The Reformation
On April 18th, 1520, Martin Luther stood before the emperor and princes of Germany in the city of Worms, charged with heresy; an act which could be punishable by death. Martin Luther, a monk, defended the pile of books that was placed in front of him. He asked to be shown where an error was made on the basis of “Scripture and plain reason.” Luther’s appearance at Worms paved the way for serious challenges to the authority of the Catholic Church. While this wasn’t the first crisis of the Church’s history, its consequences were bigger than anyone at Worms in 1520 had had in mind.
The Catholic Church had maintained its high status during the Middle Ages. It’d overcome the defiance of its authority over emperors, and the Inquisition had crushed challenges to its doctrines. But by the end of the Middle Ages, challenges to papal authority from rising monarchical states had resulted in a loss of papal temporal authority. In the 16th century, the Reformation destroyed the unity of Christendom.
Before long, new religious practices, doctrines, and organizations were forming all over Europe, including Zwingliansim, Calvinism, Anabaptism, and Anglicanism.
Prelude to Reformation: The Northern Renaissance
Martin Luther’s reform movement was not the first in the 16th century. One of the major coals of Renaissance humanism (a movement that flourished from flourished from the late 15th century until the Reformation in the 1520s overwhelmed it) was to reform Christendom. However, these two movements were different in several ways.
Christian or Northern Renaissance Humanism
Northern humanists cultivated knowledge of the classics, which was the one common bond that united all humanists. The northern humanists bought out scholarly editions of the classics for the printing press and wanted to reconcile the ethical content of them with Christian values; they had a profound preoccupation with religion. They focused on the sources of early Christianity, the Holy Scriptures and the writings of church fathers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome. It was in these early writings that they discovered the Middle Ages had corrupted a once simple religion. Their interests led them to master Greek in order to read the Greek New Testament and works of the early Greek Church fathers, like John Chrysostom. Some northern humanists even learned Hebrew in order to study the Old Testament in its original language.
While Christian humanists tried to get positions such as teachers and scholars, scholastic theologians in the universities made it hard for them to do so. However, so long as their work stuck only to the classics, they could coexist. It was when they called for radical change to the methods of theological study that they ran into opposition. On the other hand, northern Renaissance humanists had the chance to serve as secretaries to kings, princes, and cites, where their talent for writing prose could be put to good use. Support for humanists came from patricians, lawyers, and civic officials.
The reform program of the northern humanists was its most important characteristic. Because they believed human beings could reason and improve themselves, the humanists felt that education in the sources of classical, especially Christian, antiquity could instill an inner religious feeling that would cause reform in the church and society. Because of this, they supported schools, bought new editions of the classics, and made new editions of the Bible and writings of the church fathers.
Christian humanists believed that they had to change the people who make up society if they wanted to change society itself. Some humanists (Such as Erasmus) believed that a golden age could be achieved by applying new knowledge to the reform of the church and society. The turmoil of the Reformation destroyed the lives and careers of two of the most prominent Christian humanists, Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More.
Erasmus
Erasmus was the most influential Christian humanist, and is a symbol of the movement itself. His name is Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), and he created and popularized the reform program of the Christian humanists.
By 1550, he became serious about his religious studies, where he tried to reconcile the classics and Christianity though their shared ethical content. The Handbook of the Christian Knight [1503] reflected his interest in religion, whereas his Adages, [1500] an anthology of proverbs from ancient authors, showed his knowledge of the classics. He edited the Greek text of the New Testament from the earliest available manuscripts and published it with a new Latin translation in 1516. He also wrote In Praise of Folly, [1509] which is one of the most famous pieces of literature of the 16th century.
He believed that Christianity should be a guiding philosophy for the day to day life, rather than the system of dogmatic beliefs and practice that the medieval church stressed. He didn’t believe in the external forms of religion, such as the sacraments, pilgrimages, fasts, veneration of satins, and relics, and instead urged people to return to the simplicity of the early church. To achieve this, people needed to understand the original meaning of the Scriptures and early church fathers.
Erasmus’s reform program didn’t go as far as he had hoped. His moderation and preoccupation with education were quickly overshadowed by the violence unleashed by the Reformation. However, it was said “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched,” even though Erasmus eventually disproved of Luther and the Protestant reformers.
Thomas More
Thomas More (1478-1535) was trained in law, but took an interest in the new classical learning and soon became fluent in Latin and Greek. He was the Lord Chancellor of England, he served King Henry VIII, and he was an intimate friend of Erasmus. He made translations from Greek authors and wrote prose and poetry in Latin. He was a very religious man as well; he spent hours in prayer and private devotions. Many believed his family to be a shining model of Christian family life.
Utopia [1516] is his most famous work, as well as one of the most controversial of his age. In it, he wrote about his idea of a perfect society, which was an island near the New World called Utopia (Meaning “Nowhere”). If shows More’s concerns with the economic, social, and political problems of his day. His Utopia favored communal ownership rather than private property; it was much like modern socialism. Because everyone only had to work for six hours a day, they had more time to do wholesome and enriching things, as he stated in Book II: “All the rest of the twenty-four [hours] they’re free to do what they like-not to waste their time in idleness or self-indulgence, but to make good use of it in some congenial activity.”
Prelude to Reformation: Church and Religion on the Eve of the Reformation
The spiritual life of all Christendom was affected by the institutional problems of the Catholic Church. The failure of the Renaissance popes to provide spiritual leadership, in particular, had its consequences.
The Clergy
Economic changes of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as the continuing of the papal court’s preoccupation with finances, had a strong impact on the clergy. For example, to enhance revenues, high church officials achieved multiple church offices. This is called pluralism, and it led to an absentee problem, because church officeholders neglected their duties. There was also a steadily increasing gap between the higher and lower clergy. Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and abbots were rich, the lower clergy (namely the parish priests) tended to be on the same economic level as the parishioners.
The 15th century was filled with complaints about the ignorance and incapacity of parish priests, as well as their greed and sexual offences.
Popular Religion
A craving for meaningful religious expression arose from the atmosphere of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This showed itself in two ways that greatly clash each other. One of the ways was an increasing number of collections of relics; people were trying to find certainty of salvation though their veneration. Along with this were pilgrimages to holy centers like Rome and Jerusalem, despite the physical dangers.
The other direction of this religious craze was in the popular mystical movement called the Modern Devotion. It created the religious order, the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, and a reform of the monastic life in Germany and the Low Countries.
Tomas a Kempis (1380-1471) was the most prominent member of the Brothers of the Common Life in the 15th century. He wrote The Imitation of Christ, which de-emphases the need for external forms of religion. “Truly at the Day of Judgment we shall not be examined by what we have read, but by what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how religiously we lived.” They believed in a minimized importance of the church and its clergy in Christians’ lives. Popular mysticism has an important relationship to the Reformation.
Martin Luther and the Reformation in Germany
The Protestant Reformation began in a typical medieval question: What do I have to do to be saved? This question spread the Reformation like wildfire, but religion was so entangled in the social, economic, and political forces of the period that the Protestant reforms’ hope of reforming the church quickly fell through.
The Early Luther
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, so he went to the University of Erfurt where be received his bachelor’s degree in 1520. Shortly after becoming a master in the liberal arts in 1505, Martin began to study law.
In the summer of 1505, however, he was caught in a vicious thunderstorm and vowed that if he should be spared, he would live his life as monk. Afterwards, he joined the monastic order of the Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt, despite his father’s protest. Luther’s main concern became the assurance of salvation. He spent hours in confession, but always had doubts. To help the disturbed monk, his superiors recommended that he study theology. He received his doctorate in 1512, and became a professor in the theological faculty at the University of Wittenburg. Sometime between 1513 and 1516, he received an answer to his problem.
To Luther, human beings were weak and powerless in the eyes of God, and therefore could never do enough to justify salvation by doing good deeds. His answer came in a new understanding of the “justice of God,” in which salvation came from the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Humans do nothing to merit grace; it’s God’s decision. Justification by faith and the Bible as the sole authority in religious affairs became the two main points of the Protestant Reformation.
Albrecht of Brandenburg bought special permission from Pope Leo X to become archbishopric of Mainz, despite already being both bishop of Halberstadt and archbishop of Magdeburg.
Luther was disturbed by the sale of indulgences, believing that those who depended on paper for certainty of salvation would be damned. He then wrote the Ninety-Five Theses, which were either mailed to his superior, or nailed to the door of a church in Wittenburg, which is the common belief. He was mad, but he probably wouldn’t have left the church had the pope clarified the use of indulgences, as Luther had wanted. Instead, Renaissance Pope Leo X didn’t take the issue seriously; it was reported that he once said that Luther was “some drunken German who will amend his ways when he sobers up.” But because printing had been developed, a German translation of the Ninety-Five Theses was printed in thousands of copies and received by the German people, who had a long tradition of dissatisfaction with papal polices and power.
In July 1519 the Leipzig Debate took place, an important turning point for the controversy. Luther’s opponent was a Catholic theologian named Johann Eck, who forced Luther to move beyond indulgences and deny the authority of popes and councils. Because of this, Luther was forced to see the consequences of his new theology. Near the beginning of 1520, he said: “Farewell, unhappy, hopeless, blasphemous Rome! The wrath of God has come upon you, as you deserve. We have cared for Babylon, and she is not healed: let us then, leave her, that she may be the habitation of dragons, spectres, and witches.” Luther believed that he was doing God’s work, and had to go on despite his opposition.
He wrote the Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, which was a political tract written in German in which Luther declared the papacy had used three claims to prevent reform: the church is superior to the state, only the pope can interpret Scripture, and only the pope can call a council. Luther believed all of these claims to be false, and he called on the German princes to overthrow the papacy in Germany and create a reformed German church. In his The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, written in Latin, Luther attacked the sacramental systems as the means by which the pope and church had held the real meaning of the Gospel in captivity for 1,000 years. He wanted a reform of monasticism and for the clergy to be able to marry.
Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian Man was a short treatise on the doctrine of salvation which stated that it was though faith, not good deeds, that brings salvation though Jesus. He stated, “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” The church excommunicated him in January 1521. By the Edict of Works, Martin Luther was made an outlaw within the empire—his works were burned, and Luther was captured and brought to the emperor. Luther now depended on the German princes and people. His religious movement became a revolution.
The Development of Lutheranism
Luther began to organize a reformed church after returning to Wittenburg in the beginning of 1522. During the 1520s, Lutheranism spread rapidly; the University of Wittenburg served as a center for the diffusion of Luther’s ideas. The preaching of evangelical sermons that were based on the original message of the Bible was popular in Germany, and state authorities instituted a reform of the church. Pamphlets illustrated with detailed woodcuts showing the pope as a hideous Antichrist and titled with catchy phrases were especially helpful in spreading the Reformation, as was music. Southern Germany in particular became dedicated to Luther’s cause; the city of Nuremberg was the first to convert to Lutheranism.
Originally, Christian humanists supported Luther, believing that he shared their goal of reforming the abuses within the church. However, in 1521, it became apparent that Luther’s movement was a threat to the unity of Christendom, so the older generation of Christian humanists (including Erasmus) broke away from Luther. The younger generation of Christian humanists, however, had a significant role in Lutheranism. Especially prominent of the supporters was Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560).
Luther’s greatest challenge came in the mid-1520s—the Peasants’ War. The peasants were unhappy that they had not had any economic improvement, while Germany as a whole had. Also, local lords abused their peasants, and new demands for taxes and other services added to their anger. As the peasants grew more and more upset, they looked towards Martin Luther for support. Luther, however, offered no help; in fact, he wrote a pamphlet, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hoards of Peasants. It was Tomas Muntzer who led the peasants to revolt in June 1524. In May 1525, the German princes massacred the reaming peasants at Frankenhausen.
Church and State
Justification only though faith was the starting point for most of Protestantism’s major doctrines. Because Luther downplayed the role of good works in salvation, the sacraments also had to be redefined. They were now considered divinely established signs signifying the promise of salvation. Luther kept only two of the Catholic sacraments, which were baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Luther didn’t believe in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which taught that the substance of the bread and wine is somehow changed into the body and blood of Jesus. He also rejected the Catholic belief that the traditions and decrees of the church must supplement the Scripture’s authority. Since all Christians who followed the word of God were their own priests, a hierarchical priesthood wasn’t needed. Luther also instituted new religious services to replace mass.
Luther began to depend more and more on the princes or state authorities to organize and guide new Lutheran reformed churches. He didn’t have much choice. Secular authorities in Germany as elsewhere were already playing an important role in church affairs by the 16th century. By 1530, both princes and city councils appointed officials who visited churches in their territories and regulated matters of worship in the German Lutheran states. The Lutheran states in Germany became territorial or state churches in which the state oversaw and disciplined church members.
Germany and Reformation: Religion and Politics
Ever since it began, Luther’s movement was closely tied into political affairs. Charles V (1519-1556) was the Holy Roman Emperor, and therefore ruled over an immense empire, including Spain and its overseas possessions, the traditional Austrian Habsburg lands, Bohemia, Hungary, the Low Countries, and the kingdom of Naples. He hoped to preserve the unity of Catholicism throughout the empire. Although he had his strengths, Charles spent his life in vain pursuit of his goals. He had four main problems when it came to achieving his goals—the French, the Turks, the papacy, and Germany’s internal situation. While these hurt the emperor, it gave Luther’s movement time to grow and organize.
The biggest political problem for Charles V was the king of France, Francis I (1515-1547). Encircled by the Habsburg Empire, Francis became embroiled in conflict with Charles over disputed territories. These conflicts were known as the Habsburg-Valois Wars, and were fought over 24 years (1521-1544). Meanwhile, the Habsburg emperor expected papacy to help in dealing with the Lutheran heresy. However, their policy was guided by political considerations, not religious ones. Pope Clement VII (1523-1534) was afraid of Charles’s power, and joined Francis in the second Habsburg-Valois War (1527-1529). It had catastrophic results. In April 1527, the Charles V’s Spanish-imperial army went crazy while attacking Rome and subjected the capital of Catholicism with a fearful and bloody sack. Clement came to terms with the emperor, and by 1530 Charles V was in control of most of Italy.
The Ottoman Turks were under the competent lead of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566). They had defeated and killed King Louis of Hungary (Charles brother-in-law) at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. After which, they overran Hungary, moved into Austria, and advanced as far as Vienna, where they were finally repulsed in 1529.
Charles was ready to deal with Germany by the end of 1529. The second Habsburg-Valois War had ended, the Turks were defeated temporarily, and the pope subdued. However, the internal political situation in the Holy Roman Empire was not in his favor. While all Germans owed their loyalty to the emperor, Germany’s medieval development had enabled the German states to become independent of imperial authority, and thus didn’t want a strong emperor. Some states had become Lutheran.
Charles had attempted to solve the Lutheran problem at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, an attempt that proved completely inadequate. The emperor ended up demanding that the Lutherans return to the Catholic Church by April 15, 1531. In response, eight princes and eleven imperial cities (all Lutheran) formed a defensive alliance known as the Schmalkaldi League in February 1531. They vowed to help each other whenever one of them was attacked “on account of the Word of God and the doctrine of the Gospel.” Religion had divided the empire into two armed camps.
Because the Turks were suddenly a problem to Vienna again, Charles was forced, once again, to seek compromise with the Protestant authorities. From 1532-1535, he had to fight off a Turkish, Arab, and Barbary attack on the coasts of Italy and Spain. Soon after were two more Habsburg-Valois Wars (1535-1538 and 1542-1544). Finally, Charles made peace—peace with Francis in 1544 and peace with the Turks in 1545. Fifteen years after the Diet of Augsburg, Charles was finally able to resolve his problem in Germany. However, by the time Luther died in February 1546, all hopes of a peaceful compromise were gone. Charles had bought a large imperial army of German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish troops for battle against the Protestants. During the first phase of the Schmalkaldic Wars (1546-1547), the emperor’s forces defeated the Lutherans at the Battle of Muhlberg. Charles V was at the height of his power, and the Protestants seemed doomed. This wasn’t the case, however. The Schmalkaldic League was reestablished, and was newly allied with the ironically Catholic French king, Henry II (1547-1559). The war was revived in 1552. Charles was forced to negotiate a truce, and abandoned German affairs to his brother Ferdinand. He then abdicated of all his titles in 1556 and retired to his estate in Spain to spend the rest of his life alone.
The religious warfare in Germany can to an end in 1555 with the Peach of Augsburg, which marks an important turning point in the history of the Reformation. The division of Christianity was formally acknowledged, and Lutheranism was granted the same legal rights as Catholicism. Germany states were now free to choose between Catholicism and Lutheranism, however individuals were not.
The freedom of the German territorial states weakened the Holy Roman Empire and continued the decentralization of Germany. Charles dreams of a united empire had been completely destroyed, as well as the medieval idea of Christian unity.
The Spread of the Protestant Reformation
Luther’s heresy had opened the door for Catholic critics to initiate more extreme forms of religious and social upheaval. It also raised the question of how to determine what was the correct interpretation of the Bible, for Protestants and Catholics alike. Their inability to agree on this issue lead to bloody warfare.
Lutheranism in Scandinavia
The Union of Kalmar in 1397 had brought the unification of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under the rule of the king of Denmark, however, this union failed to achieve any real social or political unification. Landed nobles worked to frustrate any increase in monarchical centralization, and by the beginning of the 16th century, the union was on the brink of disintegration. Swedish barons led by Gustavus Vasa in 1520 overthrew Christian II (1513-1523) of Denmark. Three years later, Vasa became king of an independent Sweden (1523-1560) and began to establish a Lutheran Reformation in his country. Olavus Petri wrote treatises based on Luther’s writings and published the first Swedish New Testament in 1526. By the 1530s, a Swedish Lutheran National Church had been created.
Meanwhile, because Christian II had been deposed as the king of Denmark, his uncle, who became Fredrick I (1523-1533) succeeded him. Fredrick encouraged Lutheran preachers to spread their doctrines and introduce a Lutheran liturgy into the Danish church service. Under the rule of Christian III (1534-1559), a Lutheran State church was installed. He played a big role in the spreading of Lutheranism to Norway. Scandinavia had become a Lutheran stronghold by the 1540s. The Scandinavian monarchs had been the dominant force in establishing state-run churches.
The Zwinglian Reformation
Switzerland was the home of two major Reformation movements, Zwinglianism and Calvinism. Although Switzerland was theoretically part of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century, they had become virtually independent after the Swiss defeated the forces of Maximilian in 1499. The six forest cantons were democratic republics; the seven urban cantons were mostly governed by city councils controlled by narrow oligarchies of wealthy citizens. Troubled by a weak economy, the Swiss had grown accustomed to selling their soldiers as mercenaries, and had become the main exporter of soldiers in the 16th century. Overall, the Swiss Confederation was a loose group of states that had no common institutions and only worked together for survival and gain.
Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was from the Swiss rural cantons. He was strongly influenced by Christian humanism. He was ordained a priest in 1506, and he accepted a parish post in rural Switzerland until he was appointed as a cathedral priest in the Great minister of Zurich in 1518. Zwingli began the Reformation in Switzerland though his preaching.
Although Zwingli maintained that he had came to his theology completely separately from Luther, modern scholars doubt this. Either way, his preaching caused such a disturbance that in 1523 the city council held a public debate in the town hall. The disputation had become a standard method of spreading the Reformation in many cities. The reformers had an edge because they had the power of new ideas, whereas the Catholics were not used to defending their teachings. As well, city magistrates were not always motivated just by religious considerations. The secular authorities would enhance their own power by removing the Catholic Church from their town. Zwingli’s party won.
Over the next two years, evangelical reforms were spread though Zurich. Zwingli looked to the state to supervise the church. Relics and images were abolished, and all paintings and decorations were removed from the churches. The mass was replaced by a new liturgy consisting of Scripture reading, prayer, and sermons. Music was eliminated from the service as well. Also abolished were monasticism, pilgrimages, the venation of saints, clerical celibacy, and the pope’s authority. The movement soon spread to other cities in Switzerland.
Zwingli’s reform movement faced a serious political problem by 1528, as the forest cantons remained Catholic. Zurich was afraid of an alliance between them and the Habsburgs. In response, Zwingli attempted to build a league of cities by seeking an agreement with Luther and the German reformers. This alliance seemed possible, especially in Strasbourg, where Martin Bucer (1491-1551) had instituted a moderate reform movement containing characteristics of both Luther’s and Zwingli’s movements. The German and the Swiss reformers realized the need for unity. Protestant political leaders, fearful of Charles V’s ability to take advantage of the division between the reformers, attempted to promote an alliance between the Swiss and German reformed churches by having the leaders of both groups attend a conference at Marburg to resolve their differences. Although they were able to agree on everything else, Zwingli and Luther couldn’t agree on the interpretation of the scriptural words, “This is my Body, this is my blood.” Because of this, the Marburg Colloquy of 1529 produced no agreement or alliance. This was extremely harmful to Zwingli.
War erupted between the Swiss Protestant and catholic cantons in October 1531. Zwingli was found dead on the battlefield, as he’d been killed, cut up, and burned. His ashes were scattered. The able Heinrich Bullinger then succeeded Zwingli, but the movement was slowed. The Swiss civil war of 1531 was an early indication of what religious passions would lead to in the 16th century. It’s been said that when Martin Luther heard of Zwingli’s death, he remarked that he got what he deserved.
The Radical Reformation: The Anabaptists
Reformers like Luther sought a new authority by allowing the state to play an important role in church affairs. Called the Anabaptists, these radicals actually formed a large variety of different groups who shared some common characteristics. While some middle-class intellectuals were a part of this movement, Anabaptism was most attractive to peasants, weavers, miners and artisans who had been most affected by the economic changes of the age. The like between the social dissatisfaction and religious radicalism was obvious.
To the Anabaptists, the true Christian church was a voluntary group of believers who had undergone spiritual rebirth and had then been baptized into the church. They believed in adult rather than infant baptism. They also tried to return literally to the practices and spirit of early Christianity. Anabaptists followed a strict democracy in which all believers were considered equal and each church chose its own minister. The chosen ministers would then have the duty of leading services, which were very simple. They rejected theological speculation in favor of simple Christian living. The Lord’s Supper was interpreted as a remembrance. They also believed in the complete separation of church and state. Government was no only excluded from the realm of religion, it was not even supposed to exercise political jurisdiction over real Christians. While Anabaptists refused to hold office or bear arms, some groups did become violent. They were regarded as dangerous radicals who threatened the very fabric of the 16th century society. In fact, the one thing Protestants and Catholics could agree on was the need to eliminate the Anabaptists.
One early group of Anabaptists was known as the Swiss Brethren. Because their ideas scared Zwingli, they were expelled from the city. They suffered ruthless persecution, especially after the Peasants’ War of 1524-1525. Catholics and Lutherans agreed that the Anabaptists threatened not only religious peace but also secular authority because of their political ideas. The movement was stamped out of Germany, so the survivors went to Moravia, Poland, and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, Anabaptism took a strange form.
An Anabaptism uprising in the 1530s in the city of Munster determined the fate of Dutch Anabaptism. Seat of a powerful Catholic prince-bishop, Munster had gone though extreme economic disasters, including crop failure and plague. It was converted to Lutheranism in 1532, but became a haven for Anabaptists.
A more extreme version of the Anabaptists known as Melchiorites emerged in Munster. They believed that the world was going to end and that they would usher in the Kingdom of God with Munster as the New Jerusalem. These millenarian Anabaptists took control of the city by the end of February 1534. They drove out those they considered to be unbelievers, burned all books except for the Bible, and proclaimed communal ownership of all property. John of Leiden was the king of New Jerusalem. He wanted to cover the entire world and purify if of evil by the sword in preparation for Jesus’ Second Coming and the creation of a New Age. Leiden believed that in this New Kingdom, all goods would be held in common and the saints would live without suffering.
The Catholic prince-bishop of Munster soon gathered a large force and laid siege to the city. Finally, after many of the people inside the city had starved, a joint army of Catholics and Lutherans recaptured the city in June 1535 and killed the radical Anabaptist leaders. The New Jerusalem had ceased to exist. Dutch Anabaptism now returned to its pacifist tendencies. This is especially evident in the work of Menno Simons (1496-1561), who is responsible for rejuvenation Dutch Anabaptism. Menno dedicated his life to the spread of a peaceful Anabaptism that stressed separation from the world in order to emulate the life of Jesus. Simmons imposed strict discipline on his followers and banned those who refused to follow the rules. His followers were called the Mennonites. Both the Mennonites and the Amish descended from the Anabaptists, and they can be found in the modern USA.
The Reformation in England
Unhappiness with the papacy was the norm in England at this time, especially in matters such as taxation and justice. People also criticized the clergy as greedy clerics flaunted their wealth. This unhappiness as well as a craving for spiritual expression spread Lutheranism, encouraged by two different traditions of dissent. Heretical Lollardy, which stressed the use of the Bible in the vernacular and the rejection of papal supremacy, heavily influenced the lower class while Christian humanism, which called for reform, influenced the upper and middle classes. These people were the first to embrace Lutheran writings when they began to arrive in England in the 1520s.
Still, there may not have been a Reformation in England had it not been for the king wanting to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Henry VIII had two reasons to divorce her: first off, Catherine had produced no male heir. And second, Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting who refused to be just the King’s mistress. Henry called on Cardinal Wolsey to get Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage, as he was the highest-ranking English church official and Lord Chancellor to the king. This wasn’t easy, because the sack of Rome in 1527 had left the pope dependent on the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who happened to be the nephew of Queen Catherine. Impatient, Henry dismissed Wolsey in 1529.
The king now had two new advisers, Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1532, and Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540), the king’s principal secretary after the fall of Wolsey. They advised the king to get an annulment of his marriage in England’s own ecclesiastical courts. The most important thing he had to do was announce by Parliament an act that would cut off all appeals from English church courts to Rome. This legislation would abolish papal authority in England, therefore Henry no longer needed the pope to get his marriage annulled. He was in a hurry now, because Anne Boleyn was pregnant and he had secretly married her in January 1533. Marrying her would mean legitimizing the heir.
Thomas Cranmer declared that the king’s marriage to Catherine was void, and then validated Henry’s marriage to Anne. Three months after she was crowned queen in the beginning of June, she had a baby girl who was going to become Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1534, Parliament completely broke the church with the Act of Supremacy, which declared the king the supreme ruler of the land and the head of the Church of England. Now the king controlled the church in all matters of doctrine, clerical appointments, and discipline. As well, Parliament passed a Treason Act, making any denial of the king’s power punishable by death. Few challenged the new order, however, humanists and former Lord Chancellor Thomas More did. He saw the heart of the issue: loyalty to the pope in Rome was now treason in England. He was tried for treason. At his trial, he asked what the effect of the actions of the king and Parliament would be. More was beheaded in London on July 6, 1535.
Thomas Cromwell worked out the details of the government’s new role in church affairs based on the centralized power of the king and Parliament. He also helped the king financially with a daring plan for the dissolution of the monasteries. 400 religious houses were closed in 1536; their possessions confiscated by the king. Most were sold to nobles, gentry, and some merchants. The king also got a lot of money from it and created a new group of supporters who now had a stake in the new Tudor order.
While Henry VIII had broken the papacy, there was little change to the doctrine, theology, and ceremony. Thomas Cranmer had wished to have a religious reformation, but Henry refused. The king had Parliament pass the Six Articles Act of 1539 to counteract a growing Protestant sentiment. The act reaffirmed transubstantiation, clerical celibacy, and other aspects of Catholic doctrine. Henry’s conservatism helped the English accept the changes he had made; most people were indifferent to the transformation that had occurred. Popular acceptance was also furthered by Henry’s strategy of involving Parliament in all the changes.
Foreign affairs, factional intrigue, and a continued effort to find the prefect wife occupied the last decade of Henry’s reign. Henry had grown tired of Anne and had her beheaded in 1536 on a charge of adultery. Jane Seymour, his third wife, finally gave him a male heir, but she died in childbirth. He then got married to Anne of Cleves, a German princess. It was arranged for political reasons and on the basis of a painted portrait. Henry was shocked at what she looked like when he saw her in person and divorced her. He then got married to his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, who was more attractive but less moral. Henry had her beheaded when she committed adultery. His final wife was Catherine Parr, who married Henry in 1543 and outlived him. The underage and sickly Edward VI (1547-1553), the son of him and his third wife succeeded Henry.
Edward VI was only 9 when his father died, so the real control of England passed to a council of regency. During Edward’s reign, Archbishop Cranmer and others inclined toward Protestant doctrines that were able to move the Church of England more towards Protestantism. Among the new acts of Parliament were the clergy’s right to marry, the elimination of images, and the creation of a revised Protestant liturgy that was elaborated in a new prayer book and liturgical guide known as the Book of Common Prayer. These changes brought fourth a lot of opposition and prepared the way for the reaction that came when Henry’s first daughter (who’s mother was Catherine of Aragon), Mary, came to the thrown.
Mary (1553-155 cool was a Catholic who aimed to bring England back to Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately for her, she had very little understanding of politics and even less about the changes that had come to England in the last 30 years. Her restoration of Catholicism, which had been achieved by joint action of the monarch and Parliament, aroused much opposition. Many feared that the lands that had been confiscated by Henry would be restored to the church. As well, there was widespread antipathy to Mary’s unfortunate marriage to Phillip II, the son of Charles V and the future king of Spain. Phillip didn’t care for England. She burned more than 300 Protestant heretics, giving her the name “blood Mary,” and when her forces lost Calais, the last English possession from the Hundred Years’ War, she lost all support. In fact, she managed to achieve the opposite of what she had wanted; England was more Protestant by the end of her reign than it had been when she began, as people identified it with English resistance to Spanish interference. The death of Mary in 1558 ended the restoration of Catholicism in England.
John Calvin and the Development of Calvinism
John Calvin (1509-1564) stands out among the second generation of Protestant reformers and the systematic theologian and organizer of the Protestant movement. John Calvin began studying in 1523 at the University of Paris. He began training in humanistic studies, but he switched to the study of law at Orleans and Bourges from 1528-1531, while at the same time studying Greek. He returned to Paris in 1531 to concentrate on his humanistic pursuits. He was influenced by Luther’s writings, which were being circulated and read by French intellectuals as early as 1523. By 1533, he had received a highly diverse education, and in that same year he had a religious crisis that determined the rest of his life’s work. He was so convinced of the inner guidance of God that he became the most determined of all the Protestant reformers. He wasn’t safe in Paris anymore, because King Francis I persecuted Protestants. In 1536 he published Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was a masterful synthesis of Protestant thought and a manual for ecclesiastical organization. It was a work that immediately secured his reputation as one of the new leaders of Protestantism. Although it was originally written in Latin, Calvin published a French edition in 1541, spreading his ideas in French speaking lands.
Calving was very similar to Luther on most important doctrines. He believed in the doctrine of justification by faith alone to explain how humans achieved salvation. However, Calvin also placed emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of God. Predestination in particular gave a unique cast to Calvin’s teachings. While it was only one aspect of his doctrine of salvation, predestination became the central focus of succeeding generations of Calvinists. Predestination meant that God had predestined some people (the elect) to be saved and others (the reprobate) to be damned. He identified three tests that could indicate salvation: on open profession of faith, and participation in the sacraments of baptism and communion. He never suggested that worldly success or material wealth was a sign of election. Most importantly, while Calvin stressed that you couldn’t be certain of salvation, some of his followers didn’t always make this distinction. The psychological effects of predestination gave some later Calvinists an unshakable conviction that they were doing God’s work on earth. Therefore, Calvinism became a dynamic and activist faith. It became the militant international form of Protestantism.
Calvin believed that the church was a divine institution responsible for preaching the word of god and administering the sacraments, of which Calvin only kept two: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Also, Calvin agreed with other reformers that the church had the power to discipline its members. This showed when Calvin finally at the chance to establish his church in Geneva.
Until 1536, John Calvin had been mainly a scholar. But that year, he took up a ministry in Geneva that lasted until his death in 1564. One of his major successes came in 1541 when the city council accepted his new church constitution (called the Ecclesiastical Ordinances), which had four offices: pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. The Ecclesiastical Ordinances created a special body for enforcing moral discipline. It had five pastors and 12 elders, functioning as a court to oversee the moral life, daily behavior, and doctrinal orthodoxy of Genevans and to admonish and correct deviants. More serious cases could be turned over to the city council for worse punishments than excommunication. As well, stricter laws were set against blasphemy, and were enforced with banishment and public whippings.
Calvin’s success in Geneva made the city a vibrant center of Protestantism. Missionaries following Calvin’s lead trained in Geneva were sent to all parts of Europe. By the mid-sixteenth century, Calvinism had replaced Lutheranism as the international form of Protestantism.
The Social Impact of the Protestant Reformation
Because Christianity was such a big part of European life, it was inevitable that the Reformation would have an impact on the family, education, and popular religious practices.
The Family
The Catholic Church believed in abstinence from sex as the surest way to holiness, and therefore was preferable to marriage when it came to the clergy. Marriage offered the best means to control sexual intercourse and give it a purpose—creating children. This attitude persisted among the Protestant reformers, to some extent. Luther argued that sex in marriage allowed one to “make use of this sex in order to avoid sin,” And Calvin believed that every man should abstain from marriage only as long as he could avoid his sexual wants.
Both Catholic and Protestant clergy preached sermons advocating a positive view of family relationships. Because Protestantism had gotten rid of any ideas of special holiness for celibacy, abolishing both monasticism and celibate clergy, the family could be placed at the center of human life.
Calvin and Luther believed that women’s ability to produce children was part of the divine plan. God punishes women for the sins of Eve by the burdens of procreation and feeding and nurturing their children, but as Luther said, “it is a gladsom punishment if you consider the hope of eternal life and the honor of motherhood which had been left to her.” Protestant removed the woman from her traditional role as controller of religion in the home, but called upon men and women alike to read the Bible and participate in religious services together. Because of this, they provided some education for girls so that they could read the Bible and other religious literature. For example, the city council of Zwickau established a girls’ school in 1525. However, these schools were made to teach moral values rather than intellectual ideas and did very little to help the woman’s role in society.
Education in the Reformation
The Reformation had a huge impact on education. Renaissance humanism had changed the content of education and Protestant educators were very successful in using the humanists methods in Protestant secondary schools and universities. Protestant schools were aimed at a much larger audience than humanists schools, as the created more of a need for an at least semiliterate group of believers who could read the Bible for themselves. They also thought that they needed to provide the church with god Christians and good pastors as well as the state with good administrators and citizens. Martin Luther believed that all children should have the chance to get an education as provided by the sate. To do that, he urged cities and villages of Saxony to establish schools paid for by the public. Philip Melanchthon, one of Luther’s co-workers who gained the title of the Teacher in Germany, shared his ideas. In his scheme for education, he split up students into three classes based on their age or abilities. The Protestants in Germany followed his example, and were responsible for introducing the gymnasium (or secondary school) where the humanist emphasis on the liberal arts was based on instruction in Greek and Latin was combined with religious teachings.
Catholics also saw the importance in secondary schools and universities as they could educate people to Catholic beliefs. The Jesuits were especially good at combing the humanist educational methods with religious instruction.
Some humanists attacked these schools for misusing humanist methods.
Religious Practices and Popular Culture
Protestant reformers’ attacks on the Catholic Church led to radical changes in religious practices. The Protestant Reformation abolished practices such as indulgences, the venation of relics and saints, pilgrimages, monasticism, and clerical celibacy. The elimination of saints ended all the celebrations of religious holy days and changed a community’s sense of time. Many religious practices that had been important in pop culture were criticized by Protestant reforms as superstitious or remnants of pagan culture. Even Catholic leaders tried to get rid of the more frivolous aspects of popular aspects, though they didn’t go as far as the Protestants. Some Protestants tried to get rid of customary forms of entertainment. For example, the English Puritans attempted to ban drinking in taverns, dramatic performances, and dancing. Dutch Calvinists tried to get rid of the tradition of giving small children presents on the feast of Saint Nicholas, near Christmas. Most of these attempts were unsuccessful.
The Catholic Reformation
The split of Rome had created a national church in England. The situation in Europe didn’t look favorable for the Roman Catholic Church, but positive forces were at work for reform within the Catholic Church, and the came to be directed by a revived and reformed papacy by the mid-sixteenth century. By the second half of the 16th century, Catholicism had regained a lot of the hope that had been lost.
While some historians call the story of the revival of Roman Catholicism the Counter-Reformation, it’s more commonly called the Catholic Reformation. It was a mixture of old and new elements, including the best features of medieval Catholicism, which had been adapted for modern conditions. This was obvious in the revival of mysticism and monasticism. There was also the emergence of new mysticism, which was closely tied to the traditions of Catholic piety and was especially evident in the life of the Spanish mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). She founded a new order of barefoot Carmelite nuns and worked to foster their mystical experiences.
The revival of religious orders also proved invaluable to the reformation of Catholicism. Benedictines and Dominicans were reformed and renewed. The Capuchins emerged when a group of Franciscans decided to return to the simplicity and poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi, who founded the Franciscan order.
New religious orders and brotherhoods were also created, such as the Theatines, which were founded in 1524. They placed importance on reforming the secular clergy and encouraged those clerics to fulfil their duties among the laity. The Ursulines was a new order of nuns founded in Italy in 1535, and they focused on creating schools for educating girls. In 1497, the Oratory of Divine Love was organized. It wasn’t a new religious order, but instead an informal group of clergy and laymen who worked to create reform by emphasizing personal spiritual development and acts of Charity.
The Society of Jesus
The most important of the new religious orders was the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits. They became the chief instrument of the Catholic Reformation. Spanish noblemen founded it. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) was injured in battle and had to cut his military career short. He then experienced spiritual torment similar to Luther’s, but he decided to submit his will to the will of the church. He then prepared for his life’s work for 12 years by mortification, prayer, pilgrimages, going to school, and working out a spiritual program in his short but powerful book, The Spiritual Exercises. This was a training manual for spiritual development which emphasized exercises by which the human will could be strengthened to make the follow of the will of God as manifested though the Catholic Church. Loyola gathered a small group of people who shared his single-minded devotion and were recognized as a religious order by a papal bull in 1540. They were grounded on the principles of absolute obedience to the papacy, a strict hierarchical order for the society, the use of education to achieve its goals, and a dedication to engage in “conflict for God.” Members had to go though a two-year novitiate and vow absolute obedience to the pope.
The Jesuits established schools based off of the humanists educational methods; they believed that the education of young people was crucial to fight off the advance of Protestantism. The Jesuits also put out a lot of propaganda of the Catholic faith among non-Christians. Francis Xavier (1506-1552) was one of the original Jesuits, and he carried the message of Catholic Christianity to the East. Poland was largely won back for the Catholic Church because of the Jesuits.
A Revived Papacy
It took the jolt of the Protestant Reformation to stop corruption of the papacy. The change in the papacy during the 16th century was one of the most important aspects of the Catholic Reformation.
The pontificate of Pope Paul III (1534-1549) was a turning point in the reform of the papacy. Paul III continued the Renascence practice of appointing his nephews as cardinals, involving himself in politics, and patronizing arts and letters on a large scale. Nevertheless, he knew there was need for change and appointed advocates of reform such as Gasparo Contarini and Gian Pietro Caraffa, were also made cardinals.
A turning point in the direction of the Catholic Reformation and the nature of Papal reform came in the 1540s. A colloquy had been held at Regensburg in a final attempt to settle the religious division peacefully in 1541. Here Catholic moderates like Cardinal Contarini reached a compromise with Protestant moderates on a number of doctrinal issues. Caraffa was able to persuade Paul III to create a Roman Inquisition or Holy Office in 1542. There was no compromising with Protestantism.
Cardinal Caraffa was chosen pope as Paul IV (1555-1559). He increased the power of the Inquisition so that even liberal cardinals were silenced. He also created an Index of Forbidden Books, which was a list of books that Catholics were not allowed to read.
Any hope of restoring Christian unity by compromise was fading fast. The actions of the Council of Trent made compromise virtually impossible.
The Council of Trent
Pope Paul III took the decisive step of calling for a general council of Christendom to resolve religious differences created by the Protestant revolt. In March 1545, a group of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and theologians met in the city of Trent. This council met intermittently from 1545 to 1563 in three major sessions. Two important struggles determined its outcome. While the pope hoped of focus on doctrinal issues, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V wanted church reform to be the main order of business. The second conflict was about the division between Catholic moderates and conservatives. The Protestants were invited to attend the council, but since they weren’t allowed to participate, they refused. The popes controlled the council.
The final doctrinal decrees of the Council of Trent reaffirmed traditional Catholic teachings in opposition to Protestant beliefs. The seven sacraments were upheld, and belief in purgatory and in the efficacy of indulgences was affirmed, although the hawking of indulgences was prohibited.
The Roman Catholic Church had become on Christian denomination among many with an organizational framework and doctrinal pattern that would not be significantly altered until Vatican Council II 400 years later. The Catholic Church then entered a militant phase, and an era of religious warfare was about to unfold.
Conclusion
Few people suspected that Martin Luther’s stand would produce a division of Europe along religious lines, but the yearning for reform of the church and meaningful religious experience caused a seemingly simple dispute to turn into a powerful movement.
Protestantism split into different sects which were themselves divided over the interpretation of the sacraments and religious practices. As reform ideas spread, religion and politics became more and more involved with one another; political support played a huge role in the spread of the Reformation.
Lutheranism was legally acknowledged in the Holy Roman Empire by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, however, it was largely replaced by the new Protestant form of Calvinism, which was more attractive to a whole new generation of Europeans.
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