History questions not worth their own thread II

[privatehudson]

On the McCellan issue there was some occasions when his actions were prudent, such as reforming the army in the wake of the First battle of Bull Run and moulding it into a more efficient force. The forces around Washington when he took command for the first time were a shambles and some credit has to go to McCellan for turning them into the beginnings of a fine army.

Overall though I don't see it as an issue of bloodlust vs prudence since many of his decisions were not prudent at all. They would have made sense if McCellan had actually faced the number of troops he estimated, but he repeatedly overestimated the enemy's strength (with or without Pinkerton's help) to the point when you begin to wonder if it wasn't just an excuse for lack of action. He may not have desired bloody assaults but he didn't seem particularly inclined to come up with a better alternative either. The Peninsula campaign could be seen as an example of such an attempt if he hadn't advanced so slowly and eventually been driven back down it by an army smaller than his that suffered greater losses in doing so.

McCellan was given ample forces, a generally supportive/patient government and ample time to demonstrate some way of bringing the war to a successful conclusion. He was eventually handed the enemy's plan of the Maryland campaign and still couldn't do much more than fight Lee to a standstill at Antietam. Far from saving his men he left them to fight a long painful war that should never have lasted 4 years. All in all a man who seemed to spend more time worried about loosing than he did thinking about how to win.

To paraphrase the man himself he failed to whip Bobby Lee and deserved to be sent home.

 

[Cull]

What exactly caused the Reformation? I'm aware of the indulgences, but I believe there is more. Can someone explain?

 

[GoodGame]

What exactly caused the Reformation? I'm aware of the indulgences, but I believe there is more. Can someone explain?

Humanism/free-thinking/use of logical reasoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation#Humanism_to_Protestantism), abhorrence of the politics of the Papacy (indulgences would be a small part of how the Papacy could be bought). Also the "German" kingdoms of the HRE were fragmented so they could be turned against each other; siding with reformation was one way for a noble to have a casu belli on his neighbor, while being loyal to the papacy would be a secondary way. Alliances could grow from supporting protestantism, and could also be thought of as a way of challenging papal authority over them.

On the Humanist tip, I think of Erasmus as the precursor of Martin Luther. Basically he travelled, spread his ideas, caused a stir. Was pretty contemporary to the Reformation, but I like to think he gave the first model of a charismatic thinker spreading the ideas far and wide to the people.

I wonder if less overt challenging of Papal authority was also the cause. E.g. like Venice making the secular ruler the final authority on matters. But I'm not sure if any pre-dated the Reformation.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Of course, Erasmus would have been appalled at the suggestion that he was the spark that inspired Luther. But, yeah, there were theological doubts as to the orthodox dogma of the Catholic church (you can see it in art, where there were more and more paintings showing people questioning transubstantiation). Just as important were the political. The church had become the centralized institution of Europe, but it could also be quite imposing. In addition, having two (or three) Popes in different cities hurt its credibility. Finally, many thought the church was becoming too worldly when it sold indulgences basically to make money.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

(you can see it in art, where there were more and more paintings showing people questioning transubstantiation).

How on earth do you paint that? I guess if you can illustrate "people questioning transubstantiation", you can win any game of Pictionary ever . . .

 

[LightSpectra]

What exactly caused the Reformation? I'm aware of the indulgences, but I believe there is more. Can someone explain?

Indulgences had little to do with it; Martin Luther had formulated Sola fide (which was contrary to Catholic dogma) long before the affair with Johann Tetzel. That was moreso an excuse for Luther to launch his schism.

But he was an exception to the case. Very few Latin-rite people in the Middle Ages actually challenged Catholic doctrine prior to the Reformation; once you've named Berengar of Tours and Jan Hus, you've counted the majority of them. So what caused the Reformation? I would say, Luther was not so much theologically or circumstantially different than any of the heretics that preceded him. But at that point, he had the support of (a) the printing press, and (b) German princes that wanted to oppose the Habsburgs.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Another element was the desire of German princedoms to get a leg up on the Church in their home fiefdoms. Luther's movement only found support with the Princes because it gave them an excuse to do what they already wanted to, which was to seize Church lands, subordinate the Church and the appointment of its priests to the State, and to tax the clergy. This was sort of fanned by the constant Emperor vs. Pope rivalry, though it was really the idea of that rivalry, which was more of a broad North vs South thing, since the Pope had, in reality, won out on that rather handily when the Normans switched sides. The German princes who sat on the fence were pushed definitively into the Lutheran camp by the German Peasant Revolt, a popular uprising led by a radical dude named Thomas Muentzer. The peasants demanded basic political rights and legal protections from the nobility, but Muentzer and a good portion of them wanted to basically make a proto-communist "God's Kingdom on Earth" type of thing. Luther declared the man an agent of Satan, and the princes flocked to the infant Lutheran movement (as opposed to another anti-Catholic one) because it allowed them to slaughter the upstart peasants like mad dogs.

EDIT: This needs some clarification. It was not because Lutheranism allowed them to do so, it was because to defend their position, they were forced to do so, and thus they could no longer count most of the peasantry among their supporters. They then turned to the middle and upper classes, and those classes found motivation in the above described.

 

[SG-17]

For those with an intense knowledge/appreciation for the time period, what do you think of the book "A World Lit Only By Fire" by William Manchester?

 

[Plotinus]

I think the simple answer to the Reformation question is that it was incredibly complex.

In addition, having two (or three) Popes in different cities hurt its credibility.

That situation had been ended by the council of Constance - over a century before the Reformation.

Very few Latin-rite people in the Middle Ages actually challenged Catholic doctrine prior to the Reformation; once you've named Berengar of Tours and Jan Hus, you've counted the majority of them.

It's odd that you should mention Berengar of Tours and not Ratramnus of Corbie, given that the former's views were basically a retread of the latter's. Other than that, obvious candidates for medieval Latin-rite challengers to Catholic doctrine include Felix of Urgel, David of Dinant, Amalric of Bène, Siger of Brabant, and Gerard of Borgo San Donnino. More relevantly to this question, figures who not only had views which were condemned as heretical but attacked the church as an institution much as the Reformers would later do include Peter de Bruis, Henry of Lausanne, the Waldensians, and John Wycliffe, as well as Jan Hus, and one might add Geoffrey Chaucer to the list too. So the question why Luther's actions led to a Reformation, and those of these earlier figures did not, is a real one and seems to have a very complex answer. I think that part of it must be Luther himself, who, whatever one's opinion of his views, was a far more able and profound theologian that any of these earlier figures I've mentioned.

 

[Dachs]

For those with an intense knowledge/appreciation for the time period, what do you think of the book "A World Lit Only By Fire" by William Manchester?

I've heard it mentioned disparagingly but never actually read it! Perhaps I should eventually.

 

[Louis XXIV]

How on earth do you paint that? I guess if you can illustrate "people questioning transubstantiation", you can win any game of Pictionary ever . . .

There were two separate paintings I remember reading about (maybe more) that depicted miracles of transubstantiation. Both paintings were supposed to be based on real events and, iirc, they both involved a questioning Priest who, every day, would perform the sacrament but didn't actually believe that it was the true body and blood of Christ. In the first painting, a donkey came to the alter and pontificated (proving that it was real). In the second, the host actually bled.

Both stories show that there were people who doubted transubstantiation (otherwise, why would there be a need to show that it was real). I don't know enough about heretic cults, etc, to know if there were records of actual movements that professed doubt.

I think the simple answer to the Reformation question is that it was incredibly complex.



That situation had been ended by the council of Constance - over a century before the Reformation.

While true, I do think it hurt the credibility of the Papacy. The Reformation didn't happen over night. Sure, Martin Luther may have come to have these views in a relatively short amount of time, but the people who supported him did so for various reasons that had been building for a long time.

 

[LightSpectra]

It's odd that you should mention Berengar of Tours and not Ratramnus of Corbie, given that the former's views were basically a retread of the latter's. Other than that, obvious candidates for medieval Latin-rite challengers to Catholic doctrine include Felix of Urgel, David of Dinant, Amalric of Bène, Siger of Brabant, and Gerard of Borgo San Donnino. More relevantly to this question, figures who not only had views which were condemned as heretical but attacked the church as an institution much as the Reformers would later do include Peter de Bruis, Henry of Lausanne, the Waldensians, and John Wycliffe, as well as Jan Hus, and one might add Geoffrey Chaucer to the list too. So the question why Luther's actions led to a Reformation, and those of these earlier figures did not, is a real one and seems to have a very complex answer. I think that part of it must be Luther himself, who, whatever one's opinion of his views, was a far more able and profound theologian that any of these earlier figures I've mentioned.

Figures like Siger of Brabant probably were never Christian to begin with, given that they base most of their beliefs on philosophical deduction rather than revelation; religion to them is sort of a side-note that they regard only if it's in accords with their metaphysics.

I attribute Luther's success to the printing press. Winston Churchill once made a statement that went along the lines of, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Luther was able to acquire significant allies before the Church was able to make any meaningfully practical response.

 

[LightSpectra]

Would somebody care to recommend a good biography of Erich Ludendorff?

 

[ParkCungHee]

I have heard one is coming out, that makes use of his diaries, which have been largely ignored due to it being in a difficult dialect of German...wish I could remember more details.

 

[Plotinus]

Figures like Siger of Brabant probably were never Christian to begin with, given that they base most of their beliefs on philosophical deduction rather than revelation; religion to them is sort of a side-note that they regard only if it's in accords with their metaphysics.

I don't think that's true of Siger at all. In fact, his theory of the relation between philosophy and theology - that they have different means of discovering the truth (which was misinterpreted as the doctrine of "double truth") - would expressly contradict such a view. In general, Siger gets a bad press that is not supported by the evidence. In particular, he seems not to have held some of the Aristotelian doctrines that he was accused of holding, such as the eternity of the world - merely to have discussed them. Moreover, he seems ultimately to have rejected monopsychism, on the grounds that it is inconsistent with revelation, which seems to me perfectly orthodox (even on the assumption that monopsychism is heterodox in the first place). His dispute with Aquinas on this topic was over whether monopsychism should also be rejected on grounds of reason as well - not over whether it should be rejected at all.

Although even if your characterisation of Siger were accurate, I don't see why that would make him not a Christian. It would just make him an arch anti-fideist, or at most a sort of Socinian. The Cambridge Platonists held views about reason and religion similar to what you describe, but I don't think anyone would think that they weren't Christians because of that.

I attribute Luther's success to the printing press. Winston Churchill once made a statement that went along the lines of, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Luther was able to acquire significant allies before the Church was able to make any meaningfully practical response.

This is very true. Of course, it raises the question why Luther was able to harness the power of the press and the Catholic hierarchy was not.

 

[GoodGame]

A curiousity---I know Sweden officially declared itself neutral during WW2, but did any Swedes help the Allies intelligence in any way when the Swedes cracked the German signal code, due to:

Following the occupation of Denmark and Norway the Germans started to use a teleprinter circuit which ran through Sweden. The Swedes immediately tapped the line, in May 1940, and the mathematician and cryptographer Arne Beurling cracked the two earliest models in two weeks, using just pen and paper. The Swedes then read traffic in the system for most of the war, not only between Berlin and Oslo, but also between Germany and the German forces in Finland, and of course the German embassy in Stockholm.

 

[Cutlass]

What do historians think of Neville Chamberlain these days? Still the appeaser for "peace in our times", or cut some slack because GB wasn't ready for a war at that time?

 

[Dachs]

As far as I know, the answer is "yes".

 

[vogtmurr]

We may say this with a bit of hindsight now, but Germany was even far less ready in the summer of 1938, and France would have had no better chance to check Hitler's power if Britain was on board. Without the stab in the back, even Poland and Czech combined may have been enough to put up some kind of a defense since they depended on eachother. The Czech army was nothing to sneer at either, so if this was where the allies drew the line, I think the war would have been over sooner. The fact is they, and the majority of the public, really didn't want another one and were willing to try appeasement at first; so in the end Hitler's bluff succeeded. Had they called him on it, things would have gone a lot differently.

 

[LightSpectra]

In hindsight, the ideal Allied war plan was for France and Britain to occupy the Rhineland in 1938 while the German army was bogged down in the fortified Sudetenland and flanked by the Poles. The German war economy would've collapsed almost immediately without their vital western and Czech industries, international trade or Italian support.

It's quite astounding that it wasn't until the occupation of Norway that the Allied High Command figured it was a bad idea to let the Axis invade all of their allies in sequential order.