494 Years Ago

One of the biggest turning points in Western, if not world, history occurred on October 31, 1517.  Today, many churches from a reformed or semi-reformed tradition celebrated Reformation Sunday to commemorate Martin Luther's dispute with the Pope Leo X.  While there is dispute over whether Luther actually nailed them to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, there is little doubt that Luther had Ninety-five Theses or disputations against Leo.

Some may wonder what this has to do with American history.  Just a quarter-century prior to Luther, a Genoese sailor by the name of Christopher Columbus claimed the New World for Spain (except for Brazil, which went to Portugal according to the Treaty of Tordesillas).  While Columbus did not exactly discover America, since his voyages began continuous interaction and the famed "Columbian Exchange" his trip is worth remembering. Spain and Portugal were both intensely Catholic nations, and after the breakup of Catholic hegemony in Europe, controversy was bound to erupt as other nations attempted to rival these early explorers.

While England was still within the fold of Rome when Giovanni Caboto claimed parts of North America in 1497, it was after Henry VIII's break with Catholicism that the Reformation became important for current Americans.  Although Henry just wanted Catholicism without the pope, a more Protestant England emerged permanently under his daughter Elizabeth I.  It was under Elizabeth and her successor James I that England began attempting permanent settlements in the New World, partially as a part of this rivalry with Spain and other Catholic powers.  The more radical Protestants in England, the Puritans established Massachusetts, and the traditional Puritan lifestyle of early New England began around 1630 (partially due to persecution from James' son Charles I and his archbishop William Laud). 

Had Luther not complained about the selling of indulgences in Wittenburg back in 1517, the American religious landscape would be radically different than it is today.  Therefore, whatever one's religious belief, it cannot be argued that October 31 has little significance for the history of Christianity.

Whigs--One Philosophic Approach to History

A few days ago, I posted on my experience in a course on historiography and some of the questions that arose in this context.  One of the philosophies that held quite a bit of importance in historical circles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is now referred to as Whig history.  One of the most famous writers on this topic was Herbert Butterfield, who interestingly enough wrote a book titled The Whig Interpretation of History that tended to critique this particular view of the past. 

I actually gutted sizable chunks of this book in writing a historiographical overview of the English Reformation for a class last fall.  Most of the articles I read on the historiography of the period tended to refer to the Whig and the Revisionist historians.  I had long been skeptical of the term "revisionist" historians because of the connotation that they were out to change the past for their own sinister purposes.  However, I had not really explored the idea of Whig History in much depth.  What I discovered was that those holding to this idea view the backward past as progressing toward the triumphant present.  Whigs view basically anything in the past that tends toward democracy and liberty as a great sign of progress, while anything that smacks of autocracy as a remnant from a horrible past.

Butterfield, a devout Christian, argued that there were problems with this view, however.  This view of the past makes no real attempt to understand the past on its own terms, but rather in terms of the glorious present to which that past contributed.  Whig history also tends to view people in terms of black and white or right and wrong in their relation to the past's contribution to the wonderful present, not in terms of the laws and customs of the world in which they lived.  In failing to see past actors on their own terms, the past gets skewed terribly, according to the critique.

This error led to revisionism in the study of the English Reformation.  In Whiggish terms, the Reformers were great proponents of religious liberty that led the masses out of superstition.  The general Whig understanding included the idea that the people knew that they had been hoodwinked by the bishops and the pope, and that they willingly followed on this great leap toward religious liberty.  However, after reading the revisionists (generally Catholics) like Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy, the evidence definitely pointed toward a view of the masses that conflicted with the traditional Whiggish view of the English Reformation as a pretty much welcomed change.  The revisionist works tended to look at records related to the lower classes who actually worshiped and found that they tended to be fairly committed to their Catholicism.

While I am not a Catholic, this little study made it quite apparent to me (even more so that it already was) that people's presuppositions and their understanding of the past (and present) can definitely affect the way that they interpret events.  It also illustrated that at times revisionist history is actually better than the more "traditional" account, although this one example does not necessarily mean that all revisionist history is better.  Each study deserves to be judged its own merits in light of the evidence.