Reformation

The religious revolution that took place in Western Europe in the 16th cent. (1500's). It arose from objections to doctrines and practices in the medieval church (see Roman Catholic Church) and ultimately led to the freedom of dissent (see Protestantism). It marked the breakup of the Catholic church and the creation of Protestant churches.

Background - What caused the Reformation

His ideas were amplified later by John Hus in Bohemia, who was burned (1415) at the stake by order of the Council of Constance. After his death his followers in Bohemia upheld his cause in the long and bitterly fought Hussite Wars. These dwindled into compromise, but Huss’s challenge to the orthodox view of the Eucharist and the revolutionary effect of the wars did not disappear.

What was the condition of the Church?

New forces fanned discontent with the church and the medieval order of society. There had long been outcries against abuses in the church, especially the blatant worldliness of some of the clergy, the emphasis on money, and the oppressiveness, not only intellectual but economic, of members of the church hierarchy. In the 15th cent. the conciliar movement (i.e., the attempt to establish the superiority of the ecumenical council over the pope) heralded the growing internal church dissent. Although the movement failed, the number of those wishing reform nevertheless grew steadily.

The Renaissance also tended to develop an emphasis on the individual. The later humanists were outspoken in their attacks on the abuses in the church; Desiderius Erasmus was, perhaps, the most prominent, but there were many others, including the humanists at Oxford. 

The intimate connection between the new learning and the Reformation itself is shown in the pursuits of men who were to be prominent in the Reformation in central Europe; Ulrich von Hutten and Philip Melanchthon were outstanding figures in humanism, and Huldreich Zwingli arrived at opposition to the church mainly through the study of Greek and Hebrew. The very founding of the Univ. of Wittenberg, which was to be the center of revolt, was part of the urge to humanism. But remember, Renaissance humanism was an examination of the relationship of humans to the divine. It was not secular. These reformers were very religious.

The introduction of printing in Western Europe allowed more widespread dissemination of criticism. Printing was to hasten the Reformation, and the Reformation in turn was to spread printing further. 

In secular matters the opposition between church and state was centuries old, but it had begun to take a new turn with the building of strong nations. In Germany this opposition to the power of the church was coupled in the minds of many princes with opposition to that other supranational body, the Holy Roman Empire, and the princes were to play a decisive part in the ecclesiastical rebellion, largely because they did not want to see the wealth of their provinces drained away to the Church.

The economy of Europe was expanding and forcing cracks in the more or less rigid walls of the system. Scholars of the 20th cent. have put a great deal of emphasis on the connection between the new modes of religious thought and economic change (i.e., the connection between Protestantism and capitalism) as a major force in the Reformation. There were, however, many influences at work, and the field was well prepared by 1517 (i.e. before capitalism took off). Nevertheless, it was with suddenness and surprise that the Reformation began.

The Influence of Martin Luther

Martin Luther, a professor of theology at the Univ. of Wittenberg, had been stirred to action by the campaign for dispensing indulgences being launched under Johann Tetzel in Germany.

What is an indulgence?

Luther protested. On Oct. 31, 1517, he posted on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg his 95 theses, inviting debate on matters of practice and doctrine.

What was Luther's objection to indulgences? 

Luther’s action was not as yet a revolt against the church but a movement for reform within. It was, however, much more than an objection to the money-grabbing and secular policies of the clergy. Luther had already become convinced that in certain matters of doctrine the purity of the ancient church had been perverted by self-seeking popes and clergy.

What were Luther's new answers to four old, basic theological issues?

In 1520 the pope issued a bull of excommunication against Luther, and the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, thundered against the rebel. Luther defied them, publicly burned the bull of excommunication, and issued vigorous pamphlets assailing the papacy and the doctrine of the sacraments. 

The breach was thus made in 1521, and the meeting of the Diet of Worms (see Worms, Diet of) not only failed to produce a compromise but forced many doubters into the camp of the rebels. Luther was declared an outlaw, but the threat was empty; under the protection of the powerful Frederick III, elector of Saxony, he was spirited off to the safety of the Wartburg.

Economic, Spiritual, and Political Motives

The revolt was spreading with incredible speed over central and N Germany and almost immediately extended beyond the German borders. All the elements of discontent and rebellion coalesced. 

Why did Lutheranism succeed in most of Germany?

The learned, such as Luther himself, Melanchthon, and Martin Bucer, saw the opportunity to express and expand their own views. 

The nobles were enabled to cast off allegiance to the Holy Roman emperor and to enrich themselves by seizing the immense landed estates of the church. Too much can be—and has been—made out of this economic motive, however, for many of the princes belonged to the intellectual group that had been stirred to critical rejection of church doctrines, and they were perhaps better aware than the common people of the venality and money-mindedness of many of the clergy. 

Many of the pious, increased in number by a spontaneous religious revival in the late 15th cent., drank the doctrine of a new spirituality with pleasure, for Luther’s doctrine of justification (i.e., salvation) by faith alone and not by sacraments, good works, and the mediation of the church placed humans in open and direct communication with God. The new insistence on reading the word of God in the Bible placed a greater responsibility on the individual.

Those who were feeling the first and welcome experience of nationalism were anxious to shake off the hand of Rome. Absolutist rulers, particularly in Scandinavia, welcomed the opportunity to end the interference of the church in state affairs; by creating national churches they were able to escape outside influence. 

What were the benefits to the French monarchy of the Concordat of Bologna (1516)

Merchants and capitalists found the air of individual freedom exhilarating. 

The peasants, chafing under the old restrictions of feudalism, hoped that the new dispensation would take away their burdens.

Ferment, Division, and Warfare

In Zürich, Switzerland, Huldreich Zwingli had developed his own brand of dissent. In 1529 in the Colloquy of Marburg, Luther and Melanchthon on the one side and Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius on the other discussed the nature of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (the Protestant form of the Catholic Eucharist) but failed to come to an agreement. 

The fundamental principle that every man could arrive at truth by study of the Bible also led many to more radical conclusions than those that Luther adopted. The preacher known as Carlstadt (from the place of his birth) argued for a more thoroughgoing dismissal of old practices and doctrines in Wittenberg itself and caused Luther to emerge from his retirement to halt the progress of radicalism. 

The Peasants’ War (1524–25) showed plainly the rifts within the ranks of the rebels, and Luther, forced to choose between the revolutionary peasants and their opponents, the princes, chose the princes and orderly governance.

What was Luther's view of a Christian's duty to the secular state?

 The lower classes then in large measure followed more revolutionary social leaders, such as the communistic Thomas Münzer and John of Leiden. After their revolution had been brutally put down and the leaders tortured and executed, many of the revolutionary peasants returned to Roman Catholicism, but many continued to foster more radical sects, such as the Anabaptists.

The conflict in the empire led the Protestant princes to form a defensive union against the emperor in the Schmalkaldic League, in which the chief figures were Philip of Hesse and John Frederick I of Saxony. The league was put down in the Schmalkaldic War (1546–47), which did not, however, in the least solve the problem. Emperor Charles V, in an effort to prolong the uneasy peace, proposed to the Protestants that there be an interim agreement against change until a general church council could legislate on the dispute. This was the so-called Augsburg Interim (1548), which did not take effect because it was rejected by the Protestant princes. The confusion that political considerations brought to the religious issue is perhaps best seen in the career of Maurice, duke of Saxony, who fought first on one side, then on the other.

Calvin and the Spread of Protestantism

The message of the Reformation spread quickly throughout Europe (except Russia). The Scandinavian countries became firmly Protestant under Gustavus I of Sweden and Frederick I of Denmark and Norway; later attempts to win them back to Catholicism failed. Geneva had become in 1536 the headquarters of John Calvin, who is considered by many the greatest theologian of Protestantism. His Institutes of the Christian Religion, published at Basel in 1536, marked a new era in thought. 

Calvin differed from Luther principally in the doctrine of predestination, in the austerity of the life of the godly, and in the emphasis on theocratic government (see Calvinism).

What was Calvin's view of predestination?

How else did Calvinism differ from Lutheranism?

 Calvin's influence was immediate and enormous. France, which had hardly been touched by Lutheranism, was fired by Calvinist doctrine, and the Protestant minority, called the Huguenots, waged fierce battle against the Catholic majority in the Wars of Religion until toleration was won when the Huguenot leader Henry of Navarre turned Catholic, became King Henry IV, and issued (1598) the Edict of Nantes.

It proved quite impossible to reconcile the finely wrought theology of Calvinism with Lutheran doctrines, for Lutheranism rejected predestination and clung to part of the sacramental system (see Lord’s Supper). Calvinist thought did greatly influence the course of the Reformation in the British Isles and the United States. There was also a conflict of Lutheranism and Calvinism with the more radical and emotional groups, and the enthusiasm of preachers who interpreted Scripture in their own way met with a cool reception among the Calvinists.

Why were the Anabaptists feared and hated?

How did the Church of England sway public opinion to support the new church?

Currents of Calvinistic thought were, however, strong in England. The Reformation was begun with the creation of a state church and the dissolution of the monasteries. It was given Calvinist touches under Edward VI, suffered a complete reversal under Mary I, and reached a sort of balance under Elizabeth I with some persecution of both Catholics and Calvinists. Though economics drove Elizabeth to support the Protestants on the Continent.

The process was to work itself out slowly later in the English civil war, just as the fierce hatreds between Protestant and Protestant as well as between Catholic and Protestant were to be worked out later on the Continent. The burning of Servetus was a sample of the internal strife within Protestantism itself. 

Why did the popes react so slowly to the reformation?

Why were the Jesuits so effective in promoting a counter-reformation?

The divisions within the churches of the Reformation also served to forward the Counter Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church, which rewon Poland, Hungary, most of Bohemia, and part of Germany. 

The end of the Thirty Years War in the Peace of Westphalia (see Westphalia, Peace of) in 1648 brought some stabilization, but the force of the Reformation did not end then. It has continued to exert influence to the present day, with its emphasis on personal responsibility and individual freedom, its refusal to take authority for granted, and its ultimate influence in breaking the hold of the church on life and consequent secularization of life and attitudes.

Bibliography

See 

T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation (2 vol., 1906–7; repr. 1971); 

E. M. Hulme, The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reformation in Modern Europe (rev. ed. 1917); 

P. Smith, The Age of the Reformation (1920, repr. 1962); 

A. Hyma, The Christian Renaissance (1924); 

R. H. Murray, The Political Consequences of the Reformation (1926, repr. 1960); 

R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926); 

M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (tr. 1930); 

C. Hopf, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation (1946); 

R. H. Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (1952, repr. 1965) and Studies on the Reformation (1963); 

G. G. Coulton, Art and the Reformation (rev. ed. 1958); 

H. S. Lucas, The Renaissance and the Reformation (2d ed. 1960); 

H. J. Grimm, The Reformation Era, 1500–1650 (rev. ed. 1965); 

G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe, 1517–1559 (1966); 

A. G. Dickens, Reformation and Society in 16th-Century Europe (1966), 

A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (1967),

A. G. Dickens, The Reformation in Historical Thought (1985); 

N. Sykes, The Crisis of the Reformation (1967); 

H. J. Hillerbrand, The World of the Reformation (1973); 

L. W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation, 1517–1559 (1984).

adapted from  The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2002 Columbia University Press

1. What was the condition of the church from 1400-1517?
   
   Largely corrupt. People complained about clerical immorality, clerical ignorance and clerical pluralism (receiving benefits from more than one position at a time). Critics like Erasmus, in The Praise of Folly, condemned clerical superstition. Neglect of celibacy was common. Other charges included drunkenness, gambling and ostentatious dress. There was poor enforcement of standards for education of priests. Absenteeism was also a problem. There were various reform movements, notably the Brethren of the Common Life in Holland and Pope Julius II's Lateran council 1512-1517. Contrast with the devotion to religion of the catholic vicar Martin Luther before posting the 95 theses. Clearly not all were corrupt and many made a sincere effort to reform.
   
2. What is an indulgence
   
   in the Roman Catholic Church, the pardon of temporal punishment due for sin. It is to be distinguished from absolution and the forgiveness of guilt. 
   
   The church grants indulgences out of the Treasury of Merit won for the church by Christ and the saints. Indulgences may be plenary, i.e., a full remission of all temporal punishment; or they may be partial, i.e., a remission of part of the temporal punishment. 
   
   Contrary to popular understanding, the number of days specified in a partial indulgence does not denote a reduction of time in purgatory. 
   
   The practice of quantifying indulgences stems from ancient usage, when actual public penance was imposed and remitted for specified periods as the church saw fit. Hence, the penitent who is granted an indulgence receives merit as if he had performed actual penance for the length of time specified. The degree of merit varies with the disposition of the penitent. 
   
   The notion that this practice encourages moral laxity is denied by the church, since the penitent must be in a state of grace and the attachment to even a single venial sin will reduce the effectiveness of the indulgence. Indulgences won for souls in purgatory are applied only as God wills. 
   
   Martin Luther protested against the sale and abuse of indulgences and came to reject the teaching altogether. Since the Council of Trent (1562) the buying and selling of indulgences has been unlawful.

    

3. What was Luther's objection to indulgences?
   
   Luther was concerned that people ignorantly believed that once they had purchased an indulgence they had no further need for repentance. He believed there was no biblical basis for indulgences. He did not accept the authority of the pope or the councils. He thought people could be saved by faith alone, not acts and not clerical intervention. 
   
4. What were Luther's new answers to four old, basic theological issues?
   1) How is a person to be saved? Old answer: faith and good works. New answer: faith alone - the arbitrary decision of God without regard to the sacraments or to good works.
   
   2) Where does religious authority reside? Old answer:  both in the bible and in the traditional teaching of the church. New answer: in the bible as interpreted by the individual's conscience.
   
   3) What is the church? Old answer:  church identified with the clergy. New answer: the entire community of Christian believers
   
   4) What is the highest form of Christian life? Old answer:  superiority of the monastic and religious life stressed over the secular. New answer: all vocations have equal merit. Each person should serve God according to their calling.
   
5. What was Luther's view of a Christian's duty to the secular state?
   
   Luther thought people were free to obey the word of God but he really meant they were free of the authority of the Roman Church. However the freedom from authority did not extend to the secular state. He was afraid that peasant rebellions would bring about the end of civilized society. "nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. " Luther's theology exalted the state, subordinated the church to the state and championed the existing secular power structure. 
   
6. Why did Lutheranism succeed in parts of Germany?
   
   Luther's advocacy of a simple religion based on scripture and personal conscience resonated with the reforms popular among the northern humanists. 
   
   He translated the bible into German and did so with great linguistic skill. This put the scripture within the reach of the educated German laity.
   
   The middle classes envied the churches wealth and resented the religious tithes and ecclesiastical taxes.
   
   Luther wrote hymns that appealed to the Germans.
   
   He advocated educational reforms and wrote a catechism to indoctrinate young people to the new religion. His message appealed to women because if gave dignity to all vocations including domestic tasks. Lutherans exalted the home and called it the special domain of the wife.
   
   Several elements in Luther's religious reformation stirred Germanic patriotic feelings usually taking the form of anti-roman sentiments but also national pride.
   
   He appealed to the German nobility to reform the church, confiscate church property and bring about the moral reform of the church.
   
   He complained that the roman church had exploited Germany.
   
   These calls for reform appealed to the nobility who wanted to keep the wealth for themselves. 
   
   France, Spain and England, had established state churches, controlled church monies. Germany had no strong central government and no state church so all of the money flowing from the ecclesiastical offices flowed to Rome. Lutheranism meant financial and political independence for a number of cities and local political units. 
   
   For example, in France the Concordat of Bologna (1516) was a treaty between France and the Papacy in which Francis I recognized the supremacy of the papacy over a universal council. This affirmed a monarchical rather than a conciliar view of church government. In return the French king gained the right to appoint all French bishops and abbots - thereby gaining power and money and in effect creating a French state Church. It helps to explain why France did not become Protestant. 
   
   Charles V also failed to take appropriate action to stem the new movement in Germany. He lacked the resources to oppose Protestantism in Germany. He was preoccupied with Turkish, Flemish, Spanish, American and Italian difficulties. He was at war with France. 
   
   French foreign policy was consciously based on keeping Germany unstable. The wars between Charles V and the Valois Kings of France were fought in Germany so the French supported the Protestants in German. The Hapsburg-Valois war further fragmented Germany and advanced the cause of Protestantism.
   
   Charles V's brother Ferdinand needed Protestant support against the Turks who were besieging Vienna in 1529 so Charles V was willing to tolerate Protestantism for some purposes.
   
   Charles' hold on his princes was weak and after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 each prince was permitted to determine the religion of his territory.
   
   
7. What was Calvin's view of predestination?
   
   Based on a belief in the absolute sovereignty and omnipotence of God and the total weakness of humanity, Calvin's notion of predestination was that people could not have free will because that would in some way detract from the sovereignty of God.
   
   Therefore people cannot work for their own salvation. Rather, God decided at the beginning of time who would be saved and who would be damned. It is based solely on God's mercy and not on human merit and people cannot question divine will. Christ's work redeemed the elect (those predestined to be saved). Believing themselves to be elect, the Calvinists would undergo hardships and attempt to combat evil.
   
   
8. Why were the Anabaptists feared and hated?
   
   Anabaptists modeled their new church after the Christian community of apostolic times, depicted as a free gathering of convinced believers dedicated to leading the saintly life in strict accord with Scripture. They separated themselves from the control of the state church - they became the first to practice the complete separation of church and state.
   
   That separation was considered radical, unpatriotic and destabilizing to society. Anabaptists were tortured and burned at the stake for their beliefs by Catholics and Protestants alike. Critics believed that separation of church and state and the total privatization of religion (taking it out of the public sphere) would lead ultimately to the secularization of society.
   
   
9. How did the Church of England sway public opinion to support the new church?
   
   They used propaganda such as the allegorical painting from 1548 on page 469. They made extensive use of the printing press. Elizabeth promulgated the "Elizabethan Settlement" - requiring outward conformity to the Church of England and uniformity in all ceremonies. Everyone had to attend church services or they were fined.
   
10. Why did the popes react so slowly to the reformation?
    
    Catholic reformation was already underway before 1517, leading to the formation of the Ursuline Order of nuns and the Jesuits.
    
    The Counter-reformation did not begin till the 1540s. The papacy was largely concerned with internal politics and political affairs in Italy. There was some contempt for activities outside of Italy among barbaric Germans.  It was very difficult to effect changes in the vast church bureaucracy. Change would necessitate a council and Popes were hesitant to call councils for fear they would limit papal authority, revenue, power and prestige.
    
11. Why were the Jesuits so effective in promoting a counter-reformation?
    
    Unlike the monastic movement that kept priests cloistered, they went out into the world and engaged people. They were better educated, better disciplined and better organized. They worked with both the poor and the elite. They became religious, spiritual and sometime political advisors to kings. They believed in action over contemplation - they were involved in the world. They translated the bible and the mass into the local languages of the people they were trying to convert. They tried to impress the Chinese with the advances in Western European Science, mathematics and cartography. Their presence internationally, long before the colonizing efforts of the Protestants nations, ensured that Catholicism would be the religion of Christian converts - not Protestantism. Their example showed people that the church could reform. But their emphasis was not on doctrinal reform but on helping souls. This message apparently appealed to a number of lapsed Catholics. 
    
    
12. Why did Elizabeth I help the Dutch?
    
    Wars in the low countries disrupted the wool trade and hurt the English economy. They needed the customs revenues. The murder of William the Silent eliminated the check on the Farnese military advancement so the northern provinces of the Netherlands were in danger of falling into enemy hands. The English feared a Spanish invasion of England. Elizabeth had ordered the death of Mary Queen of Scots. The Pope promised to pay a million gold ducats to Philip when his troops landed in England so the threat was credible. Farnese's battle plan included an English invasion to cut off the Dutch.
    

13. How else did Calvinism differ from Lutheranism?
    Calvin believed he had been personally called by God to reform the church. He sought to establish a Christian society ruled by God through magistrates and reformed ministers.
    
    Calvin's religious community lived according to a set of shared ideas. Religion was practiced very much in the public sphere. Public religious life and public behavior was regulated by the town council which monitored the behavior of every single individual.
    
    The council members admonished individuals to correct anti social and irreligious behavior. Misbehavior included fornication, covetousness (inordinate desire for wealth or possessions or for another's possessions), idolatry, railing (to revile or scold in harsh, insolent, or abusive language), drunkenness, and extortion. Also punished were absence from sermons, criticism of the ministers, dancing, playing cards, family quarrels, heresy, adultery, blasphemy and witchcraft.
    
    Continued misbehavior was punished by public denunciation, excommunication and shunning by the community.
    
    Mocking the established religion and persistent antisocial behavior was apparently treasonous to the state and heresy to the religion and the implication is it would be met with torture and capital punishment. The Calvinistic community was based on religious intolerance.
    
    Martin Luther's view of community was somewhat less extreme. The church was the community of believers and the religion was basically intolerant of alternative ideas or other religions - especially Catholicism.
    
    Lutheranism was essentially the German state religion. It was based on Catholicism but localized the church hierarchy within the state. It abolished monasteries, celibacy rules for clergy, and reformed clerical practices. The municipal governments of all towns regulated their citizen's behavior, but not as severely as in the Calvinistic communities. Lutheranism was a reaction to Catholicism and an assertion of German nationalism.
    
    Calvinism was a conscious attempt to remold society (and individuals) according to the new theology. Lutheranism did not go that far.
    
    The Catholic church responded to the need to reform with the Council of Trent and with the foundation of new religious orders focused on raising the moral and intellectual level of the clergy and people. These orders were largely oriented toward education. Religion was not tied to the individual town or state. Within the papal states the church did establish the Roman Inquisition which investigated charges of heresy and had the power to arrest, imprison and execute. Relative to Calvinism, Catholicism was far more tolerant. No attempt was made to officially regulate private behavior if it was not considered heretical.