European History 1001 Lecture Outline (original) (raw)
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In historiography, the predominant portrayal of Charles V is that of a ruler hostile to the Reformation. Various authors, notably those unfavourably inclined towards the Habsburgs, show him as a defender of the Catholic orthodoxy and an opponent of any heresy. He is alleged to have lacked tolerance and endorsed the papacy, as well as to have used military force to combat Lutheranism. In this context, authors draw attention to the Battle of Mühlberg (1547), where the imperial army under Charles V’s command crushed the Protestant forces, leaving the battlefield strewn with the bodies of 8,000 killed and wounded. In this paper, I seek to revise the false and overly demonised image of the Emperor, one that is particularly frequently encountered in authors of evangelical provenance. In my opinion, the notion of a militant Emperor-Catholic which the figure of Charles V has come to evoke effectively diverts one’s attention away from the ideological substrate on which his vision of Christianity evolved: Charles’s religiousness and his association with the teachings of Erasmus of Rotterdam. If this context is disregarded, one cannot hope to understand the approach of the Emperor to Martin Luther and Lutheranism. Consequently, Charles’s idea of Christianity should be outlined in order to demonstrate how it translated into relations with Luther and his movement. The chief proposition I am going to argue is as follows: influenced by Erasmus’ thought, Charles V remained open to Christian humanism, understood Lutherans and sought conciliation with them; however, his attitude was neither appreciated nor acknowledged by the Protestant princes of the Reich, to whom Luther was an instrument allowing to make a bid for greater power and independence, nor was his appeal to the papacy, which rejected everything that was new as a threat to the fossilised dogmas. It is in this light that I will subsequently evaluate the impact that Charles V and Luther had on the Western civilisation.
Counter-reformation, the Spanish Age, and the “crisis of the European conscience”. A new perspective
The fact that we are gathered here to discuss quaestiones disputatae, in essence revisions of the historiography, offers a speaker a certain amount of freedom in approaching a task that, in the terms indicated by the title, would require much more than a short talk. It is a matter of understanding why certain topics and problems are emphasized today rather than others, thus of recognizing, as a first step, that the construction of the past enacted by historians is conditioned by the present and by our perception of it. The questions to highlight, the methods to follow, the choice and interpretation of the documentary sources depend on this constant "updating," more or less consciously felt and made explicit by historians (who are a rather conservative professional category within the horizon of the human sciences).
Book Review: Christianity and Revolutionary Europe c.1750-1830
European History Quarterly, 2006
In this impressively wide-ranging and scholarly book, Nigel Aston tells the tale of the resilience and strength of Christian belief in a period when, conventionally, it has been seen as under attack, first from the Enlightenment and secular authorities anxious to encroach on ecclesiastical privilege, and then from the French Revolution. While always aware of the dangers of making generalizations, Aston is keen to emphasize both the underlying religiosity of much of European society and the 'inherent attractiveness of an active religious life' (2). If, on the eve of the French Revolution, Europe represented a 'diversified Christian culture, but emphatically a Christian one' (47), the same was largely true in the Restoration period too. Aston is at his best when dealing with the two countries on which he is an expert: France and Britain. Particularly praiseworthy is the way in which he handles relatively well-known topics-dechristianization in revolutionary France, the rise of Methodism, Catholic emancipation-with freshness and insight. He is especially interesting in his treatment of the ambivalent relationship between the Church and the Enlightenment, showing that while the work of Hume and Gibbon or Raynal and Voltaire could challenge the authority of the Church, many churchmen also welcomed developments in philosophy that could lead to a more rational, less superstitious religion. The author has an excellent eye for anecdote too, about both well-known figures (Voltaire's endowing the church at Ferney, Linnaeus's location of the Garden of Eden on a Swedish island, Godoy's proposal to raise an army of clergy to fight the French), and more obscure individuals (the atheist Chief Procurator of the Russian Synod, the Archbishop of Canterbury who called for a fusion of the Gallican and Anglican churches, and the Bishop of Clogher found in a compromising position with a guardsman in a London pub). Yet, while Aston should be congratulated for the nuanced and lively nature of his work, it is not without failings. The first, and perhaps most serious, is that, for a book european history quarterly
Spain, Europe and The Wider World 1500–1800
European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, 2011
is surely the most distinguished Anglophone historian of early modern Spain and its empire; and his mastery of that topic has enabled him to make an equally distinguished contribution to our understanding of Europe as a whole between the 15th and 18th centuries. In this collection of some of his most recent articles, essays and lectures, Elliott continues to demonstrate the remarkable qualities which have underpinned that reputation. 'Part 1: Europe' opens with Elliott's important and widely cited Past and Present article, first published in 1992, on 'A Europe of Composite Monarchies', in which he explores more sympathetically than has traditionally been the case this distinctive early modern political structure, its strengths and weaknesses. In 'Learning from the Enemy: Early Modern Britain and Spain', an otherwise less easily-found Dacre Lecture, given in Oxford in 2007 in honour of Hugh Trevor-Roper, one-time mentor of the author, Elliott explores what he identifies as a rather obscure side to the relationship between England and Spain in the later 16th and early 17th centuries: alongside the very negative reaction of the former to the latter, encapsulated in the so-called 'Black Legend' of Catholic cruelty, there was an understandable readiness to admire and imitate some aspects of a dominant Spanish culture and practice, until a reversal of attitude occurred in face of Spanish decline in the later 17th century. For their part, Spaniards were less inclined to look to England for solutions to Spain's problems, at least before the 18th century, and not always then. Nevertheless, his exploration enables Elliott to draw some broader conclusions about a subject which greatly interested the honorand of the lecture-'why societies become dynamic at certain moments in their history', for example Europe between 1500 and 1800-and to suggest that the explanation included a readiness (here, on the part of the competing states of early modern Europe) to contemplate the achievements of others. In 'The General Crisis in Retrospect: A Debate Without End' (2005), Elliott provides an invaluable history of, and commentary on that debate, reiterating his view that it was the state which was revolutionary and the upheavals conservative; he also takes the opportunity to repeat a contention familiar to readers of his work, the importance of the broad canvas and of comparison of one state and society with another, to tease out the crucial features of a historical situation. One further observation by Elliott in this essay is elaborated in that which follows. In 'A Non-Revolutionary Society: Castile in the 1640s' (1990), Elliott explores the paradox that Castile exhibited all the 'preconditions' of revolution in that disturbed decade, but did not in fact revolt. In this way, Elliott throws into relief the subject of loyalty in the past, a theme which historians have arguably neglected for its opposite, disloyalty, rebellion, treachery. In the final essay in this section, 'Europe