Western
Civilization
Chapter Eleven
“The Reformation”
The Reformation
l The Reformation destroyed Western Europe’s religious
unity, and involved new ideas about the relationship among God, the individual,
and society.
l Its course was greatly influenced by politics, and
led, in most areas, to the subjection of the church to the political rulers.
Early Reformers
l Earlier
threats to the unity of the Church had been made by the works of John Wycliff
and John Huss.
l The
abuses of church practices and positions upset many people.
l Likewise,
Christian humanists had been criticizing the abuses.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) & the Beginnings.
l Martin
Luther was a miner’s son from Saxony in central Germany.
l Early
in his career he studied law.
l He
underwent a religious experience while traveling, which led him to become an
Augustinian friar.
l Later,
he became a professor at the university of Wittenberg, Saxony.
Religious Problems
l Luther,
to his personal distress, could not reconcile the problem of the sinfulness of
the individual and the justice of God.
l How
could a sinful person attain the righteousness necessary to obtain salvation?
l During
his studies of the Bible, especially of Romans 1:17, Luther came to believe
that personal efforts – good works such as a Christian life and attention to
the sacraments of the church – could not earn the sinner salvation.
Justification by Faith
l According
to Luther, only belief and faith in God were necessary to allow a person to
obtain salvation.
l This
teaching of Luther was documented in 1515.
Indulgences
l Indulgences
which had originated in connection with the crusades, involved the cancellation
of the penalty given by the church to a confessed sinner.
l Indulgences
had long been a means of raising money for Church activities.
l In
1517, the Pope was building the new cathedral of St. Peter in Rome.
l The
Church had also borrowed money from the Fuggers and needed money to pay off the
debt.
Johann Tetzel
l A
Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel was authorized to preach and sell indulgences.
l “As
soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
l Tetzel
received large amounts of money from his travels.
l Luther
protested the work of Tetzel to the Pope, to no avail.
Luther’s “95 Theses”
l On
Oct. 31, 1517, Luther nailed 95 theses, or statements, about indulgences to the
door of the Wittenberg Church and challenged the practice of selling
indulgences.
l At
this time he was seeking to reform the Church, not divide it.
l Luther
challenged the Church to debate the issue.
l The
Church sent Johann Eck to debate Luther.
Luther’s Relations with the Pope and Governments
l In
1519, Luther debated various criticisms of the Church and was driven to say
that only the Bible, not religious traditions or papal statements, could
determine correct religious practices and beliefs.
l In
1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther for his beliefs.
l In
1521, Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms, but refused to recant his
beliefs.
“Here I stand, I can do no other.”
l The
break with the Pope and Church were now permanent.
l Frederick
III of Saxony, protected Luther in Wartburg Castle for a year.
l Frederick
never accepted Luther’s beliefs but protected him because Luther was his
subject.
l The
weakness of Charles V as HRE contributed to Luther’s success in avoiding the
penalties of the pope.
Luther’s Writings
l An
Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520) argued that
nobles aw well as clergy, were the leaders of the church and should undertake
to reform it.
l Although
some radical zealots saw Luther as a symbol of resistance to the Church, he
was, in fact a conservative who rejected an alliance with other humanists like
Erasmus and even urged the destruction of synagogues.
Additional Writings
l The
Babylonian Captivity: replaced the seven sacraments with only two.
l The
Freedom of the Christian Man: explains Luther’s view on his “Justification
of Faith.”
l Against
the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the Peasants: supported the nobles in the
Peasant’s Revolt.
l In
1534, Luther translated the Bible into German
Subsequent Developments of Lutheranism
l Economic
burdens being increased on the peasants by their lords, combined with Luther’s
words that a Christian is subject to one one, led the peasants of Germany to
revolt in 1524.
l The
ensuing noble repression, supported by Luther, resulted in the deaths of 70,000
to 100,000 peasants.
Protestantism
l At
a meeting of the Holy Roman Empire’s leading figures in 1529, a group of
rulers, influenced by Luther’s teachings “protested” the decision of the
majority – hence the term “Protestant.”
l Protestant
originally meant Lutheran but eventually was applied to all Western Christians
who do not maintain allegiance to the Pope.
Augsburg Confession
l After
a failure of Protestant and Catholic representatives to find a mutually
acceptable statement of faith, the Augsburg Confession of 1530, was written as
a comprehensive statement of Lutheran beliefs.
Lutheran Reforms
l Led
by Philip Melanchthon, the “Educator of Germany,” Lutherans undertook much
educational reform, including schools for girls.
l Denmark
became Lutheran in 1523 and Sweden in 1527.
l Lutheran
rulers in Germany in order to protect themselves from Charles V formed the
Schmalkaldic League in 1531.
l Lands
owned by the Catholic church were also seized.
The “Peace of Augsburg”
l After
warfare in the 1540s, which Charles V won, but due to his treatment of
political rulers, was unable to follow up and reestablish the Church.
l The
Peace of Augsburg (1555) established the permanent religious division of
Germany into Lutheran and Catholic Churches.
l The
statement (cuius regio, eius religio) “whose religion, his religion” meant that
the religion of any area would be that of the ruling authority.
The
Reformation
“Other
Reformers”
Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)
l Ulrich
Zwingli introduced reforming ideas in Zurich
in Switzerland.
l He
rejected clerical celibacy, the worship of saints, fasting, transubstantiation,
and purgatory.
l Rejecting
ritual and ceremony, Zwingli stripped churches of decorations, such as statues.
l In
1523, the governing council of the city accepted his beliefs.
Reformation in Switzerland
l Zurich
became a center for Protestantism and its spread throughout Switzerland.
l Zwingli,
believing in the union of church and state, established in Zurich a system
which required church attendance by all citizens and regulated many aspects of
personal behavior – all enforced by courts and a group of informers.
l Efforts
to reconcile the views of Zwingli and Luther, chiefly over the issue of the
Eucharist, failed during a meeting in Marburg Castle in 1529.
l Switzerland,
divided into many cantons, also divided into Protestants and Catholics camps.
l A
series of civil wars, during which Zwingli was captured and executed, led to a
treaty in which each canton was permitted to determine its own religion.
–
First Battle of Kappel (Protestant victory)
–
Second Battle of Kappel (Zwingli cremated and spread
his ashes to the four winds.
l Heinrich
Bullinger became the new leader of the Swiss Protestants.
Anabaptists
l Anabaptists
(derived from a Greek word meaning to baptize again) is a name applied to
people who rejected the validity of child baptism and believed that such
children had to be rebaptized when they became adults.
l As
the Bible became available, through translation into the various vernaculars,
many people adopted interpretations contrary to those of Luther, Zwingli, and
the Catholics.
The Swiss Brethren
l Anabaptists
sought to return to the practices of the early Christian church, which was a
voluntary association of believers with no connection to the state.
l Perhaps
the first Anabaptists appeared in Zurich in 1525 under the leadership of Conrad
Grebel and were called the Swiss Brethren.
The Melchiorites
l In
1534, a group of Anabaptists called Melchiorites, led by Jan Matthys, gained
political control of the city of Munster in Germany and forced other
Protestants and Catholics to convert or leave.
l Most
of the Anabaptists were workers and peasants, who followed Old Testament
practices, including polygamy, and abolished private property.
l Combined
armies of Protestants and Catholics captured the city and executed the leader
in 1535.
l Thereafter,
Anabaptism and Munster became stock words of other Protestants and Catholics
about the dangers of letting reforming ideas influence workers and peasants.
l Subsequently,
Anabaptists adopted pacifism and avoided involvement with the state whenever
possible.
l Today,
the Mennonites, founded by Menno Simmons (1496-1561) and the Amish are the descendents
of the Anabaptists.
Calvinism
l John
Calvin (1509-1564) , a Frenchman, arrived in Geneva, a Swiss city-state which
had adopted an anti-Catholic position, in 1536, but failed in his first efforts
to further the reforms.
l Upon
his return in 1540, Geneva became the center of the Reformation.
l Calvin’s
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), a strictly logical analysis
of Christianity, had a universal, not local or national, appeal.
Philosophy of Predestination
l Calvin
brought knowledge of organizing a city from his stay in Strasbourg, which was
being led by the reformer Martin Bucer (1491-1551)
l Calvin
differed from Luther as Calvin emphasized the doctrine of predestination (God
knew who would obtain salvation, before those people were born) and believed
that church and state should be united.
l As
in Zurich, church and city combined to enforce Christian behavior, and
Calvinism came to be seen as having a stern morality.
l Like
Zwingli, Calvin rejected most aspects of the medieval church’s practices and
sought a simple, unadorned church.
l Followers
of Calvinism became the most militant and uncompromising of all Protestants.
Geneva
l Geneva
became the home to Protestant exiles from England, Scotland, and France, who
later returned to their countries with Calvinist ideas.
l Calvinism
ultimately triumphed as the majority religion in Scotland, under the leadership
of John Knox (1505-1572), and the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
l Puritans
in England and New England also accepted Calvinism.
Reform in England
l England
underwent reforms in a pattern differing from the rest of Europe.
l Personal
and political decisions by the rulers determined much of the course of the
Reformation.
The Break with the Pope
l Henry
VIII (1509-1547) married Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his older brother.
l By
1526, Henry became convinced that his inability to produce a legitimate son to
inherit his throne was because he had violated God’s commandments, by marrying
his brother’s wife (Leviticus 18:16, 20:21)
l Soon
Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn and decided to annul his marriage to
Catherine in order to marry Anne.
Pope Clement VII says no!
l The
pope, Clement VII, the authority necessary to issue such an annulment was,
after 1527, under the political control of Charles V, Catherine’s nephew.
l Efforts
to secure the annulment, directed by Cardinal Wolsey (1474-1530) ended in
failure and Wolsey’s disgrace.
l Thomas
Cranmer (1489-1556) named archbishop in 1533, dissolved Henry’s marriage, which
permitted him to marry Anne Boleyn in January 1533.
Creation of the English Church
l Henry
used Parliament to threaten the pope and eventually to legislate the break with
Rome by law.
l The
Act of Annates prevented payments of money to the pope.
l The
Act of Restraint of Appeals forbade appeals to be taken to Rome, which stopped
Catherine from appealing her divorce.
The Act of Supremacy
l The
Act of Supremacy declared Henry, not the pope, as the head of the English
Church.
l Subsequent
acts enabled Henry to dissolve the monasteries and to seize their land, which
represented perhaps 25% of the land of England.
l In
1536, Thomas More was executed for rejecting Henry’s leadership of the English
Church.
Protestantism?
l Protestant
beliefs and practices made little headway during Henry’s reign as he accepted
transubstantiation, enforced celibacy among the clergy and otherwise made the
English Church conform to most medieval practices.
Protestantism
l Under
Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI (1547-1553), a child of ten at his accession, the
English Church adopted Calvinism.
l Clergy
were allowed to marry, communion by the laity expanded, and images were removed
fro churches.
l Doctrine
included justification by faith, the denial of transubstantiation, and only two
sacraments.
Catholicism
l Under
Mary (1553-1558), Henry VIII’s daughter and half-sister of Edward VI,
Catholicism was restored and England reunited with the pope.
l Over
300 people were executed including bishops and Archbishop Cranmer, for refusing
to abandon their Protestant beliefs.
l Numerous
Protestants fled to the Continent where they learned of more advanced
Protestant beliefs, including Calvinism at Geneva.
Anglicanism
l Under
Elizabeth (1558-1603), who was Henry VIII’s daughter and half-sister to Edward
and Mary, the church in England adopted Protestant beliefs again.
l The
Elizabethan Settlement required outward conformity to the official church, but
rarely inquired about inward beliefs.
l Some
practices of the church, including ritual, resembled the Catholic practices.
Anglicanism Expands
l Catholicism
remained, especially among the gentry, but could not be practiced openly.
l Some
reformers wanted to purify (hence Puritans) the church of its remaining Catholic
aspects.
l The
resulting church, Protestant doctrine and practice but retaining most of the
physical possessions, such as buildings, and many powers, such as church
courts, of the medieval church, was called Anglicanism.
Reform Elsewhere in Europe
l The
Parliament in Ireland established a Protestant church much like the one in
England.
l Only
the people in and around Dublin followed the Protestant teachings, where most
of the people of Ireland remained untouched by Protestantism.
l The
Catholic Church and its priests became the religious, and eventually, the
national, leaders of the Irish people.
Presbyterian Church
l John
Knox (1505-72), upon his return from the Continent, led the Reformation in
Scotland.
l Parliament,
dominated by nobles, established Protestantism in 1560.
l The
resulting church, which followed Calvinist beliefs, was called the Presbyterian
Church.
Protestantism in France
l France,
near Geneva and Germany, experienced efforts at establishing Protestantism, but
the kings of France had control of the church there and gave no encouragement
to reformers.
l Calvinists,
known in France as Huguenots, were especially common among the nobility and,
after 1562, a series of civil wars involving religious differences (War of the
Three Henrys) resulted.