Introduction

Hilaire Belloc, a contemporary of G. K. Chesterton, was a renaissance man and a staunch Roman Catholic, like Chesterton. However, Belloc was born in France, and then raised in England. Chesterton was an Anglican convert to Rome. Belloc was a cradle Catholic. I’m more interested in hearing what cradle Catholics have to say rather than Protestant converts like Chesterton. I give more credence to them because they are more authentically Romanist, whereas Protestant converts are still Protestant in all kinds of ways. And if they adopt some kind of Ad Orientem, Latin Mass, Romanist purity, it’s only because they are doing so in reaction to their Protestant background. And if they have disdain and vitriol for Protestantism, it’s tied up with all kinds of personal, emotional stuff, and their narrow evangelical childhood. It’s hard to take them seriously. Reactionaries are boring and predictable. But a cradle Catholic who hates Protestantism, I’m very much interested in hearing.

The only thing I had ever read from Belloc was a quote from his book The Great Heresies. I used to post it every year on the anniversary of 9/11.

“It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam, and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent…The suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past: one might say that they are blinded by it…but not so very long ago, less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence…Vienna was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the king of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history – September 11, 1683.”

He wrote this in 1938. Prophetic.

Why The Reformation Happened

In How The Reformation Happened he’s open about his views on the Reformation. He isn’t feigning objectivity. He’s got an axe to grind, and he grinds it through the entirety of the book. And I appreciate that. The book should be called Why The Reformation Happened, rather than How. Though he does give us both.

So, why did the Reformation happen? Here are some preliminaries to the Reformation he mentions. Constantinople is taken by Muslims. The study of Greek and Hebrew increased. Break down of morals in Europe. Papacy already weakened due to schism (Avignon). Roman Church failed to correct moral decay or lead by example. Black death (1348-1350) killed half of Europe’s population.

Here are the four main reasons he gives for why the Reformation happened.

1. The weakening of the moral discipline among the clergy.
2. The far greater weakening of moral discipline among the laity.
3. An increasing popular indignation at the failure of the official church to reform itself.
4. That permanent hatred of the catholic faith which is inseparable from the church on earth. Hatred of the bride. Hatred of the bride groom. That force which provided Calvary.

A salvo of interesting observations:

He says the moral decay among the clergy was not universal, but its toleration was universal.

The bishop of Toledo in Spain forbade indulgences.

Belloc mentions the old rivalry between the Pope and the German King as Roman Emperor.

Leo X apparently said the Reformation was a quarrel among monks. The Dominicans were in charge of indulgences, and the Augustinians were jealous.

He gives unfair criticism of Calvin (p. 122). “He it was who began the war against joy.”

He talks about three characteristics of The Flood, his term for the Reformation’s popularity.

1. Anti-Clerical. The people resented the priesthood as a priveleged class, a wealthy class, and their possession of sacramental powers. He connects retained doctrines to laity acceptance.
2. Not originally a doctrinal attack on the Church. It was anger against abuses in the priesthood and papal see.
3. Could not construct anything.

Warts of the Reformation

In England, Belloc brings up Cranmer’s granting of an annulment to Henry VIII. Looting of monasteries. Making Henry VIII, a layman, head of the church. Monastic dissolution in England was done solely for financial reasons. Most of these criticisms I’m on board with or sympathetic to.

He makes a hilarious remark regarding the fruits of Calvinism. “Into all this had been thrust the hard wedge of Calvin’s book with its immense effects of doctrine, organization, and counter-church, set up solidly at Geneva and spreading rapidly through France. An Institution, the Presbyterian thing, was born.”

France is the Hope of the West

Belloc says France didn’t completely wipe out Protestants, and this is what caused the French Revolution, which was a “rationalist movement.” For whatever reason he places the survival of the faith in the West in France. This is interesting considering how godless France is now. He says France used the Reformation as a political tool. Suppressing it at home, supporting it abroad.

Attack on Unity

Belloc frequently mentions the Reformation as an “attack on unity.” This is the refrain of modern Romanists today. And it’s the refrain of really any fossilized, institutional shill, who is not interested in Reforming. They place unity over truth. But true unity will only come about if we prioritize truth. It’s another way of saying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” It’s the song of false prophets.

There are real attacks on unity that exist. Schismatic sects, but those sects are called Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. And there does exist the kind of person who doesn’t know how to prioritize primary issues from secondary and tertiary, zealots, purists, Cathars, and Donatists. But these accusations ring hollow among the Reformers.

Follow the Money

Belloc loves to frame the Reformation in terms of greed. He’s constantly bringing up money. Cardinal Sadoleto did the same thing with Calvin. And Calvin points out that he would have made more money if he would have just went along with the Roman Church. Belloc defines Calvinism as the love of money. Competition and usury are what it’s all about. Calvin’s doctrine of a man’s duty is to become rich. Having read quite a bit of Calvin, I’ve never picked up on this. Maybe Belloc is importing ideas about Puritan industry to Calvin. The Protestant work ethic translated into Papist is the love of money.

He again points to the plundering of monasteries. Which he may have a point as it occurred in England. I’m not familiar enough with the details to know. He mentions the squires in France. They hated Roman Catholics because they, the Squires, were poor. There was opportunity for loot, is what Belloc says. This may be true, but so what? I think of the French Revolution, which was philosophically wrong, but the ruling class got what they had coming. The same thing with the Roman Church in the Reformation. In both cases, these disgusting people got exactly what they deserved. So, I view Belloc as someone who finished second place and won’t stop whining about it. There’s also I think an element of envy. That Protestants, particularly in his time, ruled the world. And so he’s venting about greed and money and all the things that liberals whine about today.

The Reformation and The Renaissance

He says the Reformation was NOT a fruit of the renaissance. Disagree. Ad Fontes, returning to the sources, was the modus operandi of the Humanists and the Reformers. The Reformation was very much influenced and motivated by Christian Humanism. They were Humanists.

Isolation of the Soul

He makes a clever argument toward the end of the book. He says that a religion without mediators leads to isolation of the soul, which then leads to subjectivism in philosophy. He admits that even Roman Catholics have to make individual judgments. “There is a sense, of course, in which we must all do that; for instance, a man accepting the authority of the reason, or of his senses, or of the Catholic Church, is necessarily exercising an individual judgment. But subjectivism rather signifies that the mind suffering from it (for it is a disease) questions what is corporate and general in authority, and prefers what is particular and isolated.” (p. 269) I am not persuaded that Protestantism leads to subjectivism, or that it prefers what is isolated, or that it is even devoid of mediators. It does however prefer truth to institutional unity on primary matters. And if objective truth goes against a corporate judgment, like a council, or goes against something considered tradition, then we prefer the truth to the council or the supposed tradition.

He connects this isolation of the soul and subjectivism to the worship of self, since man must worship something. And since the state or the nation is an extension of himself, he says the result of the Reformation is Nationalism. He wrote the book in 1928, so this was before The National Socialists of Germany came on the scene, but it’s likely he saw that particular form of Nationalism in his day as a monster in nascent form. And couldn’t help but link it to Protestantism. They both, after all, came out of Germany.

I am not convinced of this narrative either. As mentioned already, the Protestant Principle affirms objective truth and reality. The Protestant Principle also affirms the Tradition of the Church in so far as it comports with the teachings of Jesus, His Apostles, and the Prophets. The Protestant Principle affirms our direct access to God, but also affirms mediators like elders and sacraments. Furthermore, there are healthy forms of Christian Nationalism. And if anything, the ugliest forms of Nationalism I have witnessed in our own day have been from Papists and Eastern Christians. Eastern Christians are notoriously ethno-nationalist.

Moral Anarchy and Repentance

He describes the Reformation as moral anarchy. As if there wasn’t moral anarchy before. Belloc admits to moral failures in the Church, but he also avoids doctrinal particulars. He says Rome was tardy in restoring order from 1517-1559. He admits repentance from Rome would have righted everything.

Concerning the repentance of Roman clergy, he writes:

“Obviously the perfect thing to do in such cases, – if there were no conditions of matter, time and space, if most men were intelligent, pure in motive, and heroic, instead of being, as most men are, stupid, corrupt and cowardly – would be to perform what the Catholic Church herself calls penance. Obviously the attack upon the Catholic Church would have had no success if all the officials thereof in the early sixteenth century had themselves come forward in a body denouncing their own guilt; the pluralities, the lay appropriations, the shame of their worldly lives, the gross scandals of impurity, the oppression of the poor, the exaggeration of mechanical aids to religion, the occasional use of fraud in it, the widespread use of extortion in clerical dues and rents, the chicanery of clerical courts. If the very many church official who were guilt of evil living had beaten their breasts, repented and turned anchorite; if the very many who were swollen with riches had abandoned them and given them to the poor, if such of the cultured renaissance prelates as had come to ridicule the Mysteries had suddenly felt the wrath of God – then all would have been righted. So fruitful is repentance.” (p. 211)

This may have prevented the Church from fracturing, but this does not consider the doctrinal issues which were at play, or eventually came into play. It also doesn’t consider the Biblical pattern of God dividing and reuniting.

In the last chapter, he does evidence humility in admitting that what can be known as far as factors contributing to great movements of history is limited. That there are forces beyond analysis, beyond human knowledge. This I appreciated a great deal.

Conclusion

I was hoping for a hard hitting criticism of the Reformation from Belloc, but I was generally disappointed. That’s okay. Maybe that’s not what he was going for. What I read were narratives and criticisms that I have already encountered from contemporary Roman Catholics. What I read were some criticisms that have been made of me by Christians I would consider cowards. So, this book only made me love the Reformation even more. But I still wouldn’t recommend it, unless your looking for a Roman Catholic take on the Reformation.

For good books on the history of the Reformation I would recommend, J.H. Merle D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation: A History. If you’re wanting audio/visual Ryan Reeve’s History series on YouTube are good.