WEBVTT NOTE 5. Protestants and Catholics 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.560 5. Protestants and Catholics 1. Luther, Calvin and State Absolutism 2 00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:19.680 We have seen that the counter-reformation of the 16th century had to carry on a two-front 3 00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:28.820 intellectual war on behalf of scholasticism and natural law, against Protestants and crypto-Protestants, 4 00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:34.640 and also against secularist apologists for an absolute state. 5 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:41.520 These latter two seemingly contrasting groups were closer than merely having the same enemy. 6 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:47.600 In many ways they were twins and not simply fortuitous allies. 7 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:56.000 Despite their many differences, Martin Luther, 1483-1546, son of a German miner and John 8 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:06.280 John Calvin, born Jean Covin, of which Calvin is the latinized name, 1509-1564, son of a 9 00:01:06.280 --> 00:01:12.400 French attorney and leading town official, whose new religious sects between them swept 10 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:17.240 northern Europe, agreed on some crucial fundamentals. 11 00:01:17.240 --> 00:01:23.200 In particular, their social philosophy and theology rested on the basic proposition that 12 00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:32.280 Man is totally depraved, steeped in sin. If this is so, man could scarcely achieve salvation 13 00:01:32.280 --> 00:01:39.720 even partially through his own efforts. Therefore, salvation comes not from man's non-existent 14 00:01:39.720 --> 00:01:48.160 free will, but as an arbitrary and unintelligible gift of unearned grace from God, a gift which 15 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:54.320 which he for his own reasons hands out only to a predestined elect. 16 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:57.760 All of the non-elect are damned. 17 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:04.680 Furthermore, as man is totally depraved and a slave of Satan, his reason, let alone his 18 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:08.600 sense of enjoyment, can never be trusted. 19 00:02:08.600 --> 00:02:15.100 Neither reason nor the senses can in any way be trusted to form a social ethics. 20 00:02:15.100 --> 00:02:21.460 can only come from the divine will through biblical revelation. 21 00:02:21.460 --> 00:02:26.980 To this day, fundamentalist Calvinists are taught to sum up their creed in the acronym 22 00:02:26.980 --> 00:02:36.580 TULIP, T-U-L-I-P, perhaps also recalling the Dutch vastnesses of Calvinism. 23 00:02:36.580 --> 00:02:49.060 P. Total Damnation. U. Unconditional Election. L. Limited Atonement. I. Irresistible Grace. 24 00:02:49.060 --> 00:02:53.420 P. Perseverance of the Saints. 25 00:02:53.420 --> 00:03:00.820 In short, man is damned totally. His atonement can only be limited and insufficient. The 26 00:03:00.820 --> 00:03:08.580 The only thing that can and does unconditionally save and elect among men is God's irresistible 27 00:03:08.580 --> 00:03:11.060 grace. 28 00:03:11.060 --> 00:03:17.600 If reason cannot be used to frame an ethic, this means that Luther and Calvin had to, 29 00:03:17.600 --> 00:03:24.160 in essence, throw out natural law, and in doing so they jettisoned the basic criteria 30 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:30.520 developed over the centuries by which to criticize the despotic actions of the state. 31 00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:37.960 Indeed, Luther and Calvin, relying on isolated biblical passages rather than on an integrated 32 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:45.400 philosophic tradition, opined that the powers that be are ordained of God, and that therefore 33 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:53.680 the King, no matter how tyrannical, is divinely appointed and must always be obeyed. 34 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:58.960 This doctrine, of course, played into the hands of the rising absolute monarchs and 35 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:01.040 their theoreticians. 36 00:04:01.040 --> 00:04:07.000 Whether Catholic or Protestant, these secularists pushed their religion to the background of 37 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:08.520 life. 38 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:14.120 Socially and politically they held, as we shall see below, that the state and its ruler 39 00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:21.200 are absolute, that the ruler must seek to preserve and expand his power, and that his 40 00:04:21.200 --> 00:04:24.360 as dictates must be obeyed. 41 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:32.080 It is therefore the early Jesuits of the Counter-Reformation who saw and analyzed the crucial link between 42 00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:39.680 the Protestant leaders and such amoralist secularists as Niccolo Machiavelli. 43 00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:46.440 As Professor Skinner writes, the early Jesuit theorists clearly recognized the pivotal point 44 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:53.080 at which the political theories of Luther and Machiavelli may be said to converge. 45 00:04:53.080 --> 00:04:58.720 Both of them were equally concerned, for their own very different reasons, to reject the 46 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:05.720 idea of the law of nature as an appropriate moral basis for political life. 47 00:05:05.720 --> 00:05:11.600 It is in consequence in the works of the early Jesuits that we first encounter the familiar 48 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:17.680 and the uncoupling of Luther and Machiavelli as the two founding fathers of the impious 49 00:05:17.680 --> 00:05:25.420 modern state. Moreover, Luther had to rely for the spread of his religion on the German 50 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:32.920 and other European monarchs. His preaching of all-out obedience to the ruler was reinforced 51 00:05:32.920 --> 00:05:40.640 by this practical concern. In addition, the secular princes themselves had a juicy economic 52 00:05:40.640 --> 00:05:48.640 The Confiscation of the Often Wealthy Monasteries and Other Church Property 53 00:05:48.640 --> 00:05:58.640 Underlying at least part of the motives of the monarchy and nobility of the new Protestant states was the lure of greed and grab. 54 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:07.440 Thus, when Gustaf Vasa, King of Sweden, became a Lutheran in 1524, he immediately transferred 55 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:14.400 the church tithes into taxes going to the Crown, and three years later he confiscated 56 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:17.680 the entire property of the Catholic Church. 57 00:06:17.680 --> 00:06:24.960 Similarly, in Denmark, the newly Lutheran kings seized the monastic lands and confiscated 58 00:06:24.960 --> 00:06:36.260 In Germany, Albert of Hohenzollern accompanied his Lutheran conversion by seizing the lands 59 00:06:36.260 --> 00:06:42.960 of the Catholic Teutonic Knights, while Philip of Hesse grabbed all the monastic lands in 60 00:06:42.960 --> 00:06:49.920 his state, much of the proceeds going into his own personal coffers. 61 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:56.320 In addition to grabbing the lands and revenues, the monarchs in each of the lands seized control 62 00:06:56.320 --> 00:07:03.380 of the church itself and converted the Lutheran church into a state-run church, to the plaudits 63 00:07:03.380 --> 00:07:10.760 of Martin Luther and his disciples, who championed the idea of a state-dominated church. 64 00:07:10.760 --> 00:07:17.000 In the city of Geneva, John Calvin and his disciples imposed a totalitarian theocracy 65 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:24.360 for a time, but this church-run state proved to be an aberration in mainstream Calvinism, 66 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:30.160 which triumphed in Scotland, Holland, and Switzerland, and had considerable influence 67 00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:33.280 in France and England. 68 00:07:33.280 --> 00:07:39.660 An outstanding example of a state-run church as a motive for reformation was the establishment 69 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:42.880 of the Anglican Church in England. 70 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:48.480 The defection from Catholicism of Henry VIII was accompanied by the confiscation of the 71 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:56.200 monasteries and the parceling out of these lands, either by gift or by sale at low cost, 72 00:07:56.200 --> 00:08:00.260 to favored groups of nobles and gentry. 73 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:07.540 About 2,000 monks and nuns throughout England, as well as about 8,000 laborers in the monasteries, 74 00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:14.180 are thus dispossessed for the benefit of a new class of large landholders beholden to 75 00:08:14.180 --> 00:08:22.980 the crown and not likely to permit any return to a Roman Catholic monarchy in Britain. 76 00:08:22.980 --> 00:08:28.480 2. Luther's Economics 77 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:34.940 As a man fundamentally opposed to later scholastic refinements or even to the kind of integral 78 00:08:34.940 --> 00:09:02.660 A Confused, Contradictory and Unsystematic Thinker at Best, Luther was unsurprisingly 79 00:09:02.660 --> 00:09:10.660 are the least consistent in an area of secular affairs, economics, in which he had little interest. 80 00:09:10.660 --> 00:09:19.660 Thus, on a crucial question which had vexed scholastics for centuries, whether private property is natural or conventional, 81 00:09:19.660 --> 00:09:27.660 that is, merely the product of positive law, Luther was characteristically anti-intellectual. 82 00:09:27.660 --> 00:09:31.660 He was not interested in such questions, therefore they were trivial. 83 00:09:31.660 --> 00:09:37.660 It is vain to mention these things. They cannot be acquired by thought. 84 00:09:37.660 --> 00:09:43.660 As Dr. Gary North has commented, so much for fifteen hundred years of debate. 85 00:09:43.660 --> 00:09:51.660 All in all, Richard Taney's assessment of Luther on these matters is perhaps not an overstatement. 86 00:09:51.660 --> 00:09:56.660 Confronted with the complexities of foreign trade and financial organization, 87 00:09:56.660 --> 00:10:03.820 Confusion, or with the subtleties of economic analysis. He, Luther, is like a savage introduced 88 00:10:03.820 --> 00:10:11.500 to a dynamo or a steam engine. He is too frightened and angry even to feel curiosity. Attempts 89 00:10:11.500 --> 00:10:17.480 to explain the mechanism merely enrage him. He can only repeat that there is a devil in 90 00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:23.020 it and that good Christians will not meddle with the mystery of iniquity. 91 00:10:23.020 --> 00:10:25.660 The rest is confusion. 92 00:10:25.660 --> 00:10:31.660 Upholding the commandment prohibiting theft meant that Luther had to be, at least in some 93 00:10:31.660 --> 00:10:35.900 sense, an advocate of the rights of private property. 94 00:10:35.900 --> 00:10:42.380 But to Luther, stealing meant not only what everyone defines to be theft, but also taking 95 00:10:42.380 --> 00:10:49.420 advantage of others at market, warehouses, wine and beer sellers, workshops. 96 00:10:49.420 --> 00:10:55.220 In different writings, sometimes even within the same one, Luther was capable of denouncing 97 00:10:55.220 --> 00:11:01.820 a person who makes use of the market in his own willful way, proud and defiant, as though 98 00:11:01.820 --> 00:11:09.100 he had a good right to sell at as high a price as he chose, and none could interfere. 99 00:11:09.100 --> 00:11:15.660 While also writing, anyone may sell what he has for the highest price he can get, so long 100 00:11:15.660 --> 00:11:40.660 On the just price, Luther tends to revert to the minority medieval view that a just price is not the market price, but a cost of production plus expenses, and profit for labor and risk of the merchant. 101 00:11:40.660 --> 00:11:49.660 On usury in particular, Luther tended to revert to the drastic prohibition that the Catholic Church had long left behind. 102 00:11:49.660 --> 00:11:55.660 The census contract he would ban, as he would Lucram Cessens. 103 00:11:55.660 --> 00:12:04.660 Money was sterile, there should be no increase in price for time as against cash payments for goods, etc. 104 00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:11.020 All the old nonsense, which the scholastics had spent centuries burying or transforming, 105 00:12:11.020 --> 00:12:13.240 was back intact. 106 00:12:13.240 --> 00:12:18.820 It is certainly fitting that, as we have seen, one of Luther's great theological opponents 107 00:12:18.820 --> 00:12:25.620 in Germany was his former friend Johann Eck, a Catholic theologian and friend of the great 108 00:12:25.620 --> 00:12:32.340 Fugger banking family, who was even ahead of his time in arguing in thoroughgoing fashion 109 00:12:32.340 --> 00:12:35.380 in favor of usury. 110 00:12:35.380 --> 00:12:42.060 Yet despite his opposition to usury, Luther advised the young ruler of Saxony not to abolish 111 00:12:42.060 --> 00:12:47.380 interest or to relieve debtors of the burden of paying it. 112 00:12:47.380 --> 00:12:52.940 Interest is, after all, a common plague that all have taken upon themselves. 113 00:12:52.940 --> 00:12:58.540 We must put up with it, therefore, and hold debtors to it. 114 00:12:58.540 --> 00:13:03.940 Some of these contradictions can be reconciled in the light of Luther's deeply pessimistic 115 00:13:03.940 --> 00:13:08.980 view of man and, therefore, of human institutions. 116 00:13:08.980 --> 00:13:15.080 In the wicked secular world, he believed, we cannot expect people or institutions to 117 00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:18.380 act in accordance with the Christian gospel. 118 00:13:18.380 --> 00:13:25.060 Therefore, in contrast to the Catholic attempt through the art of casuistry to apply moral 119 00:13:25.060 --> 00:13:55.020 John Calvin's social and economic views closely paralleled Luther's, and their 120 00:13:55.020 --> 00:13:57.960 There is no point in repeating them here. 121 00:13:57.960 --> 00:14:04.340 There are only two main areas of difference, their views on usury and on the concept of 122 00:14:04.340 --> 00:14:10.380 the calling, although the latter difference is more marked for the later Calvinist Puritans 123 00:14:10.380 --> 00:14:13.780 of the seventeenth century. 124 00:14:13.780 --> 00:14:19.660 Calvin's main contribution to the usury question was in having the courage to dump the prohibition 125 00:14:19.660 --> 00:14:21.580 altogether. 126 00:14:21.580 --> 00:14:27.260 The son of an important town official had only contempt for the Aristotelian argument 127 00:14:27.260 --> 00:14:29.660 that money is sterile. 128 00:14:29.660 --> 00:14:36.540 A child, he pointed out, knows that money is only sterile when locked away somewhere, 129 00:14:36.540 --> 00:14:41.620 but who in their right mind borrows to keep money idle. 130 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:46.460 Merchants borrow in order to make profits on their purchases, and hence money is then 131 00:14:46.460 --> 00:14:48.260 fruitful. 132 00:14:48.260 --> 00:14:54.900 As for the Bible, Luke's famous injunction only orders generosity towards the poor, while 133 00:14:54.900 --> 00:15:00.700 Hebraic law in the Old Testament is not binding in modern society. 134 00:15:00.700 --> 00:15:06.900 To Calvin, then, usury is perfectly licit, provided that it is not charged in loans to 135 00:15:06.900 --> 00:15:10.460 the poor who would be hurt by such payment. 136 00:15:10.460 --> 00:15:15.980 Also, any legal maximum, of course, must be obeyed. 137 00:15:15.980 --> 00:15:22.820 And finally, Calvin maintained that no one should function as a professional moneylender. 138 00:15:22.820 --> 00:15:30.380 The odd result was that hedging his explicit pro-usery doctrine with qualification, Calvin 139 00:15:30.380 --> 00:15:37.860 in practice converged on the views of such scholastics as Beale, Zumanhart, Kajetan and 140 00:15:37.860 --> 00:15:39.380 Eck. 141 00:15:39.380 --> 00:15:45.860 Calvin began with a sweeping theoretical defense of interest-taking and then hedged it about 142 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:48.260 with Qualifications. 143 00:15:48.260 --> 00:15:55.960 The liberal scholastics began with a prohibition of usury and then qualified it away. 144 00:15:55.960 --> 00:16:02.640 But while in practice the two groups converged and the scholastics in discovering and elaborating 145 00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:09.840 upon exceptions to the usury ban were theoretically more sophisticated and fruitful, Calvin's 146 00:16:09.840 --> 00:16:15.240 Calvin's bold break with the formal man was a liberating breakthrough in Western thought 147 00:16:15.240 --> 00:16:17.060 and practice. 148 00:16:17.060 --> 00:16:23.540 It also threw the responsibility for applying teachings on usury from the church or state 149 00:16:23.540 --> 00:16:26.620 to the individual's conscience. 150 00:16:26.620 --> 00:16:32.800 As Taney puts it, the significant feature in his, Calvin's, discussion of the subject 151 00:16:32.800 --> 00:16:41.120 is that he assumes credit to be a normal and inevitable incident in the life of a society. 152 00:16:41.120 --> 00:16:46.720 A more subtle difference, but in the long run perhaps having more influence on the development 153 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:52.760 of economic thought, was the Calvinist concept of the calling. 154 00:16:52.760 --> 00:16:59.080 This new concept was embryonic in Calvin and was developed further by later Calvinists 155 00:16:59.080 --> 00:17:04.100 and especially Puritans in the late 17th century. 156 00:17:04.100 --> 00:17:10.120 Older economic historians such as Max Weber have made far too much of the Calvinist as 157 00:17:10.120 --> 00:17:15.320 against Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of the calling. 158 00:17:15.320 --> 00:17:22.520 All these religious groups emphasize the merit of being productive in one's labor or occupation, 159 00:17:22.520 --> 00:17:25.400 one's calling in life. 160 00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:31.800 But there is, especially in the later Puritans, the idea of success in one's calling as a 161 00:17:31.800 --> 00:17:36.240 visible sign of being a member of the elect. 162 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:42.680 The success is striven for, of course, not to prove that one is a member of the elect 163 00:17:42.680 --> 00:17:49.640 destined to be saved, but assuming that one is in the elect by virtue of one's Calvinist 164 00:17:49.640 --> 00:18:02.760 A Calvinist emphasis on postponement of earthly gratification led to a particular stress on 165 00:18:02.760 --> 00:18:04.680 saving. 166 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:12.520 Labor or industry and thrift, almost for their own sake, or rather for God's sake, were emphasized 167 00:18:12.520 --> 00:18:18.360 in Calvinism much more than in the other segments of Christianity. 168 00:18:18.360 --> 00:18:24.440 The focus, then, both in Catholic countries and in scholastic thought, became very different 169 00:18:24.440 --> 00:18:26.780 from that of Calvinism. 170 00:18:26.780 --> 00:18:34.780 The scholastic focus was on consumption, the consumer, as the goal of labor and production. 171 00:18:34.780 --> 00:18:41.640 Labor was not so much a good in itself as a means toward consumption on the market. 172 00:18:41.640 --> 00:18:47.960 The Aristotelian balance, or golden mean, was considered a requisite of the good life, 173 00:18:47.960 --> 00:18:52.880 a life leading to happiness in keeping with the nature of man. 174 00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:59.440 And that balanced life emphasized the joys of consumption as well as of leisure, in addition 175 00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:02.960 to the importance of productive effort. 176 00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:09.960 In contrast, a rather grim emphasis on work and on saving began to be stressed in Calvinist 177 00:19:09.960 --> 00:19:11.680 Culture. 178 00:19:11.680 --> 00:19:17.480 This de-emphasis on leisure, of course, fitted with the iconoclasm that reached its height 179 00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:24.440 in Calvinism, the condemnation of the enjoyment of the senses as a means of expressing religious 180 00:19:24.440 --> 00:19:26.220 devotion. 181 00:19:26.220 --> 00:19:32.160 One of the expressions of this conflict came over religious holidays, which Catholic countries 182 00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:34.480 enjoyed in abundance. 183 00:19:34.480 --> 00:19:42.480 To the Puritans, this was idolatry. Even Christmas was not supposed to be an occasion for sensate enjoyment. 184 00:19:43.480 --> 00:19:54.480 There has been considerable dispute over the Weber thesis, propounded by the early 20th century German economic historian and sociologist Max Weber, 185 00:19:54.480 --> 00:20:02.480 which attributed the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution to the late Calvinist concept of the calling 186 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:06.840 Banking, and the resulting capitalist spirit. 187 00:20:06.840 --> 00:20:12.560 For all its fruitful insights, the Weber thesis must be rejected on many levels. 188 00:20:12.560 --> 00:20:19.240 First, modern capitalism, in any meaningful sense, begins not with the Industrial Revolution 189 00:20:19.240 --> 00:20:26.340 of 18th and 19th centuries, but, as we have seen, in the Middle Ages, and particularly 190 00:20:26.340 --> 00:20:29.200 in the Italian city-states. 191 00:20:29.200 --> 00:20:35.160 Such examples of capitalist rationality as double-entry bookkeeping and various financial 192 00:20:35.160 --> 00:20:40.280 techniques begin in these Italian city-states as well. 193 00:20:40.280 --> 00:20:42.240 All were Catholic. 194 00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:49.760 Indeed, it is in a Florentine account book of 1253 that there is first found the classic 195 00:20:49.760 --> 00:20:56.000 pro-capitalist formula, In the Name of God and of Prophet. 196 00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:02.520 No city was more of a financial and commercial center than Antwerp in the 16th century, a 197 00:21:02.520 --> 00:21:04.600 Catholic center. 198 00:21:04.600 --> 00:21:11.520 No man shone as much as financier and banker as Jakob Fugger, a good Catholic from southern 199 00:21:11.520 --> 00:21:13.260 Germany. 200 00:21:13.260 --> 00:21:19.500 Not only that, Fugger worked all his life, refused to retire, and announced that he would 201 00:21:19.500 --> 00:21:22.080 make money as long as he could. 202 00:21:22.080 --> 00:21:29.240 A prime example of the Weberian Protestant ethic from a solid Catholic. 203 00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:35.400 And we have seen how the scholastic theologians moved to understand and accommodate the market 204 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:38.120 and market forces. 205 00:21:38.120 --> 00:21:44.640 On the other hand, while it is true that Calvinist areas in England, France, Holland and the 206 00:21:44.640 --> 00:21:51.520 North American colonies prospered, the solidly Calvinist Scotland remained a backward and 207 00:21:51.520 --> 00:21:56.060 Undeveloped Area, even to this day. 208 00:21:56.060 --> 00:22:02.580 But even if the focus on calling and labor did not bring about the Industrial Revolution, 209 00:22:02.580 --> 00:22:07.880 it might well have led to another outstanding difference between Calvinist and Catholic 210 00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:14.100 countries, a crucial difference in the development of economic thought. 211 00:22:14.100 --> 00:22:19.340 Professor Amel Couter's brilliant speculation to this effect will inform the remainder of 212 00:22:19.340 --> 00:22:21.260 this work. 213 00:22:21.260 --> 00:22:22.260 Scouter 214 00:22:22.260 --> 00:22:29.460 Calvin and his disciples placed work at the center of their social theology. 215 00:22:29.460 --> 00:22:34.340 All work in this society is invested with divine approval. 216 00:22:34.340 --> 00:22:40.340 Any social philosopher or economist exposed to Calvinism will be tempted to give labor 217 00:22:40.340 --> 00:22:45.600 an exalted position in his social or economic treatise. 218 00:22:45.600 --> 00:22:53.000 And no better way of extolling labor can be found than by combining work with value theory, 219 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:56.800 traditionally the very basis of an economic system. 220 00:22:56.800 --> 00:23:04.800 Thus value becomes labor value, which is not merely a scientific device for measuring exchange 221 00:23:04.800 --> 00:23:13.880 rates, but also the spiritual tie combining divine will with economic everyday life. 222 00:23:13.880 --> 00:23:21.440 In their extolling of work, the Calvinists concentrated on systematic, continuing industriousness, 223 00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:24.920 on a settled course of labor. 224 00:23:24.920 --> 00:23:32.000 Thus the English Puritan Divine, Samuel Huron, opined that, he that hath no honest business 225 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:39.480 about which ordinarily to be employed, no settled course to which he may betake himself, 226 00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:42.880 cannot please God. 227 00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:48.920 A very influential was the early 17th century Cambridge University academic, the Reverend 228 00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:56.800 William Perkins, who did much to translate Calvinist theology into English practice. 229 00:23:56.800 --> 00:24:03.620 Perkins denounced four groups of men who had no particular calling to walk in, beggars 230 00:24:03.620 --> 00:24:11.520 and vagabonds, monks and friars, gentlemen who spend their days in eating and drinking, 231 00:24:11.520 --> 00:24:16.200 and servants, who allegedly spent their time waiting. 232 00:24:16.200 --> 00:24:21.800 All these were dangerous, because unsettled and undisciplined. 233 00:24:21.800 --> 00:24:27.200 Particularly dangerous were wanderers, who avoided the authority of all. 234 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:34.320 Furthermore believed Perkins, the lazy multitude was always inclined to popish opinions, always 235 00:24:34.320 --> 00:24:37.420 more ready to play than to work. 236 00:24:37.420 --> 00:24:50.420 In contrast to the Calvinist glorification of labor, the Aristotelian Thomist tradition was quite different. 237 00:24:50.420 --> 00:25:01.420 Instead of work, moderate pleasure-seeking and happiness formed the center of economic actions, according to Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy. 238 00:25:01.420 --> 00:25:08.420 A certain balanced hedonism is an integrated part of the Aristotelian theory of the good life. 239 00:25:09.420 --> 00:25:24.420 If pleasure in a moderate form is the purpose of economics, then following the Aristotelian concept of the final cause, all principles of economics, including valuation, must be derived from this goal. 240 00:25:24.420 --> 00:25:36.420 In this pattern of Aristotelian and Thomistic thinking, valuation has the function of showing how much pleasure can be derived from economic goods. 241 00:25:36.420 --> 00:25:50.420 Hence Great Britain, heavily influenced by Calvinist thought and culture and its glorification of the mere exertion of labor, came to develop a labor theory of value, 242 00:25:50.420 --> 00:26:06.420 While France and Italy, still influenced by Aristotelian and Thomist concepts, continued the scholastic emphasis on the consumer and his subjective valuation as the source of economic value. 243 00:26:06.420 --> 00:26:18.420 While there is no way to prove this hypothesis conclusively, the counter insight has great value in explaining the comparative development of economic thought in Britain 244 00:26:18.420 --> 00:26:31.060 in and in the Catholic countries of Europe after the 16th century 4. Calvinists on Usury 245 00:26:31.060 --> 00:26:36.700 Perhaps because he was considered the greatest French jurist of the mid-16th century, the 246 00:26:36.700 --> 00:26:46.740 merit of the contribution of Charles du Moulin, Latinized name Corollus Molinaeus, 1500-1566, 247 00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:51.940 has been highly inflated, in his and in later times. 248 00:26:51.940 --> 00:26:58.060 A Catholic who later converted to Calvinism and was then forced to leave for Germany, 249 00:26:58.060 --> 00:27:04.400 Dumoulin had nothing but contempt for scholasticism, which he attacked vehemently in his highly 250 00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:12.500 publicized work, The Treatise on Contracts and Usury, Paris, 1546. 251 00:27:12.500 --> 00:27:18.860 Whereas Molinaeus officially denounced the prohibition of usury, in actuality his views 252 00:27:18.860 --> 00:27:25.500 were little different from those of the contemporary scholastics, or indeed of Calvin. 253 00:27:25.500 --> 00:27:31.180 While clearly denouncing the view that money is sterile and demonstrating that it is as 254 00:27:31.180 --> 00:27:37.740 productive as the goods bought with it, he hedges his defense of usury sufficiently so 255 00:27:37.740 --> 00:27:41.540 that his views are little different from many others. 256 00:27:41.540 --> 00:27:48.580 He does maintain that the charge of interest on a loan per se is unjust, but ingeniously 257 00:27:48.580 --> 00:27:56.460 points out that a lender charges for the utility of the money rather than for the money itself. 258 00:27:56.460 --> 00:28:03.960 But Molinaeus attacks the cruel usuries permitted by Lucrum Cessans, and maintains with Calvin 259 00:28:03.960 --> 00:28:08.800 that interest may not be charged for loans to the poor. 260 00:28:08.800 --> 00:28:15.520 One wonders that if such a rule were enforced, who in the world would ever lend to the poor? 261 00:28:15.520 --> 00:28:21.520 And would the poor then be better off by being deprived of all credit? 262 00:28:21.520 --> 00:28:28.840 Indeed it seems that Molinaeus' main contribution was to blacken unjustly the name of poor Conrad 263 00:28:28.840 --> 00:28:34.820 Zumenhardt, a cruel injustice that would last for four centuries. 264 00:28:34.820 --> 00:28:41.780 In an act obviously motivated by malice towards scholasticism, Molinaeus took the great Zumanhart's 265 00:28:41.780 --> 00:28:48.420 arguments against the usury ban and twisted them to make the German theologian a particularly 266 00:28:48.420 --> 00:28:52.100 doltish advocate of the prohibition. 267 00:28:52.100 --> 00:28:58.260 He took Zumanhart's initial arguments for the prohibition, which he had stated in order 268 00:28:58.260 --> 00:29:05.700 to Knock Down, claimed that they were Zumanhart's own, and then plagiarized Zumanhart's critique 269 00:29:05.700 --> 00:29:09.420 of these arguments without acknowledgement. 270 00:29:09.420 --> 00:29:16.300 As a result of this shabby mendacity, as Professor Noonan points out, since Dumoulin's writings 271 00:29:16.300 --> 00:29:23.980 have alone become famous, Conrad Zumanhart has appeared to posterity only as Dumoulin 272 00:29:23.980 --> 00:29:30.980 caricatures him, that is, as a particularly obstinate and strangely stupid defender of 273 00:29:30.980 --> 00:29:34.300 the usury prohibition. 274 00:29:34.300 --> 00:29:40.360 The honor of putting the final boot to the usury prohibition belongs to the 17th century 275 00:29:40.360 --> 00:29:53.060 classicist and Dutch Calvinist Claude Zoméz, Latinized name Claudius Salmatius, 1588-1653. 276 00:29:53.060 --> 00:30:00.580 In several works published in Leiden beginning with De Usuris Liber in 1630 and continuing 277 00:30:00.580 --> 00:30:09.920 to 1645, Salmaceus finished off this embarrassing remnant of the mountainous errors of the past. 278 00:30:09.920 --> 00:30:18.720 His fort was not so much in coining new theoretical arguments as in finally willing to be consistent. 279 00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:24.660 In short, Salmaceous trenchantly pointed out that money lending was a business like any 280 00:30:24.660 --> 00:30:30.460 other and like other businesses was entitled to charge a market price. 281 00:30:30.460 --> 00:30:36.520 He did make the important theoretical point, however, that, as in any other part of the 282 00:30:36.520 --> 00:30:42.640 market, if the number of userers multiplies, the price of money or interest will be driven 283 00:30:42.640 --> 00:31:00.640 Salmatius also had the courage to point out that there were no valid arguments against usury, either by divine or natural law. 284 00:31:00.640 --> 00:31:13.640 The Jews only prohibited usury against other Jews, and this was a political and tribal act, rather than an expression of a moral theory about an economic transaction. 285 00:31:13.640 --> 00:31:20.640 As for Jesus, he taught nothing at all about civil polity or economic transactions. 286 00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:29.640 This leaves the only ecclesiastical law against usury that of the Pope, and why should a Calvinist obey the Pope? 287 00:31:29.640 --> 00:31:42.140 Salmaceous also took some deserved whacks at the evasions permeating the various scholastic justifications, or extrinsic titles, justifying interest. 288 00:31:42.140 --> 00:31:52.140 Let's face it, Salmaceous in effect asserted what the canonists and scholastics took away with one hand, they restored with the other. 289 00:31:52.140 --> 00:32:05.140 The census is really usury, foreign exchange is really usury, lucrum cessans is really usury, usury all, and let them all be licit. 290 00:32:05.140 --> 00:32:17.140 Furthermore, usury is always charged as compensation for something, in essence, the lack of use of money and the risk of loss in a loan. 291 00:32:17.140 --> 00:32:26.140 Salmatius also had the courage to take the hardest case, professional money lending to the poor, and to justify that. 292 00:32:26.140 --> 00:32:37.140 Selling the use of money is a business, like any other. If it is licit to make money with things bought with money, why not from money itself? 293 00:32:37.140 --> 00:32:50.140 As Noonan paraphrases Salmaceus, the seller of bread is not required to ask if he sells it to a poor man or a rich man, why should the money lender have to make a distinction? 294 00:32:50.140 --> 00:33:02.140 And, there is no fraud or theft in charging the highest market price for other goods, why is it wrong for the usurer to charge the heaviest usuries he can collect? 295 00:33:02.140 --> 00:33:09.800 Empirically, Salmaceus also analyzed the case of public userers in Amsterdam, the great 296 00:33:09.800 --> 00:33:15.700 commercial and financial center of the seventeenth century, replacing Antwerp of the previous 297 00:33:15.700 --> 00:33:23.420 century, showing that the usual 16 percent charge on small loans to the poor is accounted 298 00:33:23.420 --> 00:33:31.140 for by the costs of the userers borrowing their own money, of holding some money idle, 299 00:33:31.140 --> 00:33:38.940 of renting a large house, of absorbing some losses on loans, of paying license fees, hiring 300 00:33:38.940 --> 00:33:42.980 employees and paying an auctioneer. 301 00:33:42.980 --> 00:33:48.700 Deducting all these expenses, the average net interest rate of the moneylenders is only 302 00:33:48.700 --> 00:33:53.500 8%, barely enough to keep them in business. 303 00:33:53.500 --> 00:33:59.540 In concluding that usury is a business like any other, Salmaceus, in his typical witty 304 00:33:59.540 --> 00:34:06.920 and Sparkling Style, declared, I would rather be called a usurer than be a tailor. 305 00:34:06.920 --> 00:34:12.920 Our examples of his style already demonstrate the aptness of the great Austrian economist 306 00:34:12.920 --> 00:34:19.900 Boehm-Bawerk's conclusion about Salmaceus, that his works are extremely effective pieces 307 00:34:19.900 --> 00:34:24.680 of writing, veritable gems of sparkling polemic. 308 00:34:24.680 --> 00:34:32.000 The materials for them, it must be confessed, had in great part been provided by his predecessors. 309 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:38.100 But the happy manner in which Salmaceous employs these materials, and the many pithy sallies 310 00:34:38.100 --> 00:34:45.900 with which he enriches them, places his polemic far above anything that had gone before. 311 00:34:45.900 --> 00:34:51.660 As a result, Salmaceous' essays had wide influence throughout the Netherlands and the rest of 312 00:34:51.660 --> 00:34:53.100 Europe. 313 00:34:53.100 --> 00:34:59.260 As Boehm-Bawerk declared, Salmaceous views on usury were the high water mark of interest 314 00:34:59.260 --> 00:35:05.100 theory to remain so for over 100 years. 315 00:35:05.100 --> 00:35:08.180 5. 316 00:35:08.180 --> 00:35:12.940 Communist Zealots, The Anabaptists 317 00:35:12.940 --> 00:35:17.700 Sometimes Martin Luther must have felt that he had loosed the whirlwind, even opened the 318 00:35:17.700 --> 00:35:19.900 gates of hell. 319 00:35:19.900 --> 00:35:25.820 Shortly after Luther launched the Reformation, various Anabaptist sects appeared and spread 320 00:35:25.820 --> 00:35:28.020 throughout Germany. 321 00:35:28.020 --> 00:35:34.580 The Anabaptists believed in predestination of the elect, but they also believed, in contrast 322 00:35:34.580 --> 00:35:42.380 to Luther, that they knew infallibly who the elect were, that is, themselves. 323 00:35:42.380 --> 00:35:48.980 The sign of that election was in an emotional mystical conversion process, that of being 324 00:35:48.980 --> 00:35:58.300 Born Again, Baptized in the Holy Spirit Such baptism must be adult and not among infants. 325 00:35:58.300 --> 00:36:04.020 More to the point, it meant that only the elect are to be sect members who obey the 326 00:36:04.020 --> 00:36:08.420 multifarious rules and creeds of the Church. 327 00:36:08.420 --> 00:36:16.940 The idea of the sect, in contrast to Catholicism, Lutheranism or Calvinism, was not comprehensive 328 00:36:16.940 --> 00:36:23.940 Church Membership in the Society, The Sect was to be distinctly separate for the elect 329 00:36:23.940 --> 00:36:26.300 only. 330 00:36:26.300 --> 00:36:32.160 Given that creed, there were two ways that Anabaptism could and did go. 331 00:36:32.160 --> 00:36:37.520 Most Anabaptists, like the Mennonites or Amish, became virtual anarchists. 332 00:36:37.520 --> 00:36:43.140 They tried to separate themselves as much as possible from a necessarily sinful state 333 00:36:43.140 --> 00:36:50.400 and Society, and engaged in non-violent resistance to the state's decrees. 334 00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:56.560 The other route, taken by another wing of Anabaptists, was to try to seize power in 335 00:36:56.560 --> 00:37:05.040 the state and to shape up the majority by extreme coercion, in short, ultra-theocracy. 336 00:37:05.040 --> 00:37:12.900 As Monsignor Knox incisively points out, even when Calvin established a theocracy in Geneva, 337 00:37:12.900 --> 00:37:20.960 It had to pale beside one which might be established by a prophet enjoying continuous, new, mystical 338 00:37:20.960 --> 00:37:22.840 revelation. 339 00:37:22.840 --> 00:37:29.780 As Knox points out in his usual scintillating style, in Calvin's Geneva and in the Puritan 340 00:37:29.780 --> 00:37:36.860 colonies of America, the left wing of the Reformation signalized its ascendancy by enforcing 341 00:37:36.860 --> 00:38:03.700 I have called this rigorous attitude a pale shadow of the theocratic principle, because 342 00:38:03.700 --> 00:38:11.020 A full-blooded theocracy demands the presence of a divinely inspired leader or leaders, 343 00:38:11.020 --> 00:38:16.020 to whom government belongs by right of mystical illumination. 344 00:38:16.020 --> 00:38:21.340 The great reformers were not, it must be insisted, men of this caliber. 345 00:38:21.340 --> 00:38:25.440 They were pundits, men of the new learning. 346 00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:30.740 And so, one of the crucial differences between the Anabaptists and the more conservative 347 00:38:30.740 --> 00:38:38.360 of Reformers was that the former claimed continuing mystical revelation to themselves, forcing 348 00:38:38.360 --> 00:38:45.320 men such as Luther and Calvin to fall back on the Bible alone as the first as well as 349 00:38:45.320 --> 00:38:48.400 the last revelation. 350 00:38:48.400 --> 00:38:55.140 The first leader of the ultra-theocrat wing of the Anabaptists was Thomas Mintzer, circa 351 00:38:55.140 --> 00:39:02.740 1489-1525 Born into Comfort in Stolberg in Thuringia, 352 00:39:02.740 --> 00:39:08.020 Munzer studied at the universities of Leipzig and Frankfurt, and became highly learned in 353 00:39:08.020 --> 00:39:14.620 the scriptures, the classics, theology, and in the writings of the German mystics. 354 00:39:14.620 --> 00:39:20.780 Becoming a follower almost as soon as Luther launched the Reformation in 1520, Munzer was 355 00:39:20.780 --> 00:39:26.600 is recommended by Luther for the pastorate in the city of Zwickau. Zwickau was near 356 00:39:26.600 --> 00:39:32.860 the Bohemian border, and there the restless mincer was converted by the weaver and adept 357 00:39:32.860 --> 00:39:39.300 Niklas Storch, who had been in Bohemia, to the old Taborite doctrine that had flourished 358 00:39:39.300 --> 00:39:46.380 in Bohemia a century earlier. This doctrine consisted essentially of a continuing mystical 359 00:39:46.380 --> 00:39:57.380 and the necessity for the elect to seize power and impose a society of theocratic Communism by brutal force of arms. 360 00:39:57.380 --> 00:40:05.380 Furthermore, marriage was to be prohibited and each man was to be able to have any woman at his will. 361 00:40:05.380 --> 00:40:14.380 The passive wing of Anabaptists were voluntary anarcho-Communists who wished to live peacefully by themselves. 362 00:40:14.380 --> 00:40:21.380 But Menzer adopted the Storch vision of blood and coercion. 363 00:40:21.380 --> 00:40:36.380 Defecting very rapidly from Lutheranism, Menzer felt himself to be the coming prophet and his teachings now began to emphasize a war of blood and extermination to be waged by the elect against the sinners. 364 00:40:36.380 --> 00:40:46.380 Munzer claimed that the living Christ had permanently entered his own soul, endowed thereby with perfect insight into the divine will, 365 00:40:46.380 --> 00:40:52.380 Munzer asserted himself to be uniquely qualified to fulfill the divine mission. 366 00:40:52.380 --> 00:40:56.380 He even spoke of himself as becoming God. 367 00:40:56.380 --> 00:41:02.380 Abandoning the world of learning, Munzer was now ready for action. 368 00:41:02.380 --> 00:41:16.380 In 1521, only a year after his arrival, the town council of Zwickau took fright at these increasingly popular ravings and ordered Mincer's expulsion from the city. 369 00:41:16.380 --> 00:41:27.380 In protest, a large number of the populace, in particular the weavers led by Nicholas Storch, rose in revolt, but the rising was put down. 370 00:41:27.380 --> 00:41:34.660 At that point, Munzer hied himself to Prague, searching for Taborite remnants in the capital 371 00:41:34.660 --> 00:41:36.780 of Bohemia. 372 00:41:36.780 --> 00:41:42.980 Speaking in peasant metaphors, he declared that harvest time is here, so God himself 373 00:41:42.980 --> 00:41:45.780 has hired me for his harvest. 374 00:41:45.780 --> 00:41:51.740 I have sharpened my scythe, for my thoughts are most strongly fixed on the truth, and 375 00:41:51.740 --> 00:42:00.140 My Lips, Hands, Skin, Hair, Soul, Body, Life, Curse the Unbelievers 376 00:42:00.140 --> 00:42:06.380 Munzer, however, found no Taborite remnants. It did not help the prophet's popularity that 377 00:42:06.380 --> 00:42:12.180 he knew no Czech and had to preach with the aid of an interpreter, and so he was duly 378 00:42:12.180 --> 00:42:15.460 expelled from Prague. 379 00:42:15.460 --> 00:42:20.900 After wandering around central Germany in poverty for several years, signing himself 380 00:42:20.900 --> 00:42:28.220 and Christ's Messenger, Munzer in 1523 gained a ministerial position in the small Thuringian 381 00:42:28.220 --> 00:42:30.940 town of Alstadt. 382 00:42:30.940 --> 00:42:36.620 There he established a wide reputation as a preacher employing the vernacular and began 383 00:42:36.620 --> 00:42:42.500 to attract a large following of uneducated miners, whom he formed into a revolutionary 384 00:42:42.500 --> 00:42:47.300 organization called the League of the Elect. 385 00:42:47.300 --> 00:42:53.460 A turning point in Munzer's stormy career came a year later when Duke John, a prince 386 00:42:53.460 --> 00:43:00.060 of Saxony and a Lutheran, hearing alarming rumors about him, came to little Alstadt and 387 00:43:00.060 --> 00:43:03.380 asked Munzer to preach him a sermon. 388 00:43:03.380 --> 00:43:06.600 This was Munzer's opportunity, and he seized it. 389 00:43:06.600 --> 00:43:08.340 He laid it on the line. 390 00:43:08.340 --> 00:43:14.460 He called upon the Saxon princes to make their choices and take their stand, either as servants 391 00:43:14.460 --> 00:43:17.280 of God or of the devil. 392 00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:24.280 If the Saxon princes are to take their stand with God, then they must lay on with the sword. 393 00:43:24.280 --> 00:43:29.760 Don't let them live any longer, counseled our prophet, the evildoers who turn us away 394 00:43:29.760 --> 00:43:36.920 from God, for a godless man has no right to live if he hinders the godly. 395 00:43:36.920 --> 00:43:41.480 Mincer's definition of the godless, of course, was all-inclusive. 396 00:43:41.480 --> 00:43:47.080 The sword is necessary to exterminate priests, monks, and godless rulers. 397 00:43:47.080 --> 00:43:54.480 But, Mincer warned, if the princes of Saxony fail in this task, if they falter, the sword 398 00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:56.620 shall be taken from them. 399 00:43:56.620 --> 00:44:01.360 If they resist, let them be slaughtered without mercy. 400 00:44:01.360 --> 00:44:05.920 Mincer then returned to his favorite harvest-time analogy. 401 00:44:05.920 --> 00:44:11.080 At the harvest-time, one must pluck the weeds out of God's vineyard. 402 00:44:11.080 --> 00:44:17.720 For the ungodly have no right to live save what the elect chooses to allow them. 403 00:44:17.720 --> 00:44:24.680 In this way the millennium, the thousand-year kingdom of God on earth would be ushered in. 404 00:44:24.680 --> 00:44:31.080 But one key requisite is necessary for the princes to perform that task successfully. 405 00:44:31.080 --> 00:44:40.440 They must have at their elbow a priest, prophet, guess who, to inspire and guide their efforts. 406 00:44:40.440 --> 00:44:46.320 Sadly enough, for an era when no First Amendment restrained rulers from dealing sternly with 407 00:44:46.320 --> 00:44:53.320 heresy, Duke John seemed not to care about Münzer's frenetic ultimatum. Even after 408 00:44:53.320 --> 00:44:59.360 Münzer proceeded to preach a sermon proclaiming the imminent overthrow of all tyrants and 409 00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:06.040 the beginning of the Messianic kingdom, the duke did nothing. Finally, under the insistent 410 00:45:06.040 --> 00:45:12.200 The prodding of Luther that Munzer was becoming dangerous, Duke John told the prophet to refrain 411 00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:19.960 from any provocative preaching until his case was decided by his brother, the Elector. 412 00:45:19.960 --> 00:45:26.560 This mild reaction by the Saxon princes, however, was enough to set Thomas Munzer on his final 413 00:45:26.560 --> 00:45:29.080 revolutionary road. 414 00:45:29.080 --> 00:45:32.600 The princes had proved themselves untrustworthy. 415 00:45:32.600 --> 00:45:36.460 The mass of the poor were now to make the revolution. 416 00:45:36.460 --> 00:45:43.520 The poor were the elect, and would establish a rule of compulsory egalitarian communism, 417 00:45:43.520 --> 00:45:49.660 a world where all things would be owned in common by all, where everyone would be equal 418 00:45:49.660 --> 00:45:55.000 in everything, and each person would receive according to his need. 419 00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:56.520 But not yet. 420 00:45:56.520 --> 00:46:02.680 For even the poor must first be broken of worldly desires and frivolous enjoyments, 421 00:46:02.680 --> 00:46:08.640 and must recognize the leadership of a new servant of God who must stand forth in the 422 00:46:08.640 --> 00:46:12.680 spirit of Elijah and set things in motion. 423 00:46:12.680 --> 00:46:16.040 Again, guess who? 424 00:46:16.040 --> 00:46:23.080 Seeing Saxony as inhospitable, Mincer climbed over the town wall of Alstadt and moved in 425 00:46:23.080 --> 00:46:31.400 1524 to the Thuringian city of Mühlhausen. An expert in fishing in troubled waters, 426 00:46:31.400 --> 00:46:36.520 Munzer found a friendly home in Mühlhausen, which had been in a state of political turmoil 427 00:46:36.520 --> 00:46:43.340 for over a year. Preaching the impending extermination of the ungodly, Munzer paraded 428 00:46:43.340 --> 00:46:49.580 around the town at the head of an armed band, carrying in front of him a red crucifix and 429 00:46:49.580 --> 00:46:52.020 and a naked sword. 430 00:46:52.020 --> 00:46:58.020 Expelled from Mülhausen after a revolt by his allies was suppressed, Mincer went to 431 00:46:58.020 --> 00:47:04.760 Nuremberg, which in turn expelled him after he published some revolutionary pamphlets. 432 00:47:04.760 --> 00:47:10.900 After wandering through southwestern Germany, Mincer was invited back to Mülhausen in February 433 00:47:10.900 --> 00:47:16.740 1525, where a revolutionary group had taken over. 434 00:47:16.740 --> 00:47:24.260 Thomas Münzer and his allies proceeded to impose a communist regime on the city of Mülhausen. 435 00:47:24.260 --> 00:47:31.100 The monasteries were seized, and all property was decreed to be in common, and the consequence, 436 00:47:31.100 --> 00:47:36.640 as a contemporary observer noted, was that he so affected the folk that no one wanted 437 00:47:36.640 --> 00:47:38.260 to work. 438 00:47:38.260 --> 00:47:45.380 The result was that the theory of communism and love quickly became in practice an alibi 439 00:47:45.380 --> 00:47:48.220 for Systemic Theft. 440 00:47:48.220 --> 00:47:53.940 When anyone needed food or clothing, he went to a rich man and demanded it of him in Christ's 441 00:47:53.940 --> 00:47:59.420 name, for Christ had commanded that all should share with the needy. 442 00:47:59.420 --> 00:48:03.700 And what was not given freely was taken by force. 443 00:48:03.700 --> 00:48:05.300 Many acted thus. 444 00:48:05.300 --> 00:48:11.900 Thomas Munzer instituted this brigandage and multiplied it every day. 445 00:48:11.900 --> 00:48:17.700 At that point, the Great Peasants' War erupted throughout Germany, a rebellion launched by 446 00:48:17.700 --> 00:48:24.460 the peasantry in favor of their local autonomy and in opposition to the new centralizing, 447 00:48:24.460 --> 00:48:29.500 high-tax, absolutist rule of the German princes. 448 00:48:29.500 --> 00:48:35.180 Throughout Germany, the princes crushed the feebly armed peasantry with great brutality, 449 00:48:35.180 --> 00:48:39.980 massacring about 100,000 peasants in the process. 450 00:48:39.980 --> 00:48:46.580 In Thuringia, the army of the princes confronted the peasants on 15 May with a great deal of 451 00:48:46.580 --> 00:48:52.860 artillery and 2,000 cavalry, luxuries denied to the peasantry. 452 00:48:52.860 --> 00:48:58.940 The land-grave of Hesse, commander of the prince's army, offered amnesty to the peasants 453 00:48:58.940 --> 00:49:03.460 if they would hand over Mincer and his immediate followers. 454 00:49:03.460 --> 00:49:09.700 The peasants were strongly tempted, but Mincer, holding aloft his naked sword, gave his last 455 00:49:09.700 --> 00:49:16.100 Flaming Speech, declaring that God had personally promised him victory, that he would catch 456 00:49:16.100 --> 00:49:23.460 all the enemy cannonballs in the sleeves of his cloak, that God would protect them all. 457 00:49:23.460 --> 00:49:29.180 Just at the strategic moment of Mincer's speech, a rainbow appeared in the heavens, and Mincer 458 00:49:29.180 --> 00:49:34.340 had previously adopted the rainbow as the symbol of his movement. 459 00:49:34.340 --> 00:49:40.460 To the credulous and confused peasantry, this seemed a veritable sign from heaven. 460 00:49:40.460 --> 00:49:45.860 Unfortunately, the sign didn't work, and the prince's army crushed the peasants, killing 461 00:49:45.860 --> 00:49:50.500 five thousand while losing only half a dozen men. 462 00:49:50.500 --> 00:49:56.740 Mincer himself fled and hid, but was captured a few days later, tortured into confession, 463 00:49:56.740 --> 00:49:59.340 and then executed. 464 00:49:59.340 --> 00:50:04.740 Thomas Mintzer and his signs may have been defeated, and his body may have molded in 465 00:50:04.740 --> 00:50:08.620 the grave, but his soul kept marching on. 466 00:50:08.620 --> 00:50:15.580 Not only was his spirit kept alive by followers in his own day, but also by Marxist historians 467 00:50:15.580 --> 00:50:22.500 from angles to the present day, who saw in this deluded mystic an epitome of social revolution 468 00:50:22.500 --> 00:50:28.460 and the Class Struggle, and a forerunner of the chiliastic prophecies of the Communist 469 00:50:28.460 --> 00:50:33.900 stage of the supposedly inevitable Marxian future. 470 00:50:33.900 --> 00:50:41.380 The Mincerian cause was soon picked up by a former disciple, the bookbinder Hans Hut. 471 00:50:41.380 --> 00:50:48.880 Hut claimed to be a prophet sent by God to announce that at Witzentide 1528 Christ would 472 00:50:48.880 --> 00:50:54.400 would return to earth and give the power to enforce justice to Hoot and his following 473 00:50:54.400 --> 00:50:57.400 of re-baptized saints. 474 00:50:57.400 --> 00:51:03.720 The saints would then take up double-edged swords and wreak God's vengeance on priests, 475 00:51:03.720 --> 00:51:07.160 pastors, kings and nobles. 476 00:51:07.160 --> 00:51:13.440 Hoot and his followers would then establish the rule of Hans Hoot on earth, with Mülhausen 477 00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:16.400 as the favored capital. 478 00:51:16.400 --> 00:51:23.260 Hoot was then to establish a millennium marked by communism and free love. Hoot was captured 479 00:51:23.260 --> 00:51:30.660 in 1527, before Jesus had had a chance to return, imprisoned at Augsburg and killed 480 00:51:30.660 --> 00:51:38.320 trying to escape. For a year or two, Hootian followers kept emerging at Augsburg, Nuremberg 481 00:51:38.320 --> 00:51:44.480 and Esslingen in southern Germany, threatening to set up their communist kingdom of God by 482 00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:52.720 by Force of Arms, but by 1530 they were smashed and suppressed by the alarmed authorities. 483 00:51:52.720 --> 00:51:58.160 Zarian-type anabaptism was now to move to northwestern Germany.