Thomas Kaufmann - The Saved and the Damned

When Martin Luther penned his 95 Theses against the Church he began a process that was to have far reaching implications. It would have far reaching implications, which went beyond the split between what became the Catholic and Protestant Churches. These implications, religious, social, economic and political would drive struggle, civil war and revolution across Europe and extend into the colonies. Karl Marx famously noted that the Reformation "began in the brain of the monk". It is, on one level a curious statement. After all, Marx's whole life was dedicated to an approach that said that pure ideas did not exist, but are shaped by the economic contexts. Luther however was not abstracted from society, and his criticisms of the Church were closely related to wider economic and political issues. The selling of indulgences, the main target of his Theses was merely represented the tip of much deeper issues.

Thomas Kaufmann's new history of the Reformation, The Saved and the Damned, is an excellent introduction to the period. Particular in "what happened". Much of the work focuses on the German Reformation. In part this has to do with Kaufmann, as the book was originally published in German. But it is also because the Reformation started in Germany and had its most explosive period there. This is not a book of detail, it is a sweeping history which starts from the premise that "the diverging fates of the Reformation in the countries of Europe were fundamnetally connected with the diverse political, ecclesiastical, cultural and social conditions".

But to really understand the Reformation we need something deeper. After all people had made criticisms of the Church beforehand and certainly there were many intellectuals on a par with Luther who were getting an audience. Why did Luther's Theses explode across Europe ("the whole of Christendom in four weeks")? Was it simply their clarity? The Printing Press? Luther's oratory? All of these were important, but mattered was that Europe was in a social crisis, and the Theses landed in the midst of this crisis and encouraged it. For the German Peasants it was a reason to rebel. For people like Thomas Münzter it began them on a path that would lead to revolution. For thousands of others it opened a door to wider criticisms of religion and the role of the Church. Issues of individual freedom, power and wealth. Kaufmann is write to argue that Luther was the "central figure, of the Reformation" without whom it would not have happened. But we cannot ignore the deeper changes.

Here we have to look at what else was changing, and tragically, despite his scholarship on the Reformation, Kauffmann all but ignores the deeper changes in European society, principly the first developments towards merchant capitalism, and the transition from feudalism to capitalist society. Here the Peasant War is informative. Because while many peasants began their critique of society by picking up a pitchfork and a copy of a Luther pamphlet, their criticisms were mostly about economic issues. Principly the right to control their land, their community and their church. While these frequently harked back to an imaginary past, they also reflect how feudal society was moving towards a more capitalist organisation. Increasingly production was for the market, not community use. Wage labour was becoming normal, and the profits of big institutions like the Fugger bank were driving discontent by concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. 

Kaufmann reacts to these simply by discussion the Weberian idea that "there is a causal connection ebtween the religious mentality of Reformed Protestanism... and a capitalistic economic disposition". This, Kaufmann thinks is overestimated. In fact he returns several times to this:

The commonly held opinion that 'Calvinism' had an affinity primarily with the nbourgeoisie hardly accounts for the complex social and political mechanisms by which its influence spread in the second half of the century of the Reformation.

Again this misses the point. Protestantism becomes the language of the bourgeoise, not because they need it to be capitalists, but because it fits the logic of how they see the world. In turn they shape protestantism in a particular way (directly opposite to how the rebellious masses understood it). Kaufmann fails to grasp that the bourgeois revolution does not begin with a set of end goals that represent the establishment of capitalism. It is why Oliver Cromwell could say "We declared our intentions to preserve monarchy" in January 1648 and "I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it." by December of that year.

For Kaufmann the Reformation happens, and then has consequence. For instance Kaufmann he notes that the Reformation encouraged capitalist development because of things like the "drastic reduction in holidays". More importantly, as Kaufmann note the Reformation encouraged ideas of individalism. But in his writing these are the key deciding factors, rather than part of a dialectical relationship between society and religion.

So in terms of analysis, Kaufmann offers very little insight, except generalisations:

The Reformation in its multifarious manifestations influenced, encouraged and accelerated the developments leading to what is now called the modern West in many different ways. Nevertheless, the Reformation did not produce modern Western civilisation, neither by itself nor as a major influence, any more than any other factor. The Western modern world is the results of a very complex process of transformation - certainly one which would have taken a different course if the Reformation had not happened.

This is inadequate. What we really needed is to recognise that Europe was changing, and the Reformation was both an expression of that, and a factor shaping the change. The small, gradual processes of economic change in the towns and in rural production were driving much wider economic changes. But they aren't analysed here. It is why another Marxist reviewer commented that "Only the examination of the ways in which people reproduce their lives, enter social relations to that end, and by so doing create their whole society, can ideology in all its conflictual manifestations be understood."

This means that The Saved and the Damned feels rarified. It's history floats above the economic base, detached from wider society. This is not to condemn the book's scholarship. It is, in fact, an exemplary and recommended history of what took place across Europe in those turbulent years, and indeed, what that has meant for the Christian Church since. While it suffers from some annoying proofreading errors and a couple of extra paragraphs that were clearly intended as captions for unused pictures, I've no hesitation recommending it as a read. But I think many readers will come away wanting much more.

Related Reviews

Blickle - Communal Reformation: The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth Century Germany
Lortz - The Reformation in Germany: Volume 1
Marshall - Heretics & Believers: A History of the English Reformation
Duffy - The Stripping of the Altars
MacCulloch - Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700