by Jared Rubin
Figure 6.2 Percentage Protestant vs. Real Per Capita GDP, 2010
Sources: GDP – IMF (2012); Religion – Johnson and Grim (2008).
Figure 6.3 Percentage Catholic vs. Real Per Capita GDP, 2010
Sources: GDP – IMF (2012); Religion – Johnson and Grim (2008).
Figure 6.4 Percentage Muslim vs. Real Per Capita GDP, 2010
Sources: GDP – IMF (2012); Religion – Johnson and Grim (2008).
These data show that a correlation exists – and has existed since at least the seventeenth century – between Protestantism and wealth. This says nothing about whether this relationship is causal or not. Can it possibly be a mere coincidence that the regions that dominated the world economy since the Reformation – first the Dutch Republic, then England, then the United States – were all predominantly Protestant? Of course this is a possibility, but this chapter argues that this was no coincidence, and there is indeed a causal connection between Protestantism and economic success. The reasons underlying the causal connection are found in the history of the Reformation: what it was, how it spread, and how it upset the prevailing political-economy equilibrium that dominated Western Europe since the fall of Rome.
To begin to address this history, a little context is necessary. The century between 1450 and 1550 is arguably the most important one in the post-Roman history of Europe – even more important than the onset of industrialization from 1750 to 1850. Many of the institutional and technological features that eventually pushed Western Europe onto the path of economic success came to fruition in this century. A far from exhaustive list of important events in this century include the “finding” of the New World, the Copernican revolution, the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople and sieges of Vienna, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and, of course, the invention and spread of the printing press. These events marked the end of the medieval period and the onset of a new era that culminated in Western European world hegemony. Indeed, many economists and historians have pointed to at least one of these events as heralding the “rise of the West.”5 The problem is disentangling them. Which events resulted from other historical events, and, more importantly, which events were the true “prime movers” of this momentous period of economic history?
The previous chapter focused on one of these events – the spread of the printing press in Western Europe and its absence in the Middle East. Certain effects of the spread of printing are unsurprising: literacy rates rose substantially in Western Europe, cities with presses grew, and books became much less expensive. Perhaps more important were the indirect, path-dependent effects of the spread of printing. The press facilitated an information and communication revolution that went well beyond books. It allowed new ideas to spread much faster than ever before. This meant that anti-authority ideas could spread fast enough to become entrenched before authorities crushed them. This is analogous to the twenty-first-century spread of the internet and social media – arguably the most important information and communication technologies since the printing press. Websites like Facebook and Twitter allow people to organize quickly and spread new ideas almost instantaneously. For this reason, autocratic regimes susceptible to revolution (e.g., North Korea, Iran, China) do everything they can to suppress these sites. Their fear is rational: social media websites facilitated the toppling of autocratic regimes during the Arab Spring.
Around the time Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, the Catholic Church was, like those autocratic regimes, particularly vulnerable to dissent. For a couple of centuries, it increasingly engaged in worldly pursuits far removed from its original mission of salvaging souls. Practices such as simony (buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges), selling prayers to alleviate the suffering of loved ones in the recently invented purgatory, and the selling of indulgences (a “get out of Hell free” card purchasable for the right price) were all rampant in the late medieval Church. This created displeasure with the Church among both churchmen and the laity. In such a circumstance, a revolt against authority was possible so long as it could spread before the Church and its allies suppressed it. The printing press enabled the spread of such a revolt, and the result was the Protestant Reformation.6
This chapter details the connection between the printing press and the Reformation. This connection is a classic example of a path-dependentseries of events. Johannes Gutenberg had no intention of undermining the Church or of creating a technology that could possibly undermine the existing political equilibrium. He was a capitalist who figured out the key ingredients to making movable-type printing feasible, and he used this knowledge to print books. But what makes the press arguably the most important invention of the last millennium are the unintended and unforeseeable consequences that the spread of printing had on Western European political development. As this chapter documents, the press allowed the Reformation to spread rapidly enough that it became too entrenched for the Church to suppress it outright. Such a rapid spread of ideas would have been impossible to imagine in a pre-printing world. Indeed, many attempts at reforming the Church failed prior to the spread of the press. More importantly, where the Reformation became entrenched, the reformers generally removed the Catholic Church from power. They kicked churchmen out of town and confiscated the Church’s possessions. This was the final death knell to the Church in these regions – and its capacity to legitimize political rule. In England, Henry VIII confiscated Church lands, forbade all appeals to the pope on religious or other matters, claimed for the monarch all of the powers over the Church once held by the pope, and removed all abbots from the House of Lords. In the Dutch Republic, the reformers stripped the clergy of practically all their political power. In Sweden, the crown confiscated much of the land donated to the monasteries and claimed authority over the Reformed church. In the northern German independent trade cities, reformers removed churchmen from city councils and Church land was confiscated. And so on.
This was the most important consequence of the Reformation on the economic fortunes of Protestant nations. Where the Church ceased playing a role in propagating rule, the economic elite, organized in parliaments, often stepped in to take their place. Their interests aligned more closely with laws and policies that facilitated broader economic success, and the laws and policies they helped enact reflected this. This is why Weber observed a connection between Protestantism and economic success – he was wrong in his causal argument, but there is indeed a reason the two were often connected.
The economic consequences of the spread of printing and the Protestant Reformation raise another important question: What did the absence of the printing press mean for the economic and institutional trajectory of the Middle East and, in particular the Ottoman Empire? If the spread of printing were so important to the success of the Protestant Reformation, is it possible that the delayed acceptance of the press prohibited a similar change from occurring in the Islamic world? This chapter answers this question in the affirmative. This is among the primary reasons why the spread of printing was important. Where it spread, religious authorities were more likely to be undermined; where it did not spread, the status quo was more likely to hold.
The framework established in this book therefore suggests that whether a region adopted the printing press was both a cause and a consequence of the strength of the legitimizing relationship between political and religious authorities. In other words, the absence of information technology strengthened the legitimizing relationship, while a strong legitimizing relationship was the very thing that supported the suppression of printing.
The Spread of the Protestant Reformation
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the All Saints Church at Wittenberg, unwittingly sparking what would become the Protestant Reformation.7 Luther was concerned with what he viewed as theological errors, such as whether salvation could come through faith alone. He also condemned abuses of Church power such as the use of indulgences, relic cults, clerical
privileges, clerical concubinage, and simony. Although Luther’s complaints initially focused on reforming the Church from within, lay and clerical interests throughout northern Europe quickly echoed his complaints.
The Reformation initially spread in what was a highly fragmented Holy Roman Empire. Cities such as Nuremberg accepted the Reformation, with powerful friends of Luther appointing preachers sympathetic to reform ideas. A contemporary movement emerged in the Swiss confederation, where Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) espoused similar principles and preached to Zurich congregations in the vernacular. A hybrid Luther-Zwingli message caught on in the 1520s in many of the free cities of southern Germany, such as Strasbourg and Constance.8
The Reformation usually took hold in a city through the efforts of a small cadre of learned, literate priests and scholars who took it upon themselves to spread Luther’s or Zwingli’s message. Most of these reformers had positions in the established Church and could address the masses directly from the pulpit. They fervently and aggressively questioned congregations about the nature of worship and the practices of the Church hierarchy and the pope. These preachers were particularly effective in Saxony and Central Germany in the 1520s, where they spread the Reformation to towns such as Altenburg, Eisenach, and Zwickau. In the late 1520s and 1530s, reforming preachers helped convert larger towns such as Strasbourg and Lubeck, with numerous Baltic cities following suit. Many major south German cities, such as Augsburg, converted in a similar manner in the 1530s.9
The message of the Reformation also spread from city to city through broadsheets and pamphlets, most of which were written by the lead reformers, especially Luther. Although most people were illiterate in this period, oral communication was the primary way the printed word spread, and Reformers wrote pamphlets in such a manner that literate sympathizers could read them aloud in public meeting places. For example, Luther’s pamphlet in response to a papal bull of condemnation was addressed to “all who read or hear this little book.”10
In many of the cities that accepted the Reformation, such as Strasbourg and Ulm, city councils took charge of installing the Reformation by bringing in preachers sympathetic to reform ideas. This is a primary reason that historian A. G. Dickens (1974) put forth the thesis that the Reformation was an “urban event.” There is evidence to suggest that there is validity to this hypothesis: fifty of the sixty-five imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire either permanently or periodically accepted the Reformation. The close proximity of urbanites to each other, greater levels of wealth and literary awareness, and their relative political sophistication and freedom compared with the closed, autocratic regimes of the princes were are all reasons why the Reformation took off in many of the free cities of the Holy Roman Empire. In the northern Hanseatic cities, it was largely the middling bourgeoisie – who were wealthy but had little political power within the cities – who encouraged the adoption of the Reformation as a means of confronting the established powers. Some of the members of these councils sought economic gains, such as confiscation of Church property, while others undoubtedly felt the pressures for change arising from preachers and the masses. Once the Reformation was accepted by a town, it generally followed that the old privileges and status of the priesthood and hierarchy were removed, followed by the confiscation or destruction of the Church’s material wealth.
In the territories of the princes, fear of imperial retribution discouraged the introduction of the Reformation for at least a decade after its initial spread. Ultimately, the houses of Saxony, Hesse, Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Anhalt, and Mansfield all adopted the Reformation in the late 1520s. This was an important event in the early history of the Reformation because it gave the movement support from lay authorities. Their support helped the Reformers confront the existing governance structure of the empire, in which the Church played an important role. In 1530, many of the Protestant cities and princes signed the Augsburg Confession, despite condemnation from the Reichstag, which contained twenty-two articles stating the Lutheran message. In 1530–1531, a number of Protestant electorates formed an alliance known as the Schmalkaldic League. By 1535, many of the important Protestant independent cities joined the League, which provided mutual defense against Catholic invasion. Denmark quickly joined the league; it had adopted the Reformation in the 1520s under the imperial edicts of kings Frederick I (1523–1533) and Christian III (1533–1559). The defense provided by the League permitted a truce for over a decade. Eventually, the Emperor crushed the League in the Schmalkaldic War (1547). This did not end the conflict between Protestants and the emperor, however. It was not until 1555 that the Augsburg Reichstag put most disputes to rest by permitting sovereign princes and lords of the Holy Roman Empire to determine the faith of their subjects.
The time of the Reformation was also the height of Ottoman power. The fact that the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V – who, as Holy Roman Emperor as well as king of Spain, received propagation by the Church like no other monarch in Europe at the time (see Chapter 8) – did not quickly crush the Protestant alliances was in part a consequence of Ottoman incursions into central Europe. The Ottomans conquered much of southeastern Europe by this time (Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Bosnia, and Serbia) and were pushing toward central Europe. They made it as far as the gates of Vienna, the capital of the eastern portion of the Habsburg’s vast European holdings. Murat Iyigun (2008, 2015) points out that the Catholic powers therefore had a much more pressing threat on their hands than the religious heresy of the Reformers. The Ottoman threat diverted resources that could have fended off the Reformation, and when the Ottoman threat was starkest, conflict between Catholics and Protestants was rare. The Ottoman threat was therefore important to the ultimate success of the Reformation because it allowed the Reformers to gain traction with the wider populace and local rulers before the Church and its allies could suppress it.
The printing press was important to the ultimate success of the Reformation for precisely the same reason: it allowed the Reformation to become entrenched enough to pass the point of no return. And indeed, what needs explaining is the initial spread of the Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire. What mechanisms allowed the Reformation to spread unlike previous movements against Church power, which usually ended up violently suppressed?
Connecting the Spread of the Printing Press to the Reformation
“[The printing press is] God’s highest and ultimate gift of grace by which He would have His Gospel carried forward.”
– Martin Luther (quoted in Spitz 1985)
Is it merely coincidental that two of the most important events in the Western world of the last millennium – the spread of the printing press and the Protestant Reformation – sprouted 250 miles apart in the Holy Roman Empire? Is it merely coincidental that the Reformation commenced soon after the press became entrenched throughout Europe? Probably not. Mark U. Edwards (1994, p. 1) begins his book on Luther and the printing press by noting that “the Reformation saw the first major, self-conscious attempt to use the recently invented printing press to shape and channel a mass movement.” Indeed, can it possibly be a coincidence that the Reformers employed, in the words of Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin (1958, p. 288), the “first propaganda campaign conducted through the medium of the press”?
The classic connection made between the printing press and the Reformation is a supply-side one, focusing on the role that the new information technology played in spreading Lutheran ideas. There are a number of factors supporting the supply-side theory. Most importantly, the press allowed for the spread of pamphlets to literate preachers who brought the Reformation into cities and villages. High transport costs and lack of copyright meant that printers did not often ship printed works to distant locations. Instead, works more frequently spread through reprinting. Hence, those living in cities with presses or close to presses had much greater access to inexpensive pamphlets, and traveling preachers were more likely to be effective in these areas.11
It is also pos
sible that the printing press affected demand for the Reformation. Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) argues that print culture transformed cities, in some cases elevating the desires of the bourgeoisie and middle classes to greater social importance. This in turn could have made print cities more receptive to the Reformation, as the rising bourgeoisie had incentive to undermine the old order dominated by the Church and landed interests. Eisenstein (1979, p. 132) also suggests that the demand for the Reformation could have been enhanced by the press in a more subtle way:
[W]hile communal solidarity was diminished, vicarious participation in more distant events was also enhanced; and even while local ties loosened, links to larger collective units were being forged. Printed materials encouraged silent adherence to causes whose advocates could not be found in any one parish and who addressed an invisible public from afar.
Yet, it is unlikely that the press facilitated the spread of the Reformation solely by affecting the demand for reform. Numerous pre-Reformation heresies indicate that there was plenty of demand for reform prior to the Reformation – indeed, prior to the spread of the printing press. Some pre-Reformation Church leaders attempted to strip power from the pope and reduce the pomp associated with the Church hierarchy, pushing instead for the transfer of power to Church councils. Jean Gerson (1362–1429) was the leading proponent of this “reform from within” and was an important influence on Luther’s writings. Gerson wrote at a time of schism within the Church, with two rival popes making claims from their seats in Avignon and Rome from 1378 to 1418. This schism helped inspire the conciliarism movement, which claimed that the pope did not hold supreme authority within the Church; instead, the Ecumenical Council (a conference of top Church leaders and theologians) held authority within the Church. Church leaders attempted such reform – unsuccessfully – at the Councils of Lyons (1274), Vienne (1311–1312), Constance (1414–1418), Pavia-Siena (1423–1424), and Basel (1431–1439).12 In fact, much of the support for the anti-papist agenda at Basel originated from those free cities of Switzerland and southern Germany that were so important to the spread of the Reformation eighty years later. Even on the eve of the Reformation there was considerable pressure to reform the Church from within, but attempts made at the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517) were unsuccessful.
