Season 9: The Reformation (1495-1553)

History’s Great Speeches

History can be a soothing pursuit. There’s nothing more comforting than realising that there’s nothing new under the sun, that this has all happened before and will happen again. In this case, we see a cycle that begins in the 1490s and only reaches its peak, with Calvin and Luther, twenty to fifty years later.
Martin Luther and John Calvin are household names, of a type where people have no idea about them other than knowing their importance in Christian thought and culture. It is surprising, therefore, how closely their language and concerns reflect modern times. Martin Luther was a rabble-rousing man of the people, filled with invective and the emotional force of connecting with humanity rather than culture or wealth. John Calvin’s sardonic sense of humour permeates a constant barrage of mythbusting that would do a modern-day fact checker proud. The constant wisecracks were also something of a surprise from the founder of Calvinism, whose adherents are generally dour.
Three less well-known writers round out the collection. Zwingli, Melancthon and Savonarola all preach with a force befitting true Christians fighting against the vast powers of a Catholic church that was the most powerful entity in Europe, and had consolidated a wide range of practices that broke the people away from an experience of divinity.
Savonarola speaks with the voice of a travelling preacher, a man of the people whose voice matched that of Eugene Debs. Zwingli spoke with a proud nationalism and pride that was wounded by the use of foreign armies, when the land could provide for all its citizens if managed correctly. Melancthon is an academic, providing a point-by-point deconstruction of the Pope’s claimed powers in ways that were irrefutable even for the Jesuit strains that held the Catholic Church’s intellectual force.
Just as with the liberation fighters, socialists, and anarchists of previous volumes, these historical figures lived under great threat, attacking vast forces with little more than courage and the certainty of their beliefs. They stand as the bridge over the cultural change between the middle ages and the renaissance.