REFORMATION 15
interests and the material circumstances of the upcoming bourgeoisie. Thus Marx too recognized the influence of the Reformation on the origin of our contemporary world. But he saw the ultimate base of this influence in the new economic forces that were emerging even before the Reformation.
The Reformation had a remote as well as a proximate social background. The remote background consisted of the general economic change affecting Europe such as the Crusades, the Baick Death, the new trade routes, the medieval frontier and certain internal contradications of the feudal structure. This paper however, is focussed on the immediate provocations which triggered off the Protestant Reformation. Our argument is that even these provocations were economic and political rather than religious. In other words, it was not the moral indignation of a few righteous people on the "immorality of the Church" which was the most important factor behind the movement called Reformation.
The Church and the European Nations
Famous is the saying that Christ preached the Kingdom of God, but what came out was the church of Rome. The Kingdom of God preached by Christ was a protest movement against the rulers and the rich. The Gospels (the good messages of Christ) implied that God will put down the mighty and satiate the poor. But Christ was not preaching a political revolution; he was challenging the state religion of the old Roman Empire. Thus he was aiming at a secularization process. But the process initiated by Christ was reversed by an alliance of the chruch and the state under Constantine, the Great. Thus what was begun as a protest against the dominant ideology became itself the ideology of the ruling class even after the fall of Rome, and the chruch (the pope) became the feudal overlord of all Europe. The "barbarian" kings of the emerging new nations of Europe considered the chruch as a necessary instrument of unity and political stability at national and even international levels.
Eventually, however, the nation-states were consolidated in many parts of Europe, partly at least owing to the economic demands of these regions. The new political structure had to undermine the age-old relations between the chruch and the state. The new nations with despotic monarchs started challenging the overlorship of Rome. These challenges, again, were shaped by the politico-economic conditions of each region. Thus the kings of France could obtain the cooperation of all the three "Estates"