R is for Revolution

R is for revolution:

A primer

Patric C. Hayes

Copyright

R is for Revolution: a primer (Smashwords edition)

Patric C. Hayes

Spanaway, WA; October, 2017

3nd edition

Table of Contents

Humanism: A Change in Perspective

Machiavelli and his Prince

Erasmus Praises Folly

Sir Thomas More finds Utopia

Segue

Protestantism

The Story of How the Church lost its Way

Heretics and Heresies

An Accident of History

Beyond Luther

Calvin and Calvinism

The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution

Prologue

The English Reformation

The Advent of the Stuarts

A Conflict of Interests

The English Constitution

The Puritan Revolt

The Glorious Revolution

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke

Segue

The American Revolution

Parliament Picks a Fight it Can't Win

Recapitulating the Glorious Revolution

In the foyer of the Revolution

The War for Independence

Writing and Ratifying the U.S. Constitution

Rationalists and Revolutionaries

Prologue

Louis XVI summons the Estates General

The Declaration of the Rights of Man

France on the Eve of the Deluge

The French Enlightenment

Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

Diderot and the Encyclopédie

The Legislative Assembly

The Convention

The Directory

Consulate and Empire

The Industrial Revolution: Capitalism and Socialism

Preface

Getting Up Steam

Mercantilism

Le Physiocrats

Laissez faire economics

Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations

Thomas Malthus and An Essay of Population

David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economics

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Reactionaries and Revolutionaries

Prince Metternich and the Congress of Vienna

Tsar Alexander and the Holy Alliance

Restoration and Reaction in France

Tsar Alexander Experiments with Liberalism

Maintaining Autocracy in the Austrian Empire

The July Revolution (1830)

The Tenets of Democracy

1848: The Springtime of the Peoples

Springtime in the Austrian Empire

Segue

R can also be for Reform

Tory reaction in England

Life in Merry Old England

The Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Political and Social Reforms in Great Britain

The Making of Modern England

Protectionism vs. Free-Trade

Utilitarianism

The Chartist Movement

Segue

The Tragedy of the Russian Revolution

Prologue

Alexander I - Autocracy in Russia

Nicholas I

Alexander II - The Emancipator

The Intelligencia

Alexander III

Nicholas II - The End of the Line

The Great War and Russia's Involvement in It

The March Revolution

The Bolshevik Revolution

Reds and Whites: The Civil War

C is for Counter-Revolution

German and Italian Unification

German Idealism, Fascism, and National Socialism

The German Revolution

The Short Sad History of the Weimar Republic

The Fascists March on Rome

The Fascistization of Italy

The National-Socialist Counter-Revolution

The Totalitarian State

The Perennial Question

Nazi Foreign Policy - The Road to War

The Chinese Revolution

Preface

Late Imperial China and the First Opium War

The Taiping Rebellion

Restoration and Reaction

From Concessions to Spheres of Influence

Thesis, anti-Thesis and Contradictions

The Industrial Revolution, Chinese-style

The Boxer Rebellion (1899 - 1901)

The 1911 Revolution

The New Culture Movement

A Short History of the Chinese Communist Party

China's War of Resistance: 1939 - 1945

Yanan: The Unity of Theory and Practice

The Civil War (1945 - 1949)

Timeline

Atlas

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Dr. Linda Pomerantz, who taught me Chinese history and that life is struggle.

Dr. Donald Lewis, who taught me political philosophy, and once asked me if he would see me on the barricades." I answered in the affirmative.

Dr. Gene Scott, who taught me theology and Church history, and how to practice Faith.

Dr. Frederickson, who taught me to program a computer and that, although tenacity is a virtue, there is nothing wrong in admitting you are beat and asking for help.

Mr. Roger Burke, my high school U.S. History and Government teacher, and the person who set me on my academic career.

Mr. Bill Diss, my sixth and seventh grade teacher, who told my mother that I wasn’t applying myself

My mother, who promptly put an end to that.

Forward:

Will Durant wrote that in order to properly understand a History, you had to know the context in which it was written. Therefore, the story of how this book came to be written is just as important as the story itself. The idea for R is for Revolution came to me in the Fall of 1977. I was sitting in a class on social and political philosophy when the idea occurred to me that I should write a comparative history of the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. I imagined it as something along the line of Barbara Tuckman’s The Proud Tower. I had recently completed twenty units of Chinese history and earlier I had taken twelve units of Russian history, so I figured I had a pretty good start. I thought that all I had to do was familiarize myself a little more with the French Revolution - like learn which came first; the Legislative Assembly or the convention, and when did the Terror occur- and I’d bet set.

After bouncing around from college to college, I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in history, with a minor in philosophy. It could have been the other way around. I had enough philosophy units to declare myself a philosophy major, but a degree in philosophy has even less market value than a degree in history, so I decided against it.

The idea for the book never left my mind, and for the next two decades a lot of what I read I read with a future-eye towards someday writing it. In 2008 I retired and after finishing some other projects I decided that the time had come to start writing the book. I quickly discovered that my original idea was inadequate. I realized that if I wanted to talk about the Russian Revolution I would first have to talk about the Industrial Revolution, the 1848 Springtime of the Peoples and how England avoided a second civil war and revolution by reforming its political institutions. Likewise, I realized that if I wanted to talk about the American Revolution, and make sense of what the colonists were talking about when they demanded that Parliament respect their rights as Englishmen I would have to talk about the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution of 1688, and that would require an examination of the English Reformation, Protestantism and Humanism.

One of the best known Humanists is Sir Thomas More. We will begin Book One with him.

Humanism: A Change in Perspective

IF YOU HAVENT READ THE FORWORD, GO BACK AND READ IT.

On February 7, 1478, in London, Agnes Granger presented her husband, Sir John More, with a son; they named him, Thomas. Later in his life, Thomas More would write Utopia, play a major role in securing England’s king Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and then lose his head because he refused to acknowledge the king as the temporal head of the Church in England. The latter resulted in his being made a Saint of the Roman Catholic Church, and a martyr for freedom of conscience and resistance to tyranny everywhere. Although all of these are good reasons for beginning with Thomas More, and have earned him a place in the pantheon of heroes of Western civilization, those aren't the reasons we are begin with him, we are begin with him simply because he exemplifies the type of person this Chapter is interested in; the Humanist.

What was it about More that made him a Humanist? For that matter, what is Humanism and what are the Humanities? The Humanists were a group of 15th century Europeans who shared a certain point of view. They believed in religious tolerance; or, that no one should tell another person what, or how to think. They believed in the scientific method. Instead of relying on the word of someone else, they believed in finding out for themselves how things worked. Moreover, because they saw it going on all around them, they believed in the possibility of progress and change. That itself was a revolutionary idea. Humanists had what historians refer to as, historical perspective. Historical perspective is to the Humanist what optical perspective is to a painter; a way of seeing things in their relationship to other things. Putting events into perspective enabled the Humanists to see that things are always changing; albeit, at a glacial-like speed, usually. The Humanists rejected the prevailing static view of life – the one that maintained that things are the way they are because that’s the way God wants them – and any change would be contrary to the Will of God. The last time Europe experienced so much change was when Rome fell to the barbarians; before that, it was when Christendom replaced Imperial Rome.

Thomas More was born thirty-eight years after Guttenberg perfected moveable-type printing, and twenty-five years after Constantinople fell to the Turks. He was thirteen years old when Columbus discovered the New World. Not until the worldwide web was created, and the cell phones invented would anything revolutionize communications the way Guttenberg’s perfection of moveable-type printing did. Although it had been expected for quite some time, the capture of Constantinople, the last vestige of the Roman Empire, was comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992; it took people by surprise. As we learned in school, when the Turks captured Constantinople they cut off the source of spices that Europeans use to preserve their food, and make it more palatable. Columbus was merely trying to find a quicker, shorter, cheaper route to the Spice Islands when he accidently chanced upon a continent nobody, except for those who were already living there, knew existed That chance discovery, and Guttenberg's invention, helped make More one of the world's first international best-selling authors. More's Utopia purports to be an account of a civilization discovered during one of Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages to the New World. Along with In Praise of Folly and The Prince, it is one of the seminal books of Humanism.

In addition sharing a belief in the possibility of change, Humanists also shared a love of antiquity. They idolized classical Greek and Rome culture; especially Roman. During the Dark Ages, because they were all pagans, most of the Classical authors had fallen into disrepute. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries, they became the focus of intense study among the Humanists.

Essentially, humanism was a reaction to the Church's attempt to homogenize society. The Humanists sought to emulate classical civilization and its celebration of the individual; things anathema to the Church. However, the Humanists never abandoned their Christian identity; none of them broke with the Church. Because they were academics, both More and Erasmus had strong ties to the Church. In the 15th century, education was under the control of the Church; accordingly, if you wanted to get one, you, and everyone around you, had to meet with the Church's approval.

The Humanists were scholars, consequently, most of them were associated with a university, and the Church controlled the universities. Because the Church controlled education, it decided which books could be read and which books were off-limits Nothing written by Pagans - that is, nothing written during the Classical Age - was in the syllabus. The only exceptions were scientific and medical texts, plus Plato and Aristotle. In the second and third centuries the Church Fathers had used Aristotelian logic to rationalize Christianity. Anything that addressed life’s Big Questions, anything that discussed how to achieve the Good Life, anything that addressed human nature, or how people ought to relate to one another, was banned. It was the Church's position that the Bible was the only book a Christian should consult to find the answer to those Questions. It took this position because it assumed that anything written before 33 A.D. was written under the inspiration of the devil. By the 2nd century, the Church was maintaining that everything worth knowing was found in the pages of the Bible, and nowhere else.

By controlling what people could read, the Church controlled what they knew, and by controlling what they knew, it was able to control them. The Humanists objected this arrangement. They objected to being told what they could read; they wanted to be able to read whatever they wanted to read. They objected to being treated like children who needed to have someone watching over them least they stray and get into trouble. That all changed in 1452. That year Constantinople fell to the Turks, and those Orthodox Christians who could, fled to the West; bringing in their baggage what they valued most; in some cases ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts.

Now the Humanists could obtain what they had been dying-for (not literally). Refugees, desperate for money to live on, parted with their manuscripts, thus enabling them to circumvent the Church’s prohibitions. However, this gold mine came with a lot of dross. What the refuges from Constantinople brought with them were manuscripts; hand-written documents copied, and recopied, and re-recopied for centuries; and thus subject to errors. Getting rid of the dross - coming-up with authentic translations - necessitated the invention of a new science; textual analysis, the comparing of various versions of a manuscript to discover inconsistencies.

Because the Catholic Church controlled what people could read, there was only one version of the Bible available for them to read; the translation of it made by Saint Jerome. This so-called Vulgate translation – so called because it was written in "vulgar, or colloquial Latin - was a 4th century translation of Scripture made from the original Greek and Hebrew into Latin. Among the manuscripts now available to the Humanists were translations of the Scriptures that differed markedly from the translation used by the Catholic Church.

Back in 869, the Christian Church had split into Western and Eastern branches; the former became Roman Catholics while the latter became Eastern Orthodox. The split had been precipitated by the Bishop of Rome assertion of primacy over all the other bishops. Before the split, the Eastern Orthodox branch used its own Greek version of Scripture; a version that was older than the Jerome’s Latin translation. Being older, and not being a translation, the Humanist reckoned that it must be more authentic than the one they were currently reading. When they compared the two versions the Humanists realized that the Catholic Church was in serious need of reforming.

However, reforming the Church wasn’t what the Humanists were interested in. The Humanists were interested in learning what the Greeks and Romans had to say about civic life. For medieval man, the focus of life was the Hereafter; that meant doing whatever was necessary to escape the Fires of Hell. For Renaissance men, the focus of life was the here-and-now; and Humanists were men of the Renaissance. Sometime during the 14th century, Western civilization underwent a cosmological revolution; it went from being theocentric to anthrocentric. Mankind replaced God as the center of the universe.

Through their reading of the classical authors - Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, etc. etc. - the Humanists constructed a revolutionary view of what life was supposed to be about; and it was at variance with the Church’s view. They didn't think that the primary purpose of life to live in such a way as to escape hell-fire. They thought that the purpose of life was maximize the opportunities offered you, and go as far as your abilities would take you. Their interests was in the Here-and-Now; not the Hereafter. Contrary to what the Church preached, the Humanists weren’t interested in laying-up heavenly treasures; they were interested acquiring earthly treasure. Because their focus was on the things of the world, the Humanists are considered secularists. In a very rudimentary form, they supported the notion of separation of church and state. Given the fact that the Church had made getting through the pearly-gates so problematic, the Humanists thought it made more sense to put pearly gates" on your own doorstep; where they could impress everyone.

Just as American universities gave birth to the anti-War Movement in the 1960's, in the late-1400's and early-1500’s the universities run by the Church birth to the Humanist Movement. In the Middle Ages - the centuries between 1000 A.D. and 1400 A.D. - the purpose of attending a university was to prepare oneself for a career in either medicine, law, or the Church. Because the Church was the biggest employer around, the opportunities were unlimited; even a capable peasant, with the right patronage, could advance to great heights. Consequently, most people went to university to study theology. Because universities were attached to either a cathedral or a monastery, enrollment usually meant entering some sort of religious order.

In addition to being subject to the Church, the universities were also dominated by a group of men known as the Scholastics - or the Schoolmen - that is, they were partisans of particular philosopher or another. One professor might be of the school of Aristotle, another might be of the school of Plato, another might be of a more recent vintage, like Thomas Aquinas. Being a Schoolman meant that you relied on the authority of someone else; an arrangement that stifled independent thinking; which suited the Church just fine. Furthermore the things the Schoolmen concerned themselves with - like, How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? - were too abstract for the Humanists. Humanists tended to be what we call free-thinkers.

In addition to being free-thinkers, Humanists were Individualists; they celebrated their, and everyone else’s, individuality. The Church assigned little value to the individual; what mattered to it was the smooth operation of society as a whole. In the Middle Ages, the smooth operation of society was achieved through the application of the principle of collective responsibility. If an individual misbehaved, the entire village might suffer the consequences. Consequently, least anyone step out of line in any way, everyone minded everyone else's business. The Humanists found such an arrangement intolerable. Like the bourgeoisie of the 19th century, the Humanists of 16th century wanted to be free to realize their full potential, and not be hemmed-in by unimaginative people. Remarkable, the Humanists didn't limit the right to become a fully realized individual to themselves; they extended it to everyone.

Since we have made frequent mention of it, and will continue to do so, it would be advisable for us to stop for a moment, and say exactly what it is we are talking about when we say the Church, It is necessary to do this is because, before the 15th century, the Church had a much different meaning than it does today, and it is in the medieval sense that we are using the word. Today, the Church refers to both the congregation and the clergy, in the Middle Ages, the Church referred to the clergy; especially the ecclesiastical hierarchy; the bishops and the cardinals. A good analogy would be to think of the medieval Church as a business that provided a service to the people. Just as it would be wrong to think of the patients in a hospital as the Hospital, it would be wrong to think of the people who attended mass in the 14th century as the Church. They were the laity. In medieval times, people were divided into two large categories, clergy and laity, and you belonged to either one or the other. It was a Protestant innovation to include the laity in their definition the Church. However, as with all innovators, the Protestants got their inspiration from the Past. In fact, one would be justified in saying that Protestants were Humanists who specialized in studying the Bible.

The Protestant-Humanists had as their initial objective producing an authentic translation of the Bible; either in Latin, or in the vernacular; preferably in the vernacular. Later, one of core beliefs of Protestantism would be that the Bible should be available to everyone, in their native language. Not all Humanists shared this opinion; Thomas More certainly didn't. In their quest for an authentic Bible, the Protestant-Humanists discovered something they hadn't been looking for; they discovered that the Church hadn't always been a hierarchical structure with deacons, priests, bishops, and a pope. They discovered that during the Apostolic Age, there was no differentiation between Church and laity; the Church was the body of Christ. The Church might have different members, but no member had priority. The Protestant-Humanists’ attempt at producing an authentic Bible inadvertently produced the Reformation is a sterling example of the law of Unintended Consequences in action.

Secular Humanists wanted to reform society by restoring the civic virtue of classical Rome; they advocated what we call today, civic pride They believed that if everyone were allowed to realize their full potential, society as a whole would benefit. Both Secular Humanists and Protestant-Humanists were dissatisfied with the status quo and wanted to change it. Both looked to an idealized past for a remedy. This is a characteristic common to most reformers.

The Humanists invented the idea of a Liberal Education; which is not the same thing as an education in the Liberal Arts. In medieval times, someone studied the Liberal Arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic; the so-called trivium, and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, the quadrivium, as a prerequisite to the study of medicine, the Law, or theology. Competence in those fields earned you the equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts degree, and qualified you to become a Master. In the 15th century, education was every-bit-a-part of the medieval guild system as cooperage, or weaving was; and you can still see vestiges of it, in the gowns and head-gear professors wear at commencements.

The Humanists saw the Liberal Arts from a different perspective. They saw the Liberal Arts, or getting a Liberal Education, as a means of Liberating Mankind. They believed that ignorance, not sin, is the cause of our problems. They, and the Liberals who came after them, assumed that, whatever the Problem, its roots could be found in ignorance, and education was the solution. It seemed obvious to them, that the more you knew, the less inclined you would be to make mistakes, or listen to nonsense. The Humanists saw a Liberal Education as liberating because it enables its possessor to think critically, and that put them at-odds with the medieval Church. Educated people are harder to control than ignorant people, because they can see self-serving pronouncements for exactly what they are.

There is a theory of History which maintains that, in as much as civilizations are nothing more than conglomerations of individuals, they develop in similar ways. That theory maintains that, like individuals, civilizations go through infancy, adolescents, adulthood, maturity, and morbidity; each has its own agenda, each has its own problems. It is a theory that rests on the principle of analogy. However, as someone told me long ago, All analogies break-down. Arnold Toynbee, an author I never read, but only read about, wrote his twelve-volume Study of History using this theory. Using the analogy that one century in a civilization's life equals one year in an individual's life; in the 14th century, Western Civilization had reached the stage of adolescents; it was a teenager and, as teenagers are won’t to do, its more daring individuals did what teenagers do; they challenged Authority. One might say that the Humanists were acting like teenagers. The difference between the Humanists and your typical teenager, was that the former were mature men, and tended to be less impatient.

When most people reach adolescents, the authority they challenge is that of their parents and teachers. The authority the Humanists questioned was the authority of the Church, and the Church's authority was all-pervasive. There was no escaping it. There was no aspect of the individual's life that the Church wasn't involved in; there was nothing that didn't escape its attention. With hindsight, historians can see the Humanists as rebels against Church authoritarianism; but the Humanists didn't see themselves that way. The Humanists saw themselves as good sons of the Church whose only interest was in expanding the horizons of knowledge. The Humanists knew the limits - teenagers test the limits. Teenagers want to see what they can get away with. By staying within the limits most Humanists kept out of trouble with the Church. The Protestant-Humanists were the exception..

Had it not been for the conjunction of two previous events, Guttenberg's perfection of moveable-type printing and the fall of Constantinople, the Humanist Movement might not have happened at all. As we saw above, the fall of Constantinople brought an influx of classical literature into Western Europe, just at a time when people were developing an appetite for it; Guttenberg's invention fed that appetite. Between 1450 and 1500, thanks to Guttenberg's invention, and the diligent work of the Humanists, all of the major classics, and most of the minor ones, had been published. Then, because they didn't want to go out of business, publishers began looking around for new authors to publish, and they began publishing books written in the vernacular. They began publishing books written by Erasmus, More, and Machiavelli; books written in French, English, Italian, or German; books that any literate Jean, John, Giovanni, or Johann could read.

And, here we come to one of the reasons why the Humanists are so important to us. Unlike the Scholastics who wrote in Latin, the Humanists wrote in the vernacular. Historians say that by choosing to write in the vernacular, the Humanists are responsible for the democratization of knowledge; something that totally upset the status quo. It is a truism, Knowledge is Power. It is easier to control people who are ignorant, than it is to control people who are informed; just like children, uninformed people tend to look up to those who appear to know more than they do, and do what they tell them to do.

The medieval Church opposed the democratization of knowledge – specifically, it opposed making the Bible available in the vernacular. A vernacular Bible would enable people to check for themselves and see whether-or-not what the Church said was Biblical really was Biblical, or just something it make-up.

Not only did the Humanists and the Scholastics the write differently, they also thought differently. Today, we would say, They processed information differently. The Scholastics placed a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning. They believed that knowledge could be acquired through inference; that is, through inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning proceeds from specific instances to reach a general conclusion.

The Humanists differed most significantly from the Scholastics, in that they believed knowledge is acquired deductively. In Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar (Abrams Image: New York; 2007), Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein define deduction as, Reasoning from as set of premises to a conclusion that can be logically inferred from them. Then they define induction as, Reasoning from specific instances to a general conclusion that is broader than what can be logically inferred from the instances. An example of deductive logic is the syllogism: A = B; B = C; therefore C = A.

Francis Bacon is an example of someone who used deductive reasoning. Although he was primarily a politician, - he served both Elizabeth I, and James I, of England - he was also a Humanists; or at least a proto-Humanists, and a pioneer of the Scientific method. He rejected the inductive method of reasoning, saying that it was a dead end, and that the truth it yielded was only probable. He would say, "While the truth of an inductive argument can only be probable, the truth of a deductive argument can be assumed to be certain. That is because it is based on hard evidence rather than speculation. The philosophical definition of inductive reasoning is much more nuanced than the simple progression from the particular to the general. As an example of inductive reasoning, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein cite the following: We are led to assume that because the sun rose today, and yesterday, and all the yesterdays we know about, it will probably do so again tomorrow. To illustrate deductive reasoning, Cathcart and Klein offer the following syllogism: All comedians are philosopher; the Three Stooges are comedians; therefore Larry, Moe and Curly are philosophers. The problem is the Three Stooges aren't comedians, their clowns. The syllogism would have rung truer if the comedians in question were Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Mort Sahl.

When we say that the Humanists and the Scholastic thought differently, we are doing more than referring to the simple fact one of them preferred to reach its conclusions deductively and other preferred to do reach them inductively, we are referring to the fact that they differed in the way they perceived Reality. You could almost say that it was a generational-thing. Because the Baby-boomers came of age during a time of material prosperity, they had a different appreciation of life than their parents, who grew-up during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Likewise, the Humanists' view of the world was different from that of the preceding generation; the generation of the Scholastic. The Scholastics had formed their view of the world when the Byzantine Empire still stood and the existence of the American continents unknown. It was because things had not changed all that much in the preceding millennia, that the Scholastic felt secure in presupposing a static Reality. On the other hand, because they lived at a time when the world was changing all around them, it was impossible for Humanists to think of Reality as static. If Reality isn’t static, the Humanists concluded, Man could change his Reality, and improve the condition of his life. He didn’t have to accept things the way they were.

Most Humanists were devout Christians; they did not make the mistake of confusing the container - the Church - for the Contents - the Gospel. If they had a problem it was not with message, it was with the messenger. The Humanists thought that, over the centuries, the Church had gotten the message all mixed-up. They wanted to apply the tools of textual analysis to the study of the Bible, and thereby to recover the original message of the Gospel. Because it would expose them as frauds, the Church - the priests and the bishops - didn't want them doing that. A study of the Bible would reveal that half of the things the Church taught - like purgatory and indulgences - were not in the Bible at all.

What the upset the Humanists most was the Church’s worldliness. Specifically, they objected to the Church letting worship degenerate into mere formalism, while it pursued secular power. They were also dismayed that many of the clergy, and that included bishops and cardinals, were disgracefully ignorant of Scripture. When they brought these matters up, the hearing they got wasn’t cordial. The problem was, no one - and especially people in authority – like having their failures pointed out.

The notions of liberty, equality and democracy all have their roots in Humanism, not because they flourished in the heyday of Humanism, but because they were so conspicuously absent. The two centuries that mark the heyday of Humanism (1450 to 1650), also mark the heyday of political absolutism. In those centuries, the authority of the ruler was regarded as divinely sanctioned, and irresistible. In its primordial form, that political theory is known as Patriarchal-Monarchy. Later, it would go under the rubric divine right monarchy.

The classic exposition of the Patriarchal theory of government is found in Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarch (pub.1680). Filmer's theory of government is predicated on an assumed analogy between a kingdom and a family. Just as a father’s authority over his children is absolute, so is a king’s authority over his subjects. The king was supposed to be the father of his country, who rules over his subjects just as a father rules over his children. In theory that rule was supposed to be benevolent; in practice, it tended to be despotic and autocratic. In practice, the parental-theory of government proves to be unworkable; adults don’t like being treated like children who don't know what's best for them.

When Rome fell, and the Church was handed the task of filling the void created by that fall, it borrowed heavily from the Bible to construct a theory of government that would replace it. In doing so, not only did it employ the metaphor of the father in describing the relationship of the monarch to his people, it also employed that of a shepherd and his flock. In either case, whether it was father or shepherd, the idea being conveyed was one of someone responsible for the welfare of others. In return, just as children owe obedience to their father because he provides for them, the people owe the king obedience because he provides for them. That is the meaning of the word lord.

In addition to the Church-sanctioned patriarchal theory of government, there was another, older theory of government, the one that goes under the rubric: principe, legis habet vigorem or, What pleases the prince, has the force of law. We call it Might, makes Right.

Over centuries, the patriarchal theory of government evolved into the divine right theory of monarchy. The up-shot of that theory is; the monarch is God's earthly representative; His vicar or viceroy. To drive home this point, the king was anointed by the Bishop. Under such an arrangement, it wasn't long before resisting the king’s will was synonymous with resisting God’s Will.

When the 17th century rolled around, the theory of Divine right monarchy would come under relentless attack; particularly in England. John Locke would challenge the theory of divine right monarchy, and maintained that the true relationship between king and subject was that of agency; the king was not the father or shepherd of his people, he was their agent. According Locke, the king's primary purpose was to provide an environment for his people where they could pursue their interests unmolested. Locke then ventured the revolutionary opinion that, just as someone is justified in dismissing an unsatisfactory employee, the people can dismiss the king is he fails to fulfill his responsibilities.

Enough about Humanism in general, let us now talk about some specific Humanists. Specifically, Machiavelli, Erasmus, and More, and their major works.

Machiavelli and his Prince

The name Machiavelli is not one that we normally associate with Humanism, but in his field, politics, he was every bit a Humanists as More and Erasmus. Machiavelli revolutionized political philosophy by predicating his theories on his own observations, rather than on some abstract Good. He was interested in how things were actually done; not in how they ought to be done. The Prince is a How to book. It’s about how acquire political power; how to exercise it, and how to hang on to it. Previously, when men had speculated on the nature of the State they sought to describe the perfect society. Machiavelli wasn't interested in doing that; he was interested in describing how things were actually done.

It is said that Machiavelli wrote descriptively, while his predecessors wrote prescriptively." Based upon his observations, he described the behavior of the successful prince. One trait of the successful Prince which Machiavelli remarked on was that they didn't care whether or not they were loved.

One of the first things a landscape artist has to do before beginning a painting is decide what is relevant, and what is not; what he will include and what he will leave out Machiavelli had the same problem. He had to decide what was relevant in politics, and what was not. He decided to leave out any discussion of morality. He believed that the science of government, like all sciences, was amoral. He knew that no matter what choices a Prince’s made, some someone going to get hurt, so he advised them to consider two things when making their choices, what was best for the entire community and, what has the best chance of succeeding.

Throughout The Prince, Machiavelli goes to great lengths to make it clear that he what he is describing is not the behavior of a Saint, but the behavior of a successful ruler. More than once he points out that a successful ruler is one who is willing to be ruthless, even if it means he’s unpopular, when the security of the State is at stake.

It was an axiom for Machiavelli that, even though everything else changes, Human Nature never changes. Therefore, had no problem believing that a Classical Roman and a modern Italian had identical values. The word axiom comes from the Greek (āxīoma); it means, That which commends itself as self-evident. As it is used in modern logic, an axiom is simply a premise - or starting point - for a hypothesis; its truth is assumed. Machiavelli could have just as easily assumed that Human Nature varies circumstances; but what would that have done to his theory?

After having decided human nature is invariable across cultures, Machiavelli next job was to determine what it was. Based on his observations, he reckoned that human nature was fickle; it was a mixture of both good and bad elements. He also reckoned that, unless it was in their best interest, men and will not keep their promises. In having a low estimation of human nature, Machiavelli echoed the Church.

In his Discourses, Machiavelli appears to contradict himself; there he advances an almost Rousseauian view of Human Nature. In his Discourses he wrote, Man is pure, civilization corrupts him. In the same vein he also appears to have anticipated the 17th century's favorite paradigm; the State of Nature. In that essay Machiavelli also recognizes the fact that, as the environment changes, so do Men and that what worked in the past might not work in the present.

Another axiom of Machiavelli's was that the interests of the ruler, and the interests of the ruled, are best served when there is peace and quiet. Machiavelli knew that if a ruler didn't show at least a modicum of regard for his subjects’ sensibilities he would have a hard time ruling them. Therefore, he advised princes against ruling despotically.

From Machiavelli's perspective, the ruler's job was to act on behalf of the entire community; even if his own interests suffered. He compared the moral obligation of the Prince to that of the soldier. Just as a soldier is responsible for the welfare of everyone in his unit, a prince is responsible for the welfare of everyone in his kingdom.

Since the State is the instrument by which peace and quiet are maintained, it was obvious to Machiavelli that its first obligation was to itself; i.e., its own preservation. In the 16th century, the surest way to guarantee self-preservation was to be stronger and more ruthless than everyone else. In the 16th century, the surest way to guarantee self-preservation was by being stronger and more ruthless than everyone else. This gave rise to the notion of raison d’état or, the National Interest. Machiavelli believed, no matter how contrary to moral law an act might be, if the prince decided it was necessary to the preservation of the State, it was permissible. Thus, it was permissible to attack your enemy with bothering to issue a formal declaration of war!

Machiavelli’s pragmatic approach to politics took God took out of the picture, and earned him a bad reputation with the Church. The Church teaches that God is actively involved in the affairs of Men. Machiavelli shared the Humanists’ belief that men make their own history.

Machiavelli appears to have anticipated much of what would later be called Rationalism. Like the Rationalists, he was anticlerical; he was opposed to letting the Church participate in civic matters. Unlike them, he saw religion as a beneficial force. By providing everyone with a common point of reference, he saw it as the glue that held society together.

Machiavelli was astute enough to be cognizant of the dangers inherent in saying that the ends justify the means; so he added this caveat, Good men will not use evil means to achieve their ends, so he wrote, good men will not use evil means to achieve their ends." He also wrote that evil men could not be expected to act charitably.

No matter what you might personally think of The Prince, when judging it it is necessary bear in mind that its primary thesis was revolutionary. Machiavelli maintained that the ruler was to rule for the benefit of the entire population; not just a few. Machiavelli rejected the prevailing notion that the State was the personal possession of the prince.

It was a maxim of Machiavelli’s that, In politics, what we actually do is far removed from what we ought to do. Consequently, he observed, Whoever pursues virtue in politics will soon find himself at a disadvantage. For Machiavelli, politics wasn't a matter of the ends justifying the means; it was a matter of the survival of the fittest in a cut-throat world.

Machiavelli's political philosophy can be summed up in six precepts: 1) the essence of politics is the struggle for power. 2) Nothing stays the same; change is the only thing constant in human affairs. 3) For any organism to survive it must be able to adapt to change. 4) The State is not a reflection of some theological cosmic order. 5) Man is in control of his own affairs. 6) In matters of State, moral considerations are unimportant.

Today, these precepts are pretty-much accepted without question; in Machiavelli's day they bordered on heresy. By the end of the Middle Ages the power of the Church had grown enormously; it held the power of life and death and, if it didn't like what you said, it was an easy matter to get rid of you - permanently - all that was required was to have someone accuse you of witchcraft, blasphemy, or heresy. A witch was anyone who practiced the old religion, and observed its ancient rituals. Blasphemy is speaking of God in a disrespectful manner. Heresy is anything that runs contrary to the teaching of the Church. All six of Machiavelli's precepts ran contrary to the Church’s teachings. He was kept out of trouble by the fact that he had influential friends, like the Medici’s

The Church taught that the purpose of the State was to be a reflection God's heavenly kingdom. Since that kingdom was hierarchically structured with angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, it was only natural that earthly society be hierarchically structured also. That, the Church explained, is why, along with popes, bishops, and cardinals, there are kings, dukes, and peasants. In this scheme-of-things, everyone had their place; assigned to them by God.

Just as it was heresy to suggest that morality was inconsequential in government, so it was to suggest that human society could change. If change were possible then would mean that the Church could change, and the only reason for the Church changing would to correct some imperfection!

Erasmus Praises Folly

It is written regarding Erasmus that he, more than any other individual, symbolizes the spirit of Renaissance Humanism. Much as Stephen Hawking and Neil de Grasse are the intellectual superstars of the Twenty-first century, during most of the latter part of the 15th century, Erasmus dominated the intellectual life of Europe. He was a close friend of Thomas More’s and, like his friend he was frequently consulted by princes and monarchs regarding matters of State. During the Reformation, his reputation went into a temporary decline. The Protestant-Humanists took umbrage at the fact that he wouldn't support their break with the Catholic Church. The Protestants took the position, If you are not with us, then you must be against us. And if you are against us, well, a pox on your house", too. It seems that the Protestants were just as intolerant of people who didn’t share their views as the Catholic Church was intolerant of heretics.

History textbooks generally treat Humanism as a movement of university professors attempting to recover the lost heritage of antiquity. Their methodology was textual analysis. They are portrayed as studying all the ancient texts, comparing them, trying to piece together the most accurate texts. Contrary to the wishes of the Catholic Church, the Humanists applied the science of textual analysis to the Bible. Their objective was the creation of an accurate, vernacular, translation of Scripture. The Catholic Church stood in the way of their achieving that objective. The Church’s objection to everyone being able to read the Bible was the knowledge that if everyone could read the Bible it would soon be discovered that much of the what it taught was not Biblically based, but of human invention.

Humanism is also sometimes portrayed as a neo-pagan movement, or a pagan revival. The 16th century was a period of economic revival, and the fortunes it produced, and the lifestyle it provided, clashed with the asceticism that the Church preached; but did not practice. Because it didn't practice what it preached, the Humanists laid the worst charge Youth can lay against its Elders; they accused the Church of hypocrisy. While its Bishops and Cardinals lived lives of opulence, in palatial splendor, it thought everyone else should live lives of austerely. This hypocrisy gave the Humanists an excuse to reject the Church's teaching regarding the evil nature of the physical world. The Humanists rejected the notion that, in order to enjoy the pleasures of the Afterlife, it was necessary to abjure the pleasures of this life. They observed, Bishops and Cardinals certainly weren’t abjuring the pleasures of this life, and no one doubted that they were going to go to heaven. Such a doctrine might work in an Age when there wasn't too much renounce, but with business picking-up it lacked appeal. However, it would be a serious mistake to assume that the Humanists were wanton libertines, only interested in satisfying their appetites. The Humanists were genuinely offended by the hypocrisy they saw in the Church. The objective of their attack was to get the Church to reform itself. Their goal was to return the Church to the purity and simplicity it had known during the Apostolic Age.

Erasmus was in the forefront of the Humanists’ attack on Church hypocrisy. His satirical The Praise of Folly is considered one of the classics in the history of literature. In praising Folly he mocks the monastic life, the sale of Indulgences and other, more arcane, subjects; subjects too esoteric to go into here.

Erasmus' outlook on life was shaped by the fact that he received his primary education from the Brothers of the Common Life; a religious society. The Brothers lived communally, in a form of primitive communism, sharing everything, just as they imagined the Apostles done. Their Order stressed the need of putting ones' faith in God, and studying the Bible. Their study of the Bible led them to postulate the idea of human equality. The Bible clearly states, God is no respecter of persons. That is, God doesn’t hold one person in higher regard than another, but considers them all equal. Taken a step further, it could be postulated that it is not God’s that some men exercise dominion over everyone else. That was not the position taken by the Church. The Church’s cosmology taught that the universe was hierarchically structured and, just as God ruled His kingdom in Heaven attended by Angels and Archangels, cherubim and seraphim, kings on earth ruled their kingdoms attended by Counts, Barons, Dukes, and Earls, and that inequality was God’s will.

At the age of twenty, Erasmus joined the Augustinian Order; at twenty-five, he was ordained a priest. In 1494 - right after Columbus returned from discovering the New World - he enrolled at the University of Paris, the most prestigious university in Europe. There he intended to study Theology.

At Paris, he was thoroughly put-off by the Church's approach to education. Instead of teaching the things he came to Paris to learn about, he found his professors - who were usually priests – absorbed in defending their particular School. That wasn't what Erasmus was interested in. Like most university student enrolled in the College of the Humanities, he was interested in discovering the Truth. But, it wasn't the curriculum that bothered Erasmus the most. What really upset him, was the cavalier attitude the professors had towards Religion; they had reduced religion to mere formalism; the proper performance of certain rites without contemplating their meaning. That clashed with the approach Erasmus had learned from the Brothers.

Based on his experiences at Paris, Erasmus wrote Handbook of a Christian Warrior. The book addressed what he considered some of the Church's many failings. He wrote, Many are prone to count the number of masses they hear every day, and regard that as fulfilling their Christian obligation. That is, they thought that going to Church three or four times a day made them a Christian. The Brothers had taught him that being a Christian meant taking care of the poor, the needy, and the friendless. In the same vein, he continued, They worship the Saints; they like to touch their relics. They think that, perhaps, that way their saintliness will rub off on them. He told these relic-worshipers, Kissing a Saint’s bones won’t make you more Saintly; if you want to be like Peter or Paul, you must copy their faith and love. He thought pilgrimages, which were a major source of Church income, a waste of time; what mattered to him was caring for others and treating them with dignity. He disapproved of the same thing Jesus had disapproved of, and it alarmed him that the Church was engaging in them itself. He concluded by writing, If you believe your sins to be washed away with the purchase of an Indulgence; then you are utterly deceived and clean [out of your mind]. He wrote these lines sixteen years before Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral.

When the modern reader reads about the Humanists' attacking the Church, they must not make the mistake of interpreting that attack as an attack on Christianity itself. The Humanists were not intent on destroying the Church; all they wanted to do was to get it back to the way they imagined it had been in Apostolic times. Humanists, like most people of their time, saw religion as part of the woof and weave the social fabric; remove it and the whole thing would unravel. Where the Humanist-Christians and Scholastic-Christians differed was that the former saw Christianity as a life-style and the latter saw it as a matter of performing a prescribed set of rituals in the prescribed manner. Being a good Humanist, as well as a good Christian, Erasmus easily reconciled the liberal and humane vision of society found in the pages of the Classics with the teachings of Jesus. Reading Erasmus, one might reach the conclusion that Jesus was a Humanist. Erasmus aspired to create a synthesis of Classical and Christian ideas that would be acceptable to the Church.

Being a good Christian-Humanist, Erasmus undertook the task of translating and editing the Bible and, in 1516 he produced his own Greek–to-Latin translation. On one page was printed the Greek Text, on the facing page was his translation into Latin. His Latin translation was much superior to the Latin translation produced by St. Jerome a millennia earlier. The next step was to translate the Bible into the vernacular so that everyone who could read could read it. Wycliffe and Tyndale were to do it in England; Luther would do it in Germany.

Erasmus wrote his best-known work, the Praise of Folly, while he was visiting his friend Sir Tomas More, in England in1510. The title is a pun on the Latin rendering of his friend's name. Folly was written as a satirical attack on the avarice and ignorance of the monks. Unfortunately, because they lack the proper frame of reference, the modern reader usually doesn’t get the humor. In the early 16th century, when Folly was written, the clergy, especially the monks, commanded about as much respect as politicians command today. They were despised for living off the labor of others. They were seen as parasites; fattening themselves on the work of others. Erasmus was a 16th century George Carlin, or Stephen Colbert. He said what everyone else was thinking, but didn't dare to say; and he got away with it because he made a joke of it.

When Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five thesis to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral and invited the local Scholastics to debate him, it put Erasmus on the spot; not because anyone expected him to debate Luther, but because they expected him to come out and openly endorse him. Luther had taken his cue from Erasmus. During the Reformation, it was said, Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it. Luther's actions brought the controversy that had been simmering in the halls of academia out in the open, and everyone was choosing sides. The question on everyone everyone's mind was, Which side would Erasmus choose? No one considered the possibility that he would choose not to choose and seek, instead, to stay above it all. Because he did not want to alienate anyone, especially the Church, he refused to take sides, he equivocated. The result of his equivocation was that he alienated everyone. Concerning Erasmus' unwillingness to take a stand, Luther would write, Human considerations prevailed upon him much more than the divine. In others words, he was more interested in pleasing men than in pleasing God. Because it questioned his integrity, that was a very-very serious criticism for Luther to make of Erasmus.

It wasn't on account of a lack integrity that Erasmus chose not to choose sides; it was because he imagined that by not taking side he could act as a moderator between the two sides. However, in making that choice, he failed to take into account one simple the fact; Luther's actions effectively unleashed a storm that had been brewing for more than two hundred years. In that sort of atmosphere no one was in the mood to compromise; extremism was the order of the day, and the more extreme you were, the better your chances were of being heard.

As the saying goes, Erasmus was stuck between a rock and a hard place. In his heart, he knew that what Luther was saying was true - he had pretty much said the same things himself - but he believed that Luther's attitude would only result in the Church becoming more intransigent itself. Events proved this to be true. The first response of any authoritarian regime when confronted with opposition is to crack-down, and that’s precisely what the Catholic Church did. All Erasmus wanted, was that he be left alone so he could continue his studies.

Erasmus' dilemma was compounded by the fact that - early-on - the Church took the position that anyone who failed to condemn Luther would automatically be regarded as someone who supported him. Erasmus responded to his critics by saying, I follow the just decrees of Popes and Emperors because it is proper to do so. I endure their evil laws because it is the safe thing to do. By doing the safe thing Erasmus showed, if nothing else, that he was a pragmatist. His friend, Thomas More, was an idealist, and died a martyr's death as a consequence.

Trying to stay above the fray was counter-productive. Endeavoring to offend no one, Erasmus pissed-off everyone. The Church first expressed its annoyance with Erasmus by placing his Praise of Folly on its Index of Forbidden Books. Then, at the Council of Trent, it condemned him as an impious heretic. Placing The Praise of Folly on the Index of Forbidden Books probably helped make it a Best-Seller; when something is forbidden, it becomes more desirable. Condemning him as an impious heretic was a more serious matter; it denied him access to the sacraments and grace. Only his international reputation kept him from the stake. The Protestants were content with merely ostracizing him.

Sir Thomas More finds Utopia

As we said at the start, More is remembered for three things; writing Utopia, his role in the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon, and his martyrdom for refusing to acknowledge Henry as the temporal head of the Church in England. More took the position that, because the Church was Universal it could only have one head. Fred Zimmerman’s film, A Man for All Seasons (Columbia pictures; 1966), is a thoughtful portrayal of More's clash with Henry; ending with his being sent to the block for high treason. On the surface, the film is the story of someone being railroaded by the judicial system - something we sometimes call judicial murder - but, in telling More’s story, the film examines something that we all take for granted today - something that the Humanists were pioneers in - the struggle for freedom of conscience, or religious liberty.

At first glance, one might be tempted to think More was Machiavelli’s polar opposite. More would be thought of as an Idealist, and Machiavelli a Realist. The titles of their books, would contribute to that impression. To the modern mind, the words utopia and utopian carry with them the connotation impractical or unrealistic. A book bearing the title The Prince carries no such connotation. However, first impressions can be wrong. Machiavelli and More had more in common than you would imagine. Besides being Humanists, and sharing many of the same presuppositions, they were both engaged in politics, so they both had practical experience to back their theories-up. Thus, they both might be considered empiricists.

More and Machiavelli were also proto-social contract theorists; where they differed was in their presuppositions regarding the State. Machiavelli regarded the State as an End in Itself. Today, we would say, He believed that the People existed to serve the needs of the State. More reversed that priority, and said, Men created the State to serve their needs. This would seem more logical. No one would voluntarily create something to be enslaved to it. John Locke would later take More's idea and develop it more fully in his Two Essays on Government.

More was a devout Christian, probably more so than his friend Erasmus. One could say, More’s Christianity was of the heart, Erasmus’ was of the head. Given the fact that Erasmus was an ordained priest, and More a lawyer, you might have thought it would have been the other way around. Erasmus may have had a religious education, and it may have rubbed-off on him, but that doesn't mean that he had a religious vocation; for him, and for many others, the religious life was a means to an end; that end being, getting an education. For More, religion was an end in itself. In the 16th century, becoming a priest or a monk was a career choice. Ambitious young men with talent would join the Church the same way today's M.B.A.s join Citigroup, or Goldman-Sachs.

Some people see Utopia as More's attempt at creating a society based on the teachings of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:1 and Luke 6:20-38). From reading the Sermon, More reached concluded that, if people wanted to live a blessed life, they ought to live communally, with no class distinctions, sharing labor and goods. More was what you might call a Christian Socialist-Humanist.

Utopia is also an exposition of the Humanists’ assumption that our problems - individually and collectively - are of our own making, and not the result of God's malevolence, Fate, or Original Sin. Furthermore, because our problems are of our own making, we have the capacity to find solutions to them; we don’t have to accept things as they are, we can change them. His solution was to create institutions that corresponded to current conditions, and get rid of those that no longer