by OneVike
The great plague of 1348-49, along with the smaller more isolated ones to follow, effected every aspect of society. The definition of the word Renaissance is “rebirth” and while it is true that the era was highlighted by mans awakening from a spell of stagnation, the Renaissance helped give men the will that was needed to stand up to the church. It seems quite interesting that, prior to the rebirth, we had so much death. Was it just a coincidence? Maybe, but throughout history great achievements have always followed a time of strife, destruction, and mass loss of life. One just has to look at the positive affect the destruction of Israel’s Northern Kingdom, and the eventual dispersion, had on the fullness of time as the best example. The reoccurrence of the plague throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries left men with a sense of their own mortality, and a feeling of destiny. This feeling gave them the will to stand up to the feudal lords when they were forced into working harder with no benefit or reward. Just as there were guild revolts in the cities in the late 1300s, so we find rebellions in the countryside. The Jacquerie in 1358, the Peasants’ Revolt in England in 1381, the Catalonian Rebellion in 1395, and many revolts in Germany, all added to the feudal lords loosing there grip on the peasant class.
Eventually the Feudal lords capitulated to the demands of the peasants. This new freedom of movement and choice of employment allowed the most industrious and hardest working peasants to advance from the lower class to the new middle class. Many would join the ranks of what would be known at the time as ” The Universal Man”. The universal man of the Renaissance was a mixture of noblemen, wealthy merchants, bankers, shippers, country gentlemen, and even members of the clergy. Along with their new opportunity to get an education without joining a monastery, these men began to understand the philosophical arguments of what we call humanist philosophy. The southern Renaissance man used his education to advance his own personal wealth and prestige. Except for a brief superficial conversion under Savonarola in Florence, the Italians decided to live and die in the wilderness of the Roman Catholic Church. In the north, the Renaissance man was more interested in understanding his responsibility to God through the revelation of scriptures. These religious humanists that dominated the north had a desire to get back to what they believed the scriptures said.
Thanks to Gutenberg, these men had readily available literature to read that was written by scholars who could understand and translate ancient Greek manuscripts. In time, they would even be able to read the Bible in their own language and they would find discrepancies between what the scriptures said and what the clergy said. The idea that one might not need the church to attain salvation was beginning to take hold. The educated Renaissance men had strong opinions about the church, and vigorously debated them amongst each other. When Martin Luther opened the door to spiritual freedom, the Renaissance man was ready and willing to enter the classroom and take his seat. In John Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” he has a quote from John Huss as he was about to be burned at the stake in 1514. “You are now going to burn a goose, (Huss signifying goose in the Bohemian language:) but in a century you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil.”** A hundred years later the “Swan” was about to fulfill that prophecy, it was now time for the Renaissance man to accept his destiny and put up or shut up.
Knowing what I learned in my investigations for these articles, had I not begun this series under the title of “How the Renaissance Led to the Reformation”, I may have titled it “How God used the Black Death to Reform His Church”, or “How Capitalism Helped Reform the Church”. I believe the Black Death led to the rebirth of capitalism, which unleashed an unprecedented growth of wealth creating a new middle class. This growing middle class helped support the engine of the Renaissance. In the fullness of time this new middle class would become the reformers, and Gods church would enter a new stage. Twice the fullness of times has resulted in God’s message getting distributed to the world. With Patience I await the last fullness of times, when everything will be put in place for our Lord to return and bring all His children home.