Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 631 - 635
CHARLES V AND THE NETHERLANDS
In the Flanders of Charles’s maturity a thriving commerce was more than making up for sporadic industrial decline. Bruges and Ghent were depressed, but Brussels survived for being the Flemish capital, Louvain was brewing theology and beer, and Antwerp was becoming -- would be by 1550 -- the richest and busiest city in Europe. To that hectic port on the broad and navigable Scheldt international trade and finance were drawn by low import and export dues, by the political connection with Spain, and by a bourse dedicated, its inscription said, “ ad usum mercatorum cuisque ac linguae --” “To the use of merchants of every land and tongue.” Business enterprises here were free from the guild restrictions and municipal protectionism that had kept medieval industry unprogressive. Here Italian bankers opened agencies, English “merchant adventurers” established a depot, the Fuggers centred their commercial activities, and the Hanse built its lordly House of Easterlings (1564). The harbour saw 500 ships enter or leave on any day, and 5,000 traders trafficked on the exchange. A bill on Antwerp was now the commonest form of international currency. In this period Antwerp replaced Lisbon as the chief European port for the spice trade; cargos sailing into Lisbon were bought afloat by Flemish agents there, and were sailed directly to Antwerp for distribution through northern Europe. “I was sad at the sight of Antwerp,” wrote a Venetian ambassador, “ for I saw Venice surpassed”; he was witnessing the historic transfer of commercial hegemony from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic. Spurred on by this commerce, Flemish industry revived, even in Ghent, and the Lowlands provided Charles V with 1,500,000 livres ($37,500,000?) a year, half his total revenue.
He responded by giving Flanders and Holland reasonably good government except in religious liberty.-- a boon hardly conceived by his friends or his foes. Generally Charles ruled the Netherlands by indirection, through regents acceptable to the citizens; first his aunt , nurse, and tutor, Margaret of Austria, then his sister Mary, ex queen of Hungary, both women of competence, humanity, and tact. But Charles became more imperious with more Empire. He stationed Spanish garrisons in the proud cities, and suppressed with severity any serious contravention of his international policies. When Ghent refused to vote the military funds demanded by him and granted by other cities, Charles put down the revolt by a show of indisputable force, exacted the subsidy and an indemnity, abolished the traditional liberties of the municipality, and substituted Imperial appointees for the local chosen government. (1540). But this was hardly typical. Despite such occasional harshness Charles remained popular with his Lowland subjects; he received credit for the political stability and social order that supported the economic prosperity; and when he announced his abdication nearly all citizens mourned.
Accepting the current theory that national peace and strength required unity of religious belief, and fearing that Protestantism in the Netherlands would endanger his flank in his strife with France and Lutheran Germany, Charles fully supported the Church in persecuting heresy in Flanders and Holland. The reform movement was mild before Luther; after 1517 it entered as Lutheranism and Anabaptism from Germany, as Zwinglianism and Calvinism from Switzerland, Alsace, and France. Luther’s writings were soon translated into Dutch, and were expounded by ardent preachers in Antwerp, Ghent, Dordrecht, Utrecht, Zwolle, and the Hague. The Emperor, still young, thought to stop the agitation by publishing (1521), at the Pope’s request, a “placard”, forbidding the printing or reading of Luther’s works. On July 1, 1523, Henry Voes and Johann Eck, two Augustinian friars, were sent to the stake at Brussels as the first Protestant martyrs in the Lowlands. Henry of Zutphen, friend and pupil of Luther’s, and prior of the Augustinian monastery at Antwerp, was imprisoned, escaped, was caught in Holstein, and was there burned ( 1524). These executions advertised the reformers’ ideas.
A longing for the restoration of Christianity to its pristine simplicity generated a millenarian hope for the early return of Christ and the establishment of a New Jerusalem in which there would be no Government, no marriage, and no property; and with these notions were mingled communistic theories of equality, mutual aid, and even “free love”. Fanned by famine, the movement became a social revolt. Mary of Hungary, then Regent, warned the Emperor that the rebels planned to plunder all forms of property among the nobility, clergy, and mercantile aristocracy, and to distribute the spoils to every man according to his need. The Anabaptist rebels made heroic efforts; one group captured and fortified a monastery in West Friesland; the governor besieged them with heavy artillery; 800 died in a hopeless defence ( 1535) On May 11 some armed Anabaptists stormed and captured the city hall of Amsterdam; the burghers dislodged them, and wreaked upon the leaders the frightful vengeance of frightened men: tongues and hearts were torn from living bodies and flung into the faces of the dying or dead..
Thinking the whole social structure challenged by a communistic revolution, Charles imported the Inquisition into the Netherlands, and gave its officials power to stamp out the movement, and all other heresies, at whatever cost to local liberties. The most violent of these ( September 25 ,1550) revealed the deterioration of the Emperor, and laid the foundation for the revolt against his son:
“We forbid all lay persons to converse or dispute concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly . . . or to read, teach, or expound the Scriptures, unless they have duly studied theology, or have been approved by some renowned university . . . on pain of being . . . punished as follows . . . the men ( to be beheaded ) with the sword, and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they persist in them they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases to be confiscated by the crown. . . . .
Through these desperate edicts the Netherlands were made a major battleground between the old and the new forms of Christianity. Of the Dutch Anabaptists some fled to England where they became active supporters of Protestantism under Edward VI and Elizabeth. The communistic movement in the Netherlands collapsed, frightened by prosecution and stifled by prosperity. As the Anabaptists subsided a stream of hunted Huguenots poured into the Lowlands from France, bringing the gospel of Calvin. The Calvinist acceptance of work as a dignity instead of a curse, of wealth as a blessing instead of a crime; of republican institutions as more responsive than monarchy to the political ambitions of the business class, was welcomed by the population. It was with Calvinism, not Lutherism or Anabaptism, that Charles’ son would be locked in the conflict that would break the Netherlands in two, liberate Holland from the Spanish domination, and make her one of the major homes and havens of the modern mind.
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