The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-05-28

TINE Protestant Reformation was
l. an effect of the Commercial
Revolution. That great change
from the Mediterranean to the At
lantic as the most important channel
of European trade brought strength
adm national consciousness to the
Atlantic States and as their pride
and power grew it was temporal that
they would rebel against the domin-
alton Of even their temporal affairs
by the Papacy.
Some of them, like France and
Spain, persuaded the church to
yield its earthly prerogatives grace
fully, made their peace with her,
and offered the protection of their
rising might; others, like Germany
and England, preferred to shear her
Of her wealth, and cure her corrup-
ton, by seeding from her fold and
establishing national religions. The
Religious Revolution was an incident
in the birth Of the modern state.
The background of the picture is
the rising bourgeoisie. We have
seen the successive elements of their
mounting power in the growth of
an economic surplus, the develop
ment Of trade, industry and towns,
and the facilitation of exchange by
money, credit, and the extension Of
commercial routes.
The fly in this ointment was the
feudal aristocracy, who impeded
trade at every turn with exorbitant
tolls, and perpetually disordered
with baronial wars Qike the Wars Of
the Roses in England the territory
through which commerce was
obliged to pass.
When, in the natural development
Of difference and inequality, one
baron became stronger than another,
and one estate vassal to it, the mer-
chants and the Jewish financiers
allied themselves with this central
power, preferring one robber to a
hundred.
The long struggle of the king, sup
ported by the middle class against
aristocracy, laid the basis of that al
lance between government and cap
ital which is one of the main threads
of modern history.
II +
THIS Capitalization of political
Il power had by the sixteenth
century raised certain States
Spain, France, and England-to a
position which rivaled, within their
borders, the power of the church.
Germany had been and had ceased
to be a State; as the chief member
of the Holy Roman Empire she had
once been powerful; but the war be-
tween emperors and popeS had
broken down this unity, and left
the Empire no more than a geo.
graphical expression, and the en-
peror a potentate without power.
When Luther came Germany was
a conglomeration of nearly three
hundred little States, each with its
ruling family, and united only by
a common subordination to the
seven electors who had gradually
usurped the authority once held by
the emperor whom they chose.
AS these nations grew to political
elf-consciousnesS they fretted more
and more under the domination of
the church. First of all they dis
liked the church because it was a
State within a State, with its own
courts and laws, in which the enc
mics of the State could find refuge
in defeat.
They looked with suspicion and
envy upon the wealth of the church,
which owned one-third of the land
in Europe, and had in it's churches
and monasteries and papal Golfers
riches beyond those of all Of these
northern States cobined.
They suffered from the power Of
the interdict assumed by the pope,
by which he could release subjects
from allegiance to their king, and so
subject him to the church's will; in
1911, for example, Julius II ex-com-
municated the King and Queen of
Naples, and offered their kingdom to
any one who cared to come and take
it.
Above all, the States mourned the
flow of gold from their lands to
Italy; the tithes took a goodly part;
another part went into the IAN
nateS"-payment of one-half the
revenue of any church Office in the
first year of new incumbent; an
other part went in such collections
as Peters Pence; another disap-
peared with the pilgrims who went
to Rome and came back shrived but
penniless.