A Cause

I've always been enamored by the geographical proximity that European countries have with each other. For Americans, the price of cross-country vacations is almost absurd. That a Londoner can fly to Paris in an hour, have a nice lunch date, and fly back for under a hundred dollars boggles the mind of someone more than a twenty-hour drive from the closest border of their own country. It's convenient and lovely for tourists wanting to tour around the continent. However, there are serious drawbacks to having so many different cultures and governments in such a small area. 

Like an overcrowded house, there are problems that arise when too many opinions live too close to each other. Conquerors, usurpers, and religious figureheads have vied for power in Europe for millennia. Rarely, however, did these wars involve several countries at once, and rarely did they combine international war with civil war. 

The Protestant Reformation was so potent because of the Causes it espoused. Unlike the religious propaganda that convinced even lukewarm Christians to join the Crusades in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the Reformation made things personal. No matter how much a Dark Ages Christian valued Jerusalem, the Holy City was far away from his family, lands, and life. When the struggle began between the Catholics and Protestants, individuals turned against their families, families against their communities, communities against their governments, and governments against other nations. The result? Centuries of war all across Europe, a ravaged continent, and over ten million in deaths. 

While hindsight can help us validate the Reformation and the sixteenth century's glorious rejection of religious oppression, it can also elucidate exactly why the movement wreaked so much havoc. When dozens of countries and empires in close proximity start fighting over a cause so personal, so potent, so motivating, and so destructive as religious loyalty, disaster is virtually inevitable. 

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