United and Divided: How Religion Drove Politics in Pre-Modern Europe

The Middle Ages began in the 5th century. At the time, Northern Europe was a mass of tribes like the Franks, Goths, Celts, and Vikings. By the end of the Middle Ages, in the 14th century, Northern Europe was completely dominated by the Catholic Church. In the middle of the 15th century, the Catholic Church split in half and shattered Europe. This led to the European wars of religion — a series of religious wars that came about with the rise of the Protestant Reformation in parts of Europe. The conflicts ended when the Peace of Westphalia (1648) was signed, and the nation-state system was born. Europe began to look a little bit like it does today. It had transformed. It took over ten centuries, from the 5th to the 15th, for Europe to move from a tribal system to the beginnings of the modern state system.

Religion was a key aspect of this change. As Europe moved from a system of tribes to one of nation-states, leaders tried to ensure that their people practiced the religion that was most advantageous to them. This began with leaders encouraging locals to convert from pagan religions to Christianity in early Europe. Then, in the Middle Ages, Europe’s many small kingdoms and duchies were dominated by the Catholic church and the Pope. Leaders followed this system until the Reformation, which many saw as an opportunity to get out from under Rome and become more independent. Religion was central to shaping Europe into the countries we know today. 

Local Legends: Paganism in Europe

An intense belief in Christianity is almost synonymous, for many people, with Europe in the Middle Ages. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the people launched crusades and built cathedrals. But in the Middle Ages, Christianity had only been present in Europe for a few centuries. Before that, paganism dominated the continent. Because of the way Christianity spread, particularly in Northern Europe, Europe’s intense belief in Christianity was propped up and informed by the local legends of paganism. At the time, Christians in Europe saw any religion that was not Christianity, Islam, or Judaism as a pagan religion.

Although paganism, by definition, encompasses many different religions, most of the religions that existed in pre-Christian Europe had a few common attributes. These religions were incredibly local, often polytheistic, did not focus on individual choice or power, and were heavily tied to nature. The most well-known of the old pagan religions in Europe were the Greek and Roman religions, which had all of these attributes. The Greeks and Romans worshipped many gods with human characteristics. They believed there were godly wills and stories tied to natural phenomena, like seasons, as well as to natural elements like the springs, rocks, and hills. As Christianity spread across Europe, it would sometimes incorporate local religious elements.

The countries that would become Scandinavia, like Denmark, provide a good example of how Christianity spread across Northern Europe. The Danes converted to Christianity slowly, starting in the 9th century and continuing into the 11th century. They were among the last in Europe to do so. Powerful Viking chiefs and kings converted one by one and then instructed their subjects to follow suit. However, many ordinary Danes combined Christianity with their old Norse traditions and continued their lives as before. They built many Christian churches on sites that already had sacred springs, groves, or hilltops. Often, towns simply attached a saint’s name to whatever natural item they believed had protected them according to their pagan beliefs and continued to leave offerings there. By the end of the 11th century, Danes could be considered fully Christian, but with deeply integrated local traditions.

This same pattern occurred across Southern Europe, although a little earlier. The first Christians made contact with powerful tribal leaders, who converted for political reasons more often than spiritual ones. These tribal leaders then encouraged their tribes to convert, and the tribes did so by intertwining Christian beliefs with their old pagan beliefs. Thus, the spread of Christianity across pagan lands helped form Europe into the countries and continent that we know today.

A Land Divided and United

After the fall of the Roman Empire in 415 CE, Europe was a mass of tribes. Over time, from about the 5th century to the 9th century, these tribes got larger, more cohesive, and better organized as they converted to Christianity. Europe in the late Middle Ages, from the 10th to the 14th centuries, was dominated by the Catholic Church in Rome. However, Europe was still not politically stable because nation states hadn’t formed yet.

Across the continent, both cultural and political lines were nebulous. The area that would become Germany is a good example — the people who lived in Germany spoke a similar language and had similar cultural traditions. In our modern minds, that would make them all German. But they would not have seen it that way. Instead of identifying as one people in one country, they would have felt more comfortable identifying with their particular small kingdom or duchy. In addition, because nation states were not yet formed, there was not a firm border between what would become Germany and what would become France. What we see as two distinct cultures was more often blended, especially at the borders. In the late Middle Ages, there were not clear cultural or political dividing lines in Europe.

This looseness was also true in the areas that would become England, France, and the Scandinavian countries, but worked a little differently. In England, for example, there was a king who had conquered all of the smaller kingdoms and duchies in the area and who declared the country England and the people who lived in it English. However, the borders of his country were loose and subject to change. And the people who lived in it were not particularly loyal to the country as a whole. In England, France, and the Scandinavian countries, people still remained loyal to their local area, while acknowledging a royal family. As a result, Europeans in the late Middle Ages felt differently about their royal families than Europeans would later. Eventually, royal families would come to serve as powerful symbols for countries themselves. But, in the late Middle Ages, they were simply considered powerful. If another noble family was able to garner enough power to wrest the crown away from them, then the new family would be considered equally royal. This mindset allowed for frequent changes in power, and a less politically certain climate than now.

Throughout Europe, the identification that mattered the most was religion. Europeans would have been loyal to their small kingdom or duchy, and they also would have been loyal to “Christendom,” which referred to every country that Christians lived in. They were not nearly so loyal to their country. This extended loyalty to Christendom is how Popes were able to convince ordinary people to go fight in the Crusades. It also laid the groundwork for the nation state system. People were used to identifying both with the small area they had grown up in and with a larger area as a whole. When the Catholic Church united all of Europe, Christianity represented that larger area. However, as the Catholic Church began to divide Europe, people started to look to the nation state over Christendom.

A House Divided

In 1517, Martin Luther crept across his small German town and nailed a list to the Wittenberg Castle church. This list of “95 Theses” posed 95 statements and questions for debate. While the list was written to spark discussion, there was no doubt that Luther was attacking the Catholic Church and calling it corrupt. Luther took issue with the fact that the Catholic Church sold “indulgences,” which, put simply, was a way for believers to pay money to the Church in exchange for prayers to absolve them of sin. Luther found this practice horrendously corrupt. While the Catholic Church had been accused of corruption before, and selling indulgences had been criticized before, Luther’s incredibly public act came at a time when the Catholic Church was ripe for reform. Because of his timing, Luther’s “95 Theses,” put mildly, lit Europe on fire. 

About a year later, the Pope condemned Luther’s writings, which by now included more than the original 95 theses, as heretical. Luther refused to recant his writings, even as he stood in front of the top authorities of the Catholic Church at the 1521 Diet of Worms. These writings, and Luther’s refusal to renounce them, sparked a reform movement across Europe called the Reformation. The Reformation eventually led to the creation of new Protestant churches, which were rooted in Germany and wildly popular in the Saxon and Scandinavian states. Protestant churches would splinter again and again, leading to the diverse set of Christian sects that exist today.

The original Protestant churches and the medieval Catholic Church promoted similar Christian belief systems but with a few key differences. First, Protestants and Catholics had a different understanding of how Christians would make their way to heaven. Medieval Catholics taught that Christians made it to heaven through good works like prayer, charitable acts, and service; Luther objected that good works could include spending money at the church. Protestants believed that Christians got to heaven through God’s will alone. Protestants saw the Bible as the only means God provided to people to understand His revelations and will (to the extent that either could be understood). To read the Bible, according to Protestants, was to enter into a direct communion with God. It was imperative to them that as many people as possible be able to read the Bible — which is why Luther spent the last ten years of his life translating it into German. Medieval Catholics were bound not just by the Bible but also by the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. Tradition had created a hierarchal church, where the Pope was the direct successor of the first head of the Catholic Church and, through his hierarchy, was ultimately responsible for guiding every Catholic in their belief. Although there are more differences between the two churches, particularly related to Church doctrine and services, these differences in understandings of salvation, sin, the Bible, and hierarchy inform the rest. 

The disagreement sent Europe into chaos and into years of on-again, off-again warfare. The wars were finally settled in 1648 when the Peace of Westphalia — a series of peace treaties — was signed. The Peace of Westphalia recognized three separate Christian traditions — Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism — and prompted the reorganization of Europe into nation states. Throughout the wars, kings would declare what religion their people were supposed to follow — the new Protestantism or the old Catholicism — and then threaten to execute any “heretics” that followed the other. The people who wanted to follow another religion were forced to flee, thus organizing Europe into Catholic and Protestant countries. These countries grew more powerful as leaders offered protection from religious bloodshed. By 1648, when the kings and emperors came to the table to represent their people and sign the treaties, the people back in their countries were loyal to them.

From the fall of the Roman Empire to the Peace of Westphalia, Europe was united and then divided on religious grounds. Doing so drove the force of politics so that Europe, to some extent, united and then divided its people as well. Religion in the Middle Ages drove Europe to begin to look, at least a little bit, like the Europe of today.