Reading Ozment is forcing me to realize what a comprehensive transformation took place in Northern European culture, which we know as the Protestant Reformation. Our understanding, I fear, is quite anemic.
For instance, the economic system was a huge part of what the Reformation was about. There were thousands and thousands of people in the town and cities of Germany who had the right and expectation to simply live off others. In fact, the role of beggar and monk were more or less on a continuum. The Reformation preachers and pamphleteers taught that these people were hurting the common working stiff. If beggars or monks were able-bodied, then they needed to work. Society should help those who were unable to work–something that could be done much more easily if others were producing rather than demanding their own handouts.
I’m not saying the Reformation affected the economy. I’m saying economic and political change was the Reformation.
Political, too. For instance, transsubstantiation was a doctrine that legitimated the power of Reformation-era political elites. Nobles would have their banners and coats of arms paraded through the streets with the consecrated host, so that the plebs could behold their patronage of that miracle. See Christopher Elwood, “The Body Broken: the Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in 16th Century France”.
I guess for some reason I thought that monks worked, but just in their monasteries.
Related, in this view, why is it that monks would be any more of an economic parasite than a non-tent making pastor? (I’m asking for real, I’m not trying to make a point.)