact, such was the eagerness for some towns to convert,

that acts were committed which caused division and conflict. One example of

such activity occurred when Luther was still incarcerated at Wartburg in 1522.

A group of people in Wittenburg, led by Karlstadt, Muntzer and the Zwichau Prophets

committed iconoclasm, smashing statues and icons in the churches, and generally

being very disruptive and violent. So worried and disturbed was Luther this,

that he came out of hiding and made his way there in disguise in order to

deliver a series of eight sermons intended to calm things down.?? ??????????????? One of

the central requirements for the success of Lutheranism was the co-operation of

the Princes. Luther wanted a combined state and church and in order for this to

be done, the support of the Princes was needed. To begin with, there were not

many princes who were willing to completely break from tradition and risk

conflict, either because they did not believe in Luther?s ideas and thought him

a heretic, or because they feared retribution from Rome and the Holy Roman

Emperor. There were, however three man exceptions to this, Philip of Hesse,

Frederick?s successor, John of Saxony and Duke Albrecht of Prussia. Eventually,

over half of Germany was to be ruled by Lutheran princes, but it was nearly 30

years before that came about. There are many reasons why a Prince may have

wanted to convert, but one can never be always sure which of them it was that

prompted them to reject tradition and the Catholic faith. If a prince converted

then he would stand to gain a lot financially. He would get all the taxes meant

for the church and also the numerous church lands in his princedom. Thus he

would expand his sovereign powers and gain almost absolute authority, not

having to share power with bishops and the Pope. However, numerous princes converted, but still more remained

Catholic. There was fear that these new breed of Princes would cause trouble,

and so the League of Dessau was set up in 1525. This made the Lutheran princes

anxious, and so when false details of an attack on them were leaked in 1528,

Philip of Hesse and John of Saxony instigated a pre-emptive strike. Catholics

were outraged. Their fears that Lutheranism could only lead to conflict seemed

to have been confirmed. So the anti Lutheran movement was stepped up. In

response, the Lutheran princes, against Luther?s wishes, set up the

Schmalkaldic League in 1531. For the next twenty or so years, there were

conflicts, leading up to the ?Schmalkaldic Wars? and eventually the Peace at

Augsberg in 1555. We can see, therefor, that Lutheranism, as a religious

development caused a lot of conflict and division. Luther, however, was by no means the sole reformatory force

in the early half of the 16th Century. Just over the border from

Germany, in Switzerland there was a man hard at work developing his own views

on the state of the church and how he believed it should be run. His name was

Zwingli. A few months after Luther had made his stand against indulgences in

1518, Zwingli became a preacher at the Great Minister in Zurich. It was there

that he made public his increasingly radical ideas, finally making his official

break with Rome in 1523. This marked the beginning of a highly turbulent period

in Swiss history. Zwingli claimed that he had developed his ideas independently

of Luther. They were, however, remarkably similar, with Zwingli promoting sola scriptura , abolition of Mass and

so on. They did, however, differ on one very important area: consubstantiation. Whereas Luther

believed that the bread and wine took on the essence of Christ’s flesh and

blood, Zwingli believed that it was a mere representation of the Last Supper.

This was sacrementarianism.? It was this point which caused the meeting

at Marburg in 1529 to be a failure. Thus, we can see that even the Protestants

themselves were divided. Zwingli also differed from Luther in that he believed in the

use of force to spread the faith. Unlike his German counterpart, he actively

preached to his followers that violence was a viable means of converting the

public. In fact, he established a Schmalkaldic League style council of seven

reformed Swiss cities as early as 1527, called the Christian Civic Union. This

league would defend the faith, by force if necessary. In answer to the

formation of such a league, and the demands Zwingli later made on Zurich to

push reform in the rest of the cantons, the remaining five Catholic cantons

left in central Switzerland formed their own league, the Christian Aliance, in

1529. With two opposing factions now equipped with a defensive force, a clash

seemed unavoidable. The arrival of war seemed imminent in 1529, after the

controversy over the right of Unterwalden, one of the Catholic cantons, to

appoint the new Governor of the Freie Aemter. This was a position which was of

strategic importance to both of the increasingly hostile disciplines. Zwingli

was determined not to allow the Catholics control of the area, and so he

threatened to leave Zurich, unless they declared war on the Catholic cantons.

However, war was averted by Berne’s doubt that faith could be brought "by

means of spears and halberds" and wish not to disrupt the Swiss

Confederation with civil war. Thus a compromise was brought. It did, however,

frustrate Zwingli’s wish to unite Switzerland in Protestantism by war. The

forced peace could not last long. Zwingli continued to work towards the

political downfall of the Catholic cantons, and was gratified by the economic

blockade that the Protestants set up on 1530. It did, however, prompt the five

Catholic cantons to declare war on Zurich. The first battle of this new

Protestant war, at Kappel in October 1531, was a disaster, resulting in the

massacre of Zurich’s forces, and the death of Zwingli. It was not only Zwingli himself that caused problems, but

those inspired by his beliefs as well. One principal group comes to the fore;

the Anabaptists. These were people who were originally Zwinglians, but took his

belief, that the Bible was the sole authority, to what they saw to be its

logical conclusion. This meant that, on failing to find any clear reference to

infant baptism, they insisted that the practice should be abandoned and

replaced with baptism in adulthood. This was seen as extremely heretical, as it

meant that every individual could choose for himself whether or not to join the

church. This might lead to competing religious sects, which would then lead to

a divided community. The Anabaptists also wanted to separate themselves from

the Roman church by ceasing to pay tithes and electing their own ministers.

This meant that, as well as being a threat to the established church, the

Anabaptists were a political threat as well. This was more than the church was

prepared to stand for. Zwingli’s followers saved the Catholics the trouble of

suppressing this new group, as they saw the Anabaptists to be as much of a

threat to their status quo as their traditional counterparts did. Thus in 1526,

the Council of Zurich decreed that anyone discovered to be an Anabaptist would

be met with the death penalty. The following year, the leading dissident, Felix

Mantz, was drowned by a mob. This prompted the Anabaptists to flee to the Alps,

along the Rhine and to other parts of Europe. They lost any coherence they had

before, and also due to their dispersal lost the base of support they had in

the rural communities of Switzerland. This was, however, not the end of the Anabaptists. Due to

the movement’s now fragmentary setup, its characteristics varied enormously. A

man by the name of Melchior Hoffman was an example of one of the more militant

sides to the discipline. He travelled around the Rhineland, predicting a

violent apocalypse, set to take place in 1533. He believed that he was the

second Elijah sent to prepare the world for the day of judgement. He built up

some considerable support, before he was imprisoned in 1533. His followers,

however, remained active without their spiritual leader, preparing for the day

of reckoning. They poured into Munster, whose mayor, Bernt Knipperdolig had

earlier met Hoffman and approved of the radicals. They were led this time by

Jan? Buekels and Jan Mattys, who

forceably re-baptised the whole poulation and abolished private property. It

was not long before the city was under siege by the Bishop of Munster. Under

siege, the hysteria reached epic proportions. Mattys believed believed God had

empowered him with invulnerability to go and face the Bishop in battle. He was

killed by the Bishop’s troops. That left Beukels as the dictator of Munster. He

declared himself King Jan, legalised polygamy, married sixteen wives, beheaded

one for impertinence and made sins punishable by death. The Bishop, however,

now aided by Philip of Hesse, found weak spots in the walls, and took the city

by force in 1535. Jan and Knipperdollig were both killed and their corpses hung

up on display. The Anabaptists would now forever be associated with division,

bloodshed and conflict. The persecution was now stepped up, and 2000-3000 lost

their lives in the Netherlands alone in the next fourteen years. We can again

see that this religious development caused an incredible amount of conflict,

trouble and division. ??????????????? Yet

there was still another major figure in the Protestant reformist movement to

come. He would head one of the most successful religious movements of the 16th

Century and breathe new life into the subsiding initial impetus of

protestantism provided by Luther. Like Luther, Calvin was learned man in

theology, having studied to enter the clergy at a university in his homeland of

France. He also suffered a period of doubt and decided to solve the problem of

spiritual uncertainty by forming his own theological ideas. He would eventually

set up his own kind of "theocrasy"

in Geneva, but only after several years of refining his views and trying to

convince the public to convert to his view of religion. Indeed, on his first

foray into Geneva, he was spurned, and the town decided to follow Zwingli’s

ideas instead. They found Calvin too obstinate and his ideas too demanding on

their lives. After excommunicating the whole town, Calvin went to Strasbourg in

1538 to revise his "Institutes of Christian Religion". There he

remained, teaching and writing, until 1541, when he was invited back to Geneva

by a penitent council. There he remained until his death in 1564. We can see

here, yet another example of division and conflict, even amongst fellow

Protestants. ??????????????? Calvinism

caused a lot of conflict abroad, indeed it became known as "the religion

of revolt". The countries in which it had the most impact (excluding

Geneva) were France, Scotland the Netherlands. In each case, there were genuine

religious followers, but there were also "politiques",

people who converted to Calvinism for mere political reasons. Thus, we cannot

entirely blame Calvinism for all the conflict and controversy surrounding it. There were people who saw Calvinism as

a way of either distancing themselves from the authority of the Government and

the papacy or as a good pretext for forming some kind of resistance to unwanted

authority. Having said that, we must acknowledge that Calvinism was an extreme

religion and actively encouraged the use of violence to protect the movement

(Philippe du Plessis-Mornay’s Vindiciae

contra Tyrannos) and thus cannot be exempt from blame for its consequences.

Without Calvinism, there would have been no pretext for the events in the

Netherlands, France and Scotland, though one could argue that they would have

happened anyway, due to the political and social climate of the time. ??????????????? With

all the concentration on Protestant religious reformers, it is important not to

forget that the Catholic Church itself instigated a period of reform, commonly

referred to as the "Counter Reformation". This is a misleading term,

however, as it implies that the catholic reformist movement was a direct

reaction to Protestant reformers like Luther. This was not the case, as reform

was put into effect before Luther emerged, albeit not in such great scale as

later on in the 16th Century. An example of this would be the

religious changes made by Ferdinand and Isabella, as discussed above. However,

despite this, there are often seen to be three main champions of the Catholic

Reformation; Philip II, the Papacy and the Council of Trent. The reforms put

into effect by these groups also caused a lot of conflict and division. For

example, the reforms put into action by Paul III and his successors led to the

establishment of the Inquisition of Rome in 1542, the formation of the Jesuit

order in 1540 and the opening of the council of Trent, the sentencing to the

galleys over a hundred friars if ill repute and the opening of the first Roman

Index of 1559. All of these things caused the Roman Church to be placed under a

lot of strain, as it caused some amount of division within the papacy, as many

of the religious men of the time would fall foul of such measures. The city of

Rome too could not escape the vigour for cleansing. The city was purged of many

of its sorcerors, homosexuals and prostitutes too. This was accompanied with

the extensive re-education of the local priests in an attempt to stamp out

superstition amongst the common man. ??????????????? However,

there was only so much that the Papacy could accomplish from Rome, and a lot of

the reform depended on local rulers and monarchs to instigate their own

changes. A good example of this is the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria. Duke Albrecht

started religious visitations as early as 1558, five years before the

conclusion of the Council of Trent and in 1570, established the College of

Ecclesiastical Councillors to enforce the decrees. The best example, however,

of a monarch putting into action his own reforms, is Philip II. He was renown

for his extreme piety and Catholic Sentiments and also for his desire not to be

"the ruler of heretics". In fact, heresy was not that serious a

problem in Spain during Philip’s reign, and he instead devoted his attention to

mystics, humanists, Protestants, deviant Catholics and lapsed Moriscos and Conversos. The Inquisition was put hard at work, investigating

40,000 cases and burning 250 of them.?

They victimised people guilty of blasphemy, sacrilage and sex outside

marriage. All of this obviously caused conflict, on a social scale, but none of

it caused any real political trouble. It was only the Moriscos revolt of 1568-70 that caused dramatic conflict and

division. It was very bloody, with thousands killed and was an embarrassment to

Philip as it took him too long to put it down (all of his money and troops were

in the Netherlands). It resulted in the inevitable completion of the work that

the Catholic Kings had started seventy or so years before, when Philip completely

expelled the Moriscos from Granada.

Thus we can see the legacy of the movement started at the beginning of the

century concluded towards the end of the century. So we can see here that even

the Catholic reformist movement came with its share of tension, conflict and

division. ??????????????? In

conclusion, it must be said that I agree, to a certain extent, with the idea

that religious developments in the 15th Century caused division and

conflict. It has been proven here that religious developments did cause a lot

of violence, trouble, division and mistrust amongst the people of the 16th

Century. Many died, or were expelled from their homes for their chosen movement

and this had severe political and social consequences, the removal of the Moriscos for example. However, this is

not to say that these religious developments didn’t establish unity and

harmony, because many of them did. Religious movements such as Lutheranism,

Zwingliism and Calvinism, despite some false converts, brought together many

like minded people who could feel at ease with one another and were united in

their common belief. Calvinism is an extreme example, with its solid structure

and religious base at Geneva adding to the stability and harmony of the

Calvinists. Without Luther, the Lutheran Princes of Germany would never have

come together to work for a common goal. The people of Germany were united by

Luther, in a German Nationalist feeling against the Catholic Church. Nothing

else in that century brought together the people as Luther did. ??????????????? Also

all the division and conflict cited above, could not have been solely brought

on by religious developments. It was an age of change anyway, and change cannot

be brought about without destroying the old. It was time for change and so time

for the necessary conflict. Change was happening too fast, socially and

politically, due to the age of Enlightenment, for conflict not to occur. There

are hundreds of examples of conflict and division which was not caused by

religion, for example the Netherlands revolt, the wars in Italy and Henry

VIII’s numerous attacks on France; he simply enjoyed war. However, despite all

this, I am inclined to conclude that religious developments caused more

division and conflict than unity and harmony.