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Forging our Culture: Ignatius, Luther, Charles V and Magellan in the year 1521

Giancarlo Pani SJ - La Civiltà Cattolica - Tue, Jun 8th 2021

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The 16th century marks the beginning of the Modern Age. In the transition between the Middle Ages and the modern world, a series of completely new developments occurred almost simultaneously: the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World, gunpowder, a new way of keeping time (mechanical clocks), of experiencing it, and the relationship with money (“time is money!”), the development of banking, insurance and, above all, a new awareness of the identity and dignity of the human person. Some particular facts, right at the beginning of the century, attest to this: the Diet of Worms in 1521 and the way in which Charles V planned the unity of the Empire, that is, of Europe; the Reformation and Ignatius of Loyola; the circumnavigation of the world thanks to Magellan; the emergence of new relationships between citizens and the prince, between the faithful and the Church.

Charles V and Luther at the Diet of Worms

On April 17 and 18, 1521 – 500 years ago – Charles V and Martin Luther met at the Diet of Worms: the emperor, the secular arm of the Church, had summoned him to question him and, if necessary, carry out the excommunication of the Church. In the presence of the princes, Luther was asked to acknowledge the views published in his name and to disavow them. Luther acknowledged them, but refused to retract them because some were based on Holy Scripture and others concerned the abuses of Rome that were affecting the Christian world. Therefore, he would not recant anything unless he was shown by the word of God where  his errors lay: in which case “he would be most ready to recant any error.” [1]

 

 

Charles V’s spokesman reproached him for the presumption of claiming the truth for himself alone and, like all heretics, for taking refuge in Scripture, interpreted at his own discretion, and for repeating the errors already condemned by the Councils. He exhorted him not to put his own judgment before that of so many scholars who had dedicated themselves to the study of the Bible. Finally, he concluded: “Do not doubt the most holy Orthodox faith which Christ established, which the apostles preached throughout the world, which is confirmed by the red blood of the martyrs. […] So answer without ambiguity: do you want to retract the errors contained in your works, yes or no?”[2]

Knowing that he risked being burned at the stake, Luther said, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures, […] my conscience is a prisoner of the word of God. Therefore I will not and cannot recant.”[3] Unfortunately, none of the representatives of the Church, not even the nuncio Girolamo Aleandro, pointed out to Luther what his errors were.

After listening to Luther, Charles V ordered him to leave. He spent a whole night in reflection, and the next day he solemnly declared in the Diet that he wanted to follow the example of his predecessors, the Christian emperors and the Catholic kings of Spain. To the ideas of an isolated friar he opposed the faith of the Church, honor due to God, the growth of faith and the salvation of souls. Luther “erred against God, against all of Christendom, both in the past, for a thousand years and more, and in the present. […] According to his opinion the whole of Christendom has been and still is in error. Therefore I have decided to use all my kingdoms, […] my body, my blood, my life and my soul. […] I have listened to the resolute answer that Luther gave yesterday in the presence of all of you. […] I am resolved to behave and act against him as a notorious heretic. And I demand that you declare yourselves to be good Christians in this matter.[4]

Luther, 37 years old, a professor of theology, said he wanted to be faithful to his conscience which bound him to Scripture, but Charles V, a young man of 21, emperor for 16 months, also had a problem of conscience: the fidelity of his fathers to the Church and to tradition. It is not surprising that both wanted the good of the Christian community, a renewal of the life of faith, convinced that they had the truth on their side and that they had to obey God.

Charles V then had the Edict of Worms drawn up: it was written on May 20-21 and published on the 26th. Luther was excommunicated and placed under the ban of the Empire.

Luther’s position became the “crucial text of Protestantism,”[5] from which the Reformation and the division in the Church were born, with the painful consequences still present today. Charles V’s affirmation , on the other hand, has fallen into oblivion and he is sometimes accused of a superficial traditionalism, but his statement has its own authority because it is aimed at the good of Christianity and fidelity to the Gospel.[6]

The stronghold of Pamplona

Again 500 years ago, on May 20, 1521, another event occurred in faraway Spain that would leave its mark on history. About a month before, on April 23, at the Diet of Worms, Charles V learned the news that his troops in Spain had defeated the Comuneros in the battle of Villalar: it was an insurrection of some cities of Castile against the young emperor.[7] At the same time the French, taking advantage of the weakness of the Spanish crown, besieged the city of Pamplona, capital of the kingdom of Navarre.

What the emperor did not know was that a gentleman of the Duke of Nájera, a Guipuzcoan named Iñigo López di Loyola, had been seriously wounded at Pamplona while defending the stronghold against the French. It was the last bastion of Basque resistance: most were determined to surrender, but Iñigo convinced them to resist to the bitter end. In the fury of combat, a cannon ball hit him in the leg, breaking it. When he fell, the garrison also collapsed: the defenders surrendered.[8]

The wounded were treated with honor and Iñigo stayed in Pamplona for a couple of weeks, where they tried to re-construct his fractured bones, but his condition worsened and the worst was feared. However, almost miraculously, he recovered. Unfortunately, the bones in his leg had been badly reset. There was even a bone protruding above the knee and it was horrible to see. Since he was a man of the world, this defect was considered a major impediment by Iñigo: he underwent another painful operation (at that time there was no anesthesia), to saw off the bone and keep the leg in traction.  The outcome was that one leg was shorter than the other, which made him limp.[9]

No one at that time suspected that this Iñigo, later taking the name of Ignatius (in honor of the martyr Ignatius of Antioch), would be the one who would initiate a reform of the Church in the name of the Gospel, following his profound spiritual conversion. During his long convalescence, he asked for some books on chivalry, his favorites. Unfortunately, there were none, and they gave him what they had: the Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony and the Legenda aurea of Jacopo da Varazze. Leafing through those books, just to pass the time, Ignatius slowly became attracted to the exploits of the saints. He noticed that, when he thought about his chivalrous ideals, he felt pleasure, but then he was sad. Instead, reflecting on what he was reading, after an initial discomfort, he felt consolation and, strange for him, he was even happy. Sometimes he asked himself: “What if I did what Saint Francis or Saint Dominic did?”[10]

Ignatius became the founder of the Society of Jesus. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, in Pamplona Ignatius had fallen to the ground: for him, a journey of interior search began. He founded a new institution that, through the proclamation of the Gospel, pastoral ministry, the experience of the Spiritual Exercises, and the teaching of catechism to children, would support the reform of the Church. Everything started on that 20th day of May in the year of 1521.

Ferdinand Magellan and the circumnavigation of the world

After the “discovery of America” by Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan sailed along the American continent up to the strait that bears his name between 1519 and 1522, again 500 years ago. He crossed the Pacific to the Philippines, where, in a conflict with the natives, he lost his life. The 26 survivors of the 265 who had begun to voyage arrived back in Spain at the beginning of 1522, after having made the first circumnavigation of the globe. One of the veterans, Antonio Pigafetta from Vicenza, gave an accurate description of the journey.[11] For the first time, there was an awareness that the Earth was circumnavigable and that Europe, until then thought to be the center of the world, was nothing more than a small portion of the globe; in addition, the great Mediterranean Sea, the Mare nostrum, was a lake compared to the oceans: the Eurocentric vision of the world was over. It was realized that humanity was made up of different peoples, unknown languages, different cultures, religions hitherto unknown. Europe was no longer what everyone believed it to be: it was the first steps towards “modernity” and future globalization.

The empire of Charles V and the unity of Europe

Until then, Europe was thought to have a center of gravity, which was universally recognized: God. In the mindset of the time, Charles V, since his election as emperor in 1519, had proposed a model of Empire behind which stood a faith and a personal policy shaped in the wake of his ancestors and his tutors, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Adrian of Utrecht (Pope Adrian VI). Europe was to be one, amid the plurality of nations, in a new unity, willed by God, under the leadership of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire. And it had to be Christian, in the sense of a single Church led by the pope, and it had to be renewed by the convening of a Council. It should be remembered that, while everyone was calling for a Council, the only one who really wanted it, until Paul III, was Charles V.

Today it is clear that the model envisioned by the emperor was utopian, did not fit the historical reality and in fact did not have much impact on his contemporary world, but the idea of a united Europe is a very current political ideal, which advances with difficulty due to the prevailing interests of individual states.

With the modern world, the hierarchical order dreamed of by Charles V was called into question, both because of the rise of nation-states and the new relationships that were emerging in society. Among people there should be no hierarchy, because all are equal and have the same dignity.

The new center of gravity of society

The 14th century had seen the appearance of the work of the philosopher Marsilius of Padua, the Defensor pacis (dated 1324). The treatise asserted that power belonged to the people and that citizens were the sources of authority; it had what we would call a secular and democratic approach to the state, and even to the Christian community (which, like the cardinals who elect the pope, had to elect its own bishops), with hints that were precursors of doctrines that would develop in the 19th century. Marsilius’ political doctrine was the great scandal of the 14th century, and was immediately condemned by John XXII because it was contrary to the tradition of the Church. Yet it was the beginning of what we now call “modern democracy,” of the ideas of respect and tolerance that we have come to after several centuries of history, fratricidal wars, violence and revolutions.

The novelty of the 16th century finds expression here: God is no longer society’s center of gravity. In a radical change of perspective, humans, the person, the individual, the subject who acts is the protagonist.

Becoming aware of our own value, we humans became the center of the world: Pico della Mirandola’s masterpiece, “The Oration on the Dignity of Man” (De hominis dignitate oratio), is defined as the manifesto of the Renaissance.[12] The new reality is captured in its multifaceted aspects, both positive and negative: humans are free, but they can abuse freedom; they are the wonder of God, but can trample on their dignity and become brutes; humans also experience their own frailty, the precariousness of life, loneliness, the malaise of an unsatisfied life, unhappiness and social sin. What was considered unthinkable in the Middle Ages now emerges as completely obvious, and is found both in the doctrine elaborated by the Reformation and in that of the Council of Trent.[13]

Marie-Dominique Chenu, in his study The Awakening of Conscience in Medieval Civilization,[14] points out how at the origins of the modern world a new meaning was given to human history, determined by the value of conscience. Acting against conscience is evil, it is contrary to human dignity, which becomes the principal focus of human history and of the history of the world.

The people used to be an element in a hierarchical universe governed by God, religion and the laws of nature; now they became the center of religious experience, both with a strong call to a personal relationship with God in the reform movements that characterized the late Middle Ages and the early modern age, and in the great expansion of the mendicant orders, and especially with the Devotio moderna that spread through 15th century Europe a new sense of an immediate relationship with God and the call to personal conscience. It is not a question of the rejection of God in the sense of a “secularization,” as has been understood in the past, but a “disenchantment,” to use a well-known term of Max Weber.[15] In other words, in the face of the sacred, the autonomy of the world, of human action and rationality is affirmed; the sphere of celestial and infernal spirits is re-dimensioned against the superstitions, witchcraft, magic and demonic beliefs in which medieval civilization was steeped, with the consequence of sometimes limiting the sacred to liturgy and sacraments.[16]

‘Europe of the Spirit’

These events of 500 years ago forged Europe and the Western world. History is an ever-progressive movement, with ups and downs. Even through conflicts and struggles, between tendencies toward unity and division, between religious truth affirmed and imposed, or tolerated, between tradition and renewal, the need to sustain a united Europe remains clear today, where it is not a question of unifying different groups, original cultures, religions and confessions that have evolved throughout history, but of highlighting ideals and values that, despite secularization, are based on a Christian image of the human person.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini formulated his dream for the Europe of the future: “The Europe that I dream of is a Europe not of markets, nor only of states, regions or municipalities; it is a Europe of peoples, of citizens, of men and women. A Europe that is reconciled and capable of reconciliation; a Europe of the spirit, built on solid moral principles and, for this reason, capable of offering to each and every one authentic spaces of freedom, solidarity, justice and peace; a Europe that lives its mission joyfully and generously.”[17]

Charles V reminds us of the mission and the importance of a united Europe; Luther, the Gospel’s role  in the reform of the Church and the value of the conscience responsive to the word of God; Ignatius of Loyola, the service of God and people in the Church, at the disposal of the Roman Pontiff, in spiritual discernment, in the proclamation of the Gospel and in any other work of charity useful to the common good; Magellan presents us with the discovery of the new earthly reality, almost a prophecy of today’s world and globalization. We are part of an Earth larger than us, a treasure to be cared for and safeguarded, where we are all involved: a human and religious ideal in which it does not matter if one is a believer or not, but if one is credible – as Judge Rosario Livatino said – in the values by which one lives and by what one does for the common good.[18]


DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 6, no. 6 art. 3, 0621: 10.32009/22072446.0621.3

[1].    S. Nitti, Lutero, Rome, ed. Salerno, 2017, 197.

[2].    M. Luther, Werke, VII, Weimar, H. Böhlaus, 1897, 837f.

[3].    Ibid. 838.

[4].    R. García-Villoslada, Martin Lutero. Il frate assetato di Dio, vol. 1, Milan, IPL, 1985, 773.

[5].    H. Schilling, Martin Lutero. Ribelle in un’epoca di cambiamenti radicali, Turin, Claudiana, 2016, 191.

[6].    Cf. ibid.

[7].    Cf. R. García-Villoslada, Martin Lutero…, op. cit., 789.

[8].    Cf. Ignatius of Loyola, Autobiografia. Storia di una vocazione e di una missione, Rome – Milan, La Civiltà Cattolica – S. Fedele, 1986, 11.

[9]  .   See ibid., 12.

[10].   Ibid., 14.

[11].   A. Pigafetta, Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, Florence, Barbes, 2009.

[12].   Cf. G. Pico della Mirandola, Discorso sulla dignità dell’uomo, Milan, Guanda, 2007.

[13].   Cf. P. Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2010, 15f.

[14].   Cf. M.-D. Chenu, Il risveglio della coscienza nella civiltà medievale. L’intelligenza della fede, Milan, Jaca Book, 2010.

[15].   The term is Entzauberung: cf. M. Weber, “L’etica economica e le religioni universali”, in Id., Sociologia della religione, vol. I, Milan, Edizioni di Comunità, 1982, 248.

[16].   Cf. P. Prodi, Introduzione allo studio della storia moderna, Bologna, il Mulino, 1999, 60-68.

[17]. C. M. Martini, Sogno un’Europa dello Spirito, Casale Monferrato (Al), Piemme, 1999, 279.

[18]. Cf. P. Sima, Rosario Livatino. Identità, martirio e magistero, Trapani, Il Pozzo di Giacobbe, 2020, 30.

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