The Story of Mankind [93]
The early Spaniards and Portuguese
looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and contemplated
the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in
the least know what to make of those worthy prophets with
their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that
these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented
something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the
respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit
of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere with the trade in
spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the ``evil influence''
with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very
definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage
of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future.
THE REFORMATION
THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST
COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM
WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND
BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE
AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY
ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE
WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND
LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS
ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION
OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think
of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the
ocean to have ``freedom of religious worship.'' Vaguely in the
course of time (and more especially in our Protestant countries)
the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of
``liberty of thought.'' Martin Luther is represented as the
leader of the vanguard of progress. But when history is
something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed
to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the
German historian Ranke, we try to discover what ``actually
happened,'' then much of the past is seen in a very different
light.
Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely
bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of
the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and
bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do
this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But
we ought to try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow
our prejudices to influence us too much.
Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very
Protestant centre of a very Protestant country. I never saw
any Catholics until I was about twelve years old. Then I felt
very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid.
I knew the story of the many thousand people who had been
burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition
when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their
Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real
to me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It
might occur again. There might be another Saint Bartholomew's
night, and poor little me would be slaughtered in my
nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as
had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny.
Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic
country. I found the people much pleasanter and much
more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former countrymen.
To my great surprise, I began to discover that there
was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a
Protestant.
Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, who actually lived through the Reformation, did
not see things that way. They were always right and their
enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be
hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which
was no more than human and for which they deserve no blame.
When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500,
an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor
Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder
of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a number
of highly centralised kingdoms. The
looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and contemplated
the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in
the least know what to make of those worthy prophets with
their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that
these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented
something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the
respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit
of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere with the trade in
spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the ``evil influence''
with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very
definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage
of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future.
THE REFORMATION
THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST
COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM
WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND
BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE
AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY
ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE
WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND
LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS
ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION
OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think
of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the
ocean to have ``freedom of religious worship.'' Vaguely in the
course of time (and more especially in our Protestant countries)
the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of
``liberty of thought.'' Martin Luther is represented as the
leader of the vanguard of progress. But when history is
something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed
to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the
German historian Ranke, we try to discover what ``actually
happened,'' then much of the past is seen in a very different
light.
Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely
bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of
the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and
bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do
this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But
we ought to try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow
our prejudices to influence us too much.
Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very
Protestant centre of a very Protestant country. I never saw
any Catholics until I was about twelve years old. Then I felt
very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid.
I knew the story of the many thousand people who had been
burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition
when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their
Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real
to me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It
might occur again. There might be another Saint Bartholomew's
night, and poor little me would be slaughtered in my
nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as
had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny.
Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic
country. I found the people much pleasanter and much
more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former countrymen.
To my great surprise, I began to discover that there
was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a
Protestant.
Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, who actually lived through the Reformation, did
not see things that way. They were always right and their
enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be
hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which
was no more than human and for which they deserve no blame.
When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500,
an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor
Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder
of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a number
of highly centralised kingdoms. The