Thursday, 20 Oct. MacCulloch, Reformation, 576-607.

Identify: soul-sleep, Kirk Session, Accession Day, holy fairs

If "the great Protestant-Catholic fault line" was "the late medieval Church's claim to be able to offer living humanity an active part in directing the fate of the dead to damnation, Purgatory or heaven," (576) Protestants did not take death lightly. When it came to rituals pertaining to death, "minimal rites of passage" (577) did not prevail. Pay attention to how Protestants performed funerals and what they thought about the fate of the deceased.

Note MacCulloch's distinction of Christianity's "religious system" (579): "it is a religious system as prescribed by the professionals (which on both sides in the Reformation was reformist in intent and agenda), and it is religion as actually practised" (580). Too often we take too seriously official pronouncements about religious belief and life as if religious elites had an unchanging monopoly on these. What many call "popular religion" endured within Protestantism, and, as we learn, Protestant elites tolerated this, even if grudgingly. Scottish Kirk Sessions dealt leniently with "those who went a-maying to ancient holy wells, or drank and danced on Midsummer Day" (582). The Church of England persisted with baptism rituals that Puritans believed were "superstitious and popish" (582). These data suggest that we are jumping to conclusions if we see Protestantism as liberating Europeans from superstitions. Indeed, I propose that we use "superstition" circumspectly when studying religious history. Too often it functions as value-laden term that prevents us from understanding the complex history of religious belief and practice. In the second part of the course, you will notice that some historians regard the endurance of popular religion in Protestantism as a potent indication of the Reformation's failure.

MacCulloch maintains, however, that Protestant clergy "scored an extraordinary success in religious instruction within the territories of confessional Protestantism" (584). Sermons abounded, and "everywhere sermons were the great occasions of the week" (586). Protestants and Catholics intensified their efforts at catechesis. Singing too played an important role in transmitting essential Christian beliefs.

The way that MacCulloch presents the "patterns of life" in Chapter 14 gives an impression of the depth and sincerity of religious commitment in Reformation Europe. His analysis of "godly discipline" reflects this. We may think of discipline as repressive, but the "disciplinary mood" inspired "revolutionary puritans on both sides who wanted everyone to be as pure as themselves" (592). (I assume MacCulloch has in mind Catholics and Protestants when he refers to "puritans on both sides.") In Reformed Protestantism "discipline was constructed from below, not imposed by a prince" (596). Communal participation in judging violations of Christian conduct and the sincerity of apologies "was an ultimate expression of what the Reformation meant: no longer was the act of absolution in the control of a clergyman, but was in the gift of all God's people" (599).

At the end of the chapter, MacCulloch shows that Protestantism was not simply doom and gloom. Protestants celebrated, and the Eucharist, which they "did not downgrade" (601), was a focus of their celebration. Was "the spirit of Protestantism" the spirit of capitalism? Max Weber, author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, has not convinced MacCulloch. He demolishes the idea that capitalist individualism can find its roots in Protestantism and ends by observing that the lesson of the debates over the "spirit of capitalism" is that we need to understand theology in its proper context. Characteristically, MacCulloch warns: "we should never forget that theology is an independent variable, capable in the Reformation of generating huge transformations in society, modes of behaviour and the very shape of the year" (606).