From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part VI
From Feudalism to Capitalism | Part VI A further step in the transition came in the 1530s and 40s. Under Henry VIII, the assumption of absolute power over church and state enabled him to order the destruction of the monasteries, which in turn broke the power of the third leg of the feudal triumvirate – the bishops and clergy – and made vast tracts of land available to the crown for sale and taxation, often to the rising merchant and gentry class. Which brings us to the influence of the Reformation in nurturing market-driven capitalism. In opposing the Roman Catholic church, Luther, Calvin, Knox and Henry VIII were taking on the ideological center of feudalism and drawing in not only the urban and rural poor, but the new layer of untitled rich. The appeal of a flatter hierarchy, a simpler, more democratic infrastructure, church services in each nation’s mother tongue and, as Weber points out, salvation by hard, earnest work, aligned Protestantism far better...