The Reformation

Beginning of Protestant Christianity

 The Protestant Reformation (Starting
in 1517)
The Reformation was a religious revolt against the
authority and certain doctrines of the Roman
Catholic Church.
The Reformation established many protestant sects.
(A Protestant is generally considered to be a
Christian who is not of the Roman catholic or
Eastern Orthodox faiths.)
In western Europe the Reformation shattered
Catholic religious unity and led to Christian
diversity.
 Causes of the Reformation
1. Political. Some rulers resented the Church
courts and the Church claim of supremacy
over civil authority. Except in Italy,
nationalist-minded persons, who were
growing in number, considered the pope a
foreign ruler.
 Causes
2. Economic. Some ruler’s envied the Church’s
wealth and desired to confiscate the vast Church
properties. Some business people viewed the
Church tithe as a heavy burden and the Church
prohibition of interest on loans as a restriction
on economic enterprise. Nationalist-minded
persons resented the flow of Church taxes from
their countries to the papacy in Rome.
 Causes
3. Intellectual. The Renaissance, by its ferment of
new ideas, helped contribute to the Reformation.
The Renaissance emphasis on individual expression
encouraged some persons to seek a direct
relationship between the individual and God. The
Renaissance questioning attitude led some
educated persons to doubt Church religious powers
and authority. These persons prepared the way for
religious dissent by challenging Church teachings
on astronomy, history, and Bible interpretation.
 Causes
Church Abuses.
Some persons were critical of the following Church
practices, which seemed unworthy of religious
leaders:
a. Worldliness-the luxurious and materialistic life
of certain popes and high clergy.
b. Nepotism-appointing relatives to Church offices
regardless of ability.
c. Simony-selling appointments to Church offices.
 Causes
Abuses cont.
d. Sale of Indulgences-accepting money for
Church pardons, called indulgences, without
requiring true repentance. These pardons were
granted to reduce punishment in the hereafter
for certain sins.
 Causes
5. Decline of Church Prestige. Some persons lost
respect for the Church because of the
a. Babylonian Captivity (1309-1377, a period
during which the popes lived at Avignon, France
under the domination of French kings, and
b. The Great Schism (1378-1417), a period during
which rival popes-at Avignon and at Rome-each
claimed to be the true pope and struggled for
Church supremacy.
 Spreads Like Fire
Knowledge of these causes, basic to the
reformation, could be spread widely, quickly and
inexpensively in western Europe after 1450,
following the invention of printing with
moveable type.
Martin Luther Starts the Reformation-
1517
1. Luther’s Background. Martin Luther (1483-
1546), born into a poor German family,
received an excellent education and entered
a Catholic monastic order. At age 25 Luther
was appointed professor of Christian
theology at the University of Wittenberg.
 Martin Luther
2. Luther Attacks the Church.
Luther condemned the sale of indulgences and
denounced papal agents selling them in Germany.
(The funds obtained were to be used for building St.
Peter’s Cathedral in Rome.)
In 1517 Luther nailed to the door of the Church in
Wittenberg a statement of his religious beliefs, the
Ninety-five Theses. The theses aroused
tremendous popular support, further encouraging
him to attack the Church.
Luther
denied the pope’s supremacy,
proclaimed the Bible as the final authority in
religious matters,
translated the Bible into German,
urged each individual to read and understand
the Bible, and
criticized a number of Catholic practices.
 Luther: Faith and Excommunication
Luther developed the doctrine of justification by
faith, that faith alone ensures salvation.
Excommunicated by the pope, Luther faced
punishment from Charles V, king of Spain, in his
capacity as Holy Roman Emperor.
 Luther Finds Support
3. North German Rulers Support Luther.
Powerful northern German rulers welcomed revolt
against Rome.
In addition to having religious reasons, they desired
to seize Church properties, weaken the Holy Roman
Emperor, and end their submission to a non-
German pope.
Consequently, they protected Luther against
punishment. Throughout northern Germany, these
rulers accepted Luther’s ideas as the basis of a new
Christian religion, Lutheranism.
 Luther’s Activities
In establishing the new religion. Luther
replaced Latin with the vernacular German in Church
services,
wrote catechisms for Church members,
encouraged congregations to sing hymns, wrote hymns (
most notably, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”),
approved marriage by the clergy,
rejected the organization of any clerical(priestly)
hierarchy, and
recognized the position of the church as subordinate to
and an agent of civil authority.
 Scandinavia Rapidly Accepts
Lutheranism
Scandinavian rulers in Norway, Sweden and
Denmark were converted to Lutheranism,
established it as the official state religion, and
confiscated Catholic Church properties.

By the end of the 16th century, Scandinavia had

become almost entirely Lutheran.
 John Calvin (1509-1564)
A French religious reformer, fled from catholic France to
safety in Geneva, Switzerland.
Author of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin
became a leading Protestant spokesman.
He taught the doctrine of predestination, that only those
elected beforehand by God would achieve salvation.
He founded a simple form of worship, frowned upon such
pastimes as dancing and cardplaying, and extolled a
serious, moral and hardworking life.
Those persons predestined for salvation, he held, could
be identified by the virtue of their moral lives.
 Calvinism Spread Quickly
a. In Switzerland Calvinism became the Swiss Reformed
Church.
b. In Holland Calvinism became the prevailing faith, the
Dutch Reformed Church.
c. In Scotland Calvinism became the official state religion,
the Presbyterian Church.
d. In France Calvinism became the faith of a small,
influential, middle-class group, the Huegenots.
e. In England Calvinism became the religion of the Puritans.
During the 17th century, a number of Puritans migrated to
the New World colony of Massachusetts, where they
introduced Calvinism as the Congregational Church.
 Anglicanism in England
Henry VIII, king of England (1509-1547), at first a
loyal Catholic, broke with the Church because
1. The pope refused to grant him a divorce from
his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, and
2. Henry desired for the crown the extensive
Church properties in England.
He induced Parliament to pass the Act of
Supremacy (1534), which instituted the Anglican
Church of England, independent of Rome and under
the leadership of the English ruler.
 Henry VIII
Henry’s actions won the support of the nationalist-
minded English, who considered the pope to be a
foreign ruler, and of many people who opposed
certain Church practices.
After Henry was granted a divorce by the Anglican
Church, he married a young English woman, Anne
Boleyn. Their daughter later became Queen
Elizabeth I.
During Elizabeth’s reign (1558-1603), Anglicanism
became firmly entrenched as the English religion.
 The Catholic Reformation
To defend itself against the Protestant
movement, the Catholic Church took a number
of actions known as the Catholic Reformation,
or Counter-Reformation.
1. Effective Leadership. A succession of capable,
energetic popes provided strong leadership for
Church reform. From all the clergy they
demanded devotion to duty and the highest
religious standards.
 Counter-Reformation
2. The Council of Trent (1545-1563).
This Church council
a. reaffirmed basic Catholic doctrines such as papal
supremacy and exclusive Church authority to
interpret the Bible;
b. prohibited Church abuses – nepotism, simony, and
sale of indulgences;
c. required the clergy to renounce worldly pleasures;
d. authorized an Index, a list of heretical books
forbidden to Catholics
 Counter-Reformation
3. The Holy Inquisition. These Church courts vigorously
combated heretics. In Italy and Spain the Inquisition
helped stop the spread of Protestantism.
4. The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). This religious order
was founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola. Known as the
Jesuits, the members became the leading spiritual
soldiers in the fight against Protestantism.
By serving as priests and teachers, they helped preserve
Catholicism in Poland, southern Germany, and Belgium.
They also won new converts in India, China, Japan and
North America.
 Results of the Reformation
1. Immediate Effects
a. End of Religious Unity. The religious unity of western
Europe had been destroyed. Henceforth, Europe was
divided according to religion, as follows:
1. Predominately Catholic were Italy, Spain, Portugal,
France, Belgium, Ireland, southern Germany, Austria, Poland
and Hungary.
2. Predominately Protestant were England, Scotland,
Wales, Holland, northern Germany, Switzerland, Denmark,
Norway and Sweden.
The Protestant world at first consisted of the Lutheran,
Calvinist and Anglican denominations. Later there arose other
protestant sects such as Methodists and Baptists.
Religious Divisions in Western Europe
 Immediate Effects
1b. Religious Wars.
In the 16th and 17th centuries. Europe endured a
series of wars, caused partly by religious
differences.
1)Civil Wars in Germany. Catholic and
Lutheran rulers in Germany fought several civil
wars. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) provided a
compromise permitting German rulers to choose
for themselves and their people either Catholicism
or Lutheranism.
 Immediate Effects
1b. Religious wars
2) Spanish Naval War Against England. Philip II
of Spain desired to a) safeguard Spanish merchant
ships and New World colonies against English raids,
b) depose Elizabeth I, the Protestant queen of
England, and c) restore Catholicism in England. To
invade England, he organized a huge war fleet, the
Spanish Armada. In 1588 the Armada was sighted
off the English coast and destroyed by the English
navy. Philip’s plans were ruined.
The Spanish Armada
 Immediate Effects
1b
3) Civil Wars in France. Protestant and
Catholic claimants to the French throne engaged in
a series of civil wars. In 1589, Henry of Navarre, a
Protestant , became King Henry IV. Seeking to end
religious strife, he a) adopted Catholicism, the
predominant French religion, and b) issued the
Edict of Nantes (1598), granting religious freedom
to the Protestant minority, the Huegenots.
 Immediate Effects
1b
5. Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). This war, the bloodiest of the
period, originated as a religious struggle in central Europe between
Protestant and Catholic rulers.
Fought almost entirely in Germany and causing widespread economic ruin,
the Thirty Years’ War ended in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia:
a. Calvinist as well as Lutheran and Catholic rulers in Germany gained the
right to determine the religion of their people.
b. Holland and Switzerland, both Protestant, received recognition of their
independence.
c. Strengthened Civil Authority. The state gained power at the expense of
the Church. In Protestant countries the governments
1. confiscated Catholic Church properties
2. abolished Catholic Church courts
3. assumed control of the new Protestant churches
Thirty Years’ War
 Long- Term Effects
a. Encouragement of Education. Protestantism,
stressing individual Bible reading in a person’s
own language, encourage widespread teaching
of reading.
b. A Step Toward Religious Tolerance. West
European people, torn by religious groups
during much of the Reformation, experienced
great intolerance. Later, s people realized that
intolerance their own as well as other faiths,
governments permitted some religious diversity.