The Christian Church has always persecuted heretics. It is amazing how people who have been persecuted themselves, once they get a little power, turn round and immediately persecute others. However the Church’s persecution of heretics only broke out into open warfare with the Hussite wars of the 15th century. John Hus may have said, “Oh sancta simplicitas!” as he saw an old woman hobbling toward him with a bundle of faggots to add to the pile that were to burn him; but there was nothing “simple” about those who decided to burn him, only treachery. War broke out in 1419, and for 12 years the Hussites overwhelmed the papal forces sent against them; and the Papacy was prepared in the end to negotiate a settlement. Then internal discord among the Hussites resulted in their being overwhelmed themselves.
Persecution continued during our Tudor period. We, in Britain, largely escaped the horrors on the Continent; but Gibbon compares favourably the relatively modest persecutions of the Roman Emperors with the appalling atrocities committed by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands at that time.
Then a century after the Hussite wars, the Reformation broke out in 1517. There was an attempt at reform with the Council of Trent, which Luther wisely declined to attend, having the example of John Hus before him. But with the triumph of the Jesuits at the Council, reform was abandoned, intolerance returned, and the Bohemians again rebelled, after the defenestration of Prague. This time they were crushed completely, and Bohemia only recovered its freedom in 1919.
Then the German Lutherans had to be dealt with; and after political ineptitude, the papal attempt to bring them to heel resulted in the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. And the Papacy would have succeeded here too, but for the politics of Richelieu, a French cardinal, and the arms of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. The war ended with exhaustion in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. And even with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the same principle of the supremacy of the Church could be said to be still alive. So when all these centuries of religious madness were over, what followed?
So when sanity at last prevailed, it is not surprising that religion had lost its fervour. with our own Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the practical tolerance of Locke’s philosophy, and in France with the Enlightenment and the rise of the Encyclopaedists, who preached a mechanical universe in the wake of Newton’s Principia. The vision of a world created by God had gone, and religious enthusiasm was replaced by tradition. And as science secured one triumph after another in its understanding of Nature, the demoralised Church, apparently incapable of thinking the problem through, seized on one initiative after another to raise enthusiasm again. All of them had a brief success, and then they withered. In contrast science went from strength to strength, and by the end of the 19th century was made so confident by its success that scientists literally thought they had little more to discover. Only modern physics disabused them of their hubris. But in the meantime the public had learned to admire science’s success, and still does. Modern physics means nothing to the public. And though there was a time when the creed and dogma of the Church had achieved a coherence that satisfied the Western spirit, that moment was now well passed. In the Church today enthusiasm means waving arms and singing choruses. It fills churches; but as an antidote to Islam I fear it is utterly useless.
Could there be any more convincing proof of the folly, and wickedness, of this claim made by Hildebrand, in the 11th century, and continued long afterwards, that the Church was the supreme political power in Europe, than the complete collapse of the Church’s morale in modern times? And did not the two German Wars of the 20th century demonstrate that the political inspiration of the Church was bankrupt, after 900 years of meddling? The Church should have been content to be the “leaven” of society, which was after all Jesus’ concept.