Chapter 11 Chapter 9: The Two Poles Are Connected

Chapter 9: The Two Poles Are Connected Through the era of turmoil and turmoil, the rain has passed and the sky has cleared, and the hardships have come.Having experienced the wounds of various wars, misfortune will end and peace will come.But during this period of mourning, some people are suffering and others are mourning. - Marguerite, song by Da Otelli It appears the struggle is over.Calvin got rid of Castellio, got rid of his only rival of outstanding intelligence, and at the same time made his political opponents in Geneva dumbfounded.The dictator can then develop his policy without hindrance.Dictators, once they have overcome the inevitable early crises, tend to think that they can hold their positions for a long time.Just like the human body, after a period of discomfort, it adapts to the new material environment.Therefore, the state can also adapt to the new method of governance.That older generation, who often painfully compared the violence of the existing regime to the better days they remembered long ago, died after a while.The younger generation has no such memories and grew up in new traditions that they took for granted.In the course of one generation they are decisively conditioned by one thought.Thus, after twenty years of Calvin's priesthood, such a situation arose: the dictator's new Ten Commandments, developed from a theological concept to a formed substance.Objectively, he said, we have to recognize the extraordinary ability of this organizer. He thought carefully and started to work from the beginning of victory, making his system gradually develop into a world-wide one. He established an iron-like order and made Geneva Be a role model in behavior.Members of the Reformation made pilgrimages from all over the Western world to "Protestant Rome," admiring such an admirable model of theological government.Granted, dead canon and Spartan tenacity have been established and pushed to the full, even if at the price of monotony instead of exuberance and variety, unquestionable precision instead of joy.But, in return, education was elevated to a proper place within the humanities.Schools, universities, and welfare institutions were unrivaled; science was carefully cultivated.With the creation of the college, Calvin not only brought the first Protestant cultural center, but also established a group similar to the "Jesuit" (founded by his former student Loyola), practicing the same logical canon, the same will of iron.Priests and theologians were equipped with first-class theological weapons, and Geneva sent them to spread Calvinism everywhere.The master had long ago made up his mind that his authority and his teachings could not be confined to this Swiss city.His desire for power compelled him to extend his dominion over continents and seas.He hopes that Europe, no, the world will accept his totalitarian system.Scotland is already in his hands, thanks to his emissary John Knox; Make a decisive blow.If times were right, the Principia might become a global fundamental, and Calvinism might become the only way of thinking and acting in the Western civilized world.

Such a victory would have decisively changed the culture of Europe, showing that where the imprint of Calvinism soon became supreme.Wherever the Church of Geneva went, it had the power to enforce the moral and religious dictatorship it aspired to, if only for a short time, and a special imprint was placed on the life of the nation.Citizens or subjects are happy to carry out their moral and religious duties "without spot"; lust and free will are tamed and naturalized until they are well controlled;A strong character is so effective in immortalizing itself in the daily life of a people that to this day the traveler in the streets of those cities where Calvinism once predominated recognizes its lasting effects, such as the expression of Restraint in manners, slovenliness in dress, informality in manners, even solemnity in architectural style.Calvinism took great pains to restrain the demands of individualistic impulses wherever its influence reached.To tighten the grip on power so that every man becomes the quintessentially good servant, the enduring subject of society—in short, the most formal, ideal, and immaculate quintessential member of the middle class.There is considerable justification in this assertion, since no other factor has promoted the element of absolute obedience to the success of industrialism as strongly as Calvinism.For Calvinism inculcates in youth such things as religious duty, unhesitating acceptance of mean thinking and mechanization.Never forget that a nation always strengthens its military power by the determination to organize its subjects, and those arduous and indomitable navigators and colonizers, first the Dutch, then the English, who conquered and opened up new continents, chiefly They are all of Christian origin.These generations of Puritans helped to shape the identity of North America, so the great success of the United States and Canada is largely due to the educational influence of the dogmatic missionaries from Picasso.

Undoubtedly, today, in 1936 (400 years ago, Erasmus died; Geneva decided to live entirely according to the Gospel and the will of God; Calvin visited Geneva for the first time), we should be thankful that That famous "canon" was not successfully established in its sharpest form throughout Protestant Europe.With a hatred of beauty, pleasure, and life itself, Calvinists rage against the splendor of life and the luxurious profligacy of art.Their system was harsh and orderly, with bans on creative performances and palls over colored flames.In the history of civilization, Western Europe was also ruled in this way during the Renaissance.Just as in subsequent centuries they castrated art in Geneva; as soon as they took control of England they trampled to the ground Shakespeare's theater, the most beautiful flower in the spiritual world; The fear of God as a substitute for earthly joy.Thus, throughout Europe, they ruled that passions should be tolerated only in so far as they lead man to God in a devout form.Other forms of zeal must be condemned as opposed to their interpretation of the law of Moses, and what a strange world would be if they succeeded.The European spirit would experience decay, would content itself with theologically unhelpful and trivial analysis, and would no longer have the never-ending development and transformation of itself.For, unless it is fertilized by liberty and pleasure, the world would be barren and uncreative, and life, if bound by austere institutions, would be a frozen corpse.

Thankfully, Europe did not allow itself to be canonized, puritanized, "Genevaised," just as the non-Spartan Greeks would not submit to Spartan rigor.Rigid Calvinism prevailed in only a small part of Europe, and even there it quickly gave way.Calvin's theocracy cannot be imposed on any country for long, and when the dictator is dead, hard reality moderates the intolerant "canons" he intends to impose.In the end, it turns out that warm emotion is stronger than abstract dogma, and that the juice of life seeps through the imposed shackles, breaks all shackles, and tempers all harshness.Just as a muscle cannot be tense indefinitely, or a passion constantly simmering, so dictatorship in the spiritual realm cannot forever maintain its ruthless radicalism.It rarely even lasts more than one generation.

In this way, Calvin's intolerant canon might be tempered more quickly than might be hoped.Rarely does a teaching remain exactly as it began when a century passed.We would be terribly mistaken if we thought that later Calvinism was identical to Calvinism's Calvinism.No doubt, even in the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the people of Geneva were busy arguing whether the theater should be banned at all, and asking themselves "Whether the fine arts signify the progress of man or the vice of man--and long before that, Gard The rough edges of humanism have been polished, and the dead account of God's will has been rewritten to meet the needs of mankind. The current of evolution knows how to restrain its creatures for its own mysterious purposes. Eternal progress flows from every institution. What is accepted is only what is desirable, and what limits us is thrown away, just as we throw away the peel of a fruit. Dictators are but a temporary force in the realization of the great plan of mankind. Those who take life The desire to confine style to mechanical responses can only be achieved in the short term, because life then leads to a more powerful outlet. Thus, by a wonderful modification, Calvinism, by its desire to hinder individual liberty The fanatical determination of the country gave rise to the idea of ​​​​political freedom. The Netherlands, England and the United States ruled by Cromwell, these three countries are the prototypes of modern liberalism, bringing a broad vision to the country's freedom and democratic ideas. The most important modern A document, the American Declaration of Independence, was born of the Puritan spirit, which in turn exerted a decisive influence on the formation of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. The bipolar connection is the strangest spectacle of transformation. The most thoroughly saturated with different The land of tolerance became the center of tolerance in Europe. It was those places where Calvinist religion ruled, and Castellio's ideal was later realized. The city of Geneva, where Calvin burned Servetus (for that The Spaniards dared to disagree with the dictator), and at certain times became the refuge of the antichrist who was still alive at that time, Fuerte, the "enemy of God". This "antichrist" was killed by Gal Wen's successors, the missionaries of St. Pierre's Cathedral, were respectfully invited to visit. They did not hesitate to engage in philosophical discussions with this atheist. Besides, it was Holland, those who had nowhere else on earth People who can't find a shelter, Descartes and Spinoza wrote books to liberate mankind from the shackles of ecclesiastical and traditional. Renon, who doesn't talk about miracles, claims to let rigid Protestants advance rationalists The Enlightenment was a miracle. But they did. Those who in other lands were persecuted for their beliefs and opinions fled to the shadow of Calvinism for protection. The poles were connected. Castellio And two centuries after Calvin's death, the demands of the former and those of the latter: brotherly tolerance on the one hand, and religion on the other, coexisted side by side and peacefully in Holland, England, and America.

Castellio's ideal, and Calvin's ideal, outlived their creators.When a person dies, there may seem to be a brief void—the words and deeds of the deceased sublime into a void that may remain silent for decades, as if the earth had become the coffin of the dead.No one whispered Castellio's name; his friends died or disappeared; what little he had published gradually became unavailable; no one dared to print his unpublished works.It is conceivable that the battlefields he fought and the life he lived have all been wiped out.But history moves in uncanny ways.The apparent absolute victory of his adversary prompts Castellio's resurrection.The triumph of Calvinism in Holland was too complete.The missionaries, tempered by fanatical sects, thought it right to be more severe than Calvin in the newly conquered lands.Soon, however, antagonisms resumed among these obstinate people who had successfully opposed those who claimed the right to rule the old and new worlds.The Dutch could not tolerate their newfound political freedom being extinguished by dogmatic coercion in the sphere of conscience.Some clergymen began to protest (they were later called "respondents") against the demands of Calvinist totalitarianism.In their search for spiritual weapons against unrelenting orthodoxy, they suddenly remembered a forerunner.He had become almost legendary, and Kuhnhertz and other liberal Protestants had unearthed Castellio's writings.Beginning in 1603, the original and Dutch translations of the work were reprinted.They attained general attention and a growing admiration from readers.

It is evident that Castellio's ideal of religious tolerance did not rot in the grave; it survived the harsh winter and now blossomed with new vigor.The zealots of religious toleration were not content with reprinting the works of the masters, and they sent envoys to Basel to obtain the surviving manuscripts.The writings were brought back to the Netherlands, where they were published in original and in translation.Thus, half a century after Castellio's death, Holland Gouda published his anthology: (1612).The resurrected Castellio immediately became the center of controversy and, for the first time, had a large number of followers.His influence was widespread, though almost impersonal and anonymous.Castellio's ideas came to life anew in the writings and struggles of others.The famous Arminian sect supported and defended the liberal Reformed Protestantism mainly on the arguments in his writings.When an Anabaptist was tried in Chur for heresy, Gantner, a missionary from Grisson, Switzerland, vigorously defended the accused, appearing with the book "Martinus Bliss" .It is very possible (although this assumption lacks documentation) that Descartes and Spinoza were directly influenced by the ideas of Castellio, whose writings are now almost household names in Holland.However things may be, the cause of religious toleration is no longer supported solely by intellectuals and humanists; it is gradually becoming the cause of all the peoples of the Low Countries, who are weary of theological disputes and religious fraternal wars. .At the Utrecht Peace Treaty, the idea of ​​tolerance became a weapon for managing state affairs. It powerfully concretized the abstracted domain and took root on the solid earth.Castellio's fervent plea to the cardinals to respect the views of others is now heard by the free peoples, and embodied in their laws.From this first land, which will become the territory of the world, the ideal of tolerance begins to conquer every program and every point of view.One nation after another embraced Castellio's revelation, condemning the persecution of religious and philosophical ideas.In the French Revolution, the rights of the individual were finally guaranteed.The French Revolution declared that men are born free and equal, that they have the right to express their opinions and declare that there is no limit to their beliefs.In the next century, the nineteenth, the process accelerated even more.The concept of liberty - liberty of nations, liberty of the individual, liberty of thought - was at last accepted by civilized thought as an inalienable maxim.