In the end, Henry had three children: a young son, Edward, and two older half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. He suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety that led him to become a monk, the traditional solution to an identity crisis as of the early modern period. Religious Divide in the Holy Roman Empire One of the greatest problems in our churches is the breakdown of church unity. By Loyolas death in 1556, there were about 1,000 Jesuits; that number rapidly increased by the end of the century. The meaning of the gospel can easily be distorted or lost. Free will is merely an illusion born of human ignorance, since the fate of a persons soul was determined before time itself began. The 95 Theses were relatively moderate in tone. Luther had hoped that his Theses would initiate an academic discussionnot serve as the agenda for a major reform of the . He spent most of his reign fighting against both France and the Ottoman Empire, which were among the greatest powers of the era. Ultimately, the most important undertaking of the Jesuits was the creation of numerous schools. The hard line on doctrine was distressing to Emperor Charles V, who had earnestly hoped that the Church would give ground on some of the doctrinal issues and thereby win back Protestants in his lands; he even tried to prevent Pope Paul IV from taking office because the latter was so intransigent. It should be emphasized that calls for reform within the Church were nothing new, and Luther certainly saw himself as a would-be reformer at this stage, not a revolutionary. Reformers called Anabaptists emerge. The result of this widespread concern with corruption was a new focus on the inner spiritual life of the individual, not the focus on and respect for the priest, monk, or nun. Concurrently, Luther translated the Bible into German for his people and had published the Old Testament by 1534. Likewise, many orders started opening hospitals and orphanages in the cities that provided care for both the sick and the poor and indigent. Another way to gain access to the treasury of merit was to possess, or even come into contact with, holy relics (typically the bones of saints). A depiction of the Council of Trent (in the background) painted in 1588, when wars between Protestants and Catholics were raging. The statues are in the baroque style noted above, practically dripping with ornamentation and gilding. By 1600 there were 250,000 students in Jesuit schools across continental Europe. With considerable disagreements everywhere else, why the similarity at this point? Supernatural Encounters: Miracles and Prophecy | Supernatural This understanding upended the Catholic Church and its notions of progressive, drip-drip-drip justification. Paedobaptism was an unquestioned staple of the Catholic Church. Thus, in 1526 he allowed the German princes to choose whether or not to enforce his ban on Lutheranism as they saw fit, in hopes that they would continue to offer him their military assistance he tried unsuccessfully to repeal this reluctant tolerance in 1529, but it was too late. A (highly dramatized) portrayal of Luther at the Diet of Worms painted in the nineteenth century. Finally, most of Scotland became devoutly Calvinist, under the Presbyterian branch of the Calvinist movement (many Scottish nobles remained Catholic until well into the seventeenth century, however). That awakening was explicitly focused on what he described as the Church Hierarchical: not just a worldly institution that offered guidance to Christians, but the sole path to salvation, imbued by God Himself with spiritual authority. The contrast between the required vow of poverty taken by monks and nuns and the wealth and luxury many monks and nuns enjoyed was obvious to laypeople. After developing his theology and winning many converts, Calvin colluded with the city council of Geneva to enforce a whole set of moralistic laws that regulated almost every aspect of behavior. Practically speaking, however, Calvinism involved a kind of circular argument about salvation. In contrast to the austerity and even harshness of Lutheranism and (especially) Calvinism, the Catholic Church came to offer a mystical, emotional form of both worship and religious experience that was very appealing to many who may have originally been alienated from the institution. The pioneers of this movement were seeking to reform the church from within and sought "the unification of all . Whereas Lutheranism and Calvinism had both come about as protests against the perceived moral and doctrinal failings of the Catholic Church, the English Reformation happened because of the selfish desires of a king. Why a Post-Christian World Needs Pastor-Theologians, Indiana Jones: Fading Magic in a Secular Age, Heresy at the Heart of Derek Webbs Boys Will Be Girls, Past Lives: Mature Wisdom in an Indie Romance, Marriage Is Better for Your Adult Kids Than You May Think, How to Dismiss an Employee in a Church or Ministry. Catherine, however, was only able to bear Henry a daughter, Mary, and failed to produce a son. What Is the Most Widely Practiced Religion in the World? Luther, after all, had not set out to split the Church, but to reform it hence the very term reformation. His position radicalized quite quickly, however, and he did openly defy both the pope and the Church hierarchy within just a few years of the posting of the 95 Theses. Lets return to the real storythe true good news. Finally, popes fought to claim the right to intervene in secular affairs as they saw fit, although this was a fight they rarely won, losing even more ground as the new more powerful and centralized monarchies rose to power in the fifteenth century. Like the statue of Ignatius of Loyola, the statue above is in the highly dramatized and emotional baroque style. This assertion of civic independence was the context of Calvin's invitation to Geneva, and many of Calvin's reforms and his growing influence sparked resistance within Geneva's . The new fervor led to a revival of religious orders focused on reaching out to the common people rather than remaining sequestered from the public in monasteries and convents. Luther In 1517, a dispute about who was entitled to a cut of the revenues generated by itinerant papal indulgence sellers provoked the controversy that led the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, to nail his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg. What did the Reformation do? The early decades of the Counter-Reformation thus saw an opening up of the Church to its followers and a greater emphasis on the duties of the Church to laypeople. The Reformation | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Many of the popes were corrupt and abusing their power. It also marked the later years of scholasticism. While Lutheranism spread to northern Germany and the Scandinavian countries, Calvinism caught on not just in Switzerland, but in France (where Calvinists were known as Huguenots) and Scotland, where the Scottish Calvinists became known as Presbyterians. LEARNING OBJECTIVE Understand the origins of the Thirty Years' War KEY POINTS Answers to these questions have countless layers. Translation of the Bible into German, French, English, and other languages. ), but there was no budging on doctrine. One significant new order along those lines was the Carmelites, an order of nuns reformed by St. Teresa of Avila starting in 1535. But given that not all reformers held to paedobaptismMenno Simons and the Anabaptists, for exampleone must venture a guess. Zwingli took it a step further, arguing for a memorialist view where, in eating the bread and drinking the cup, Gods people simply proclaim Christs death and resurrection until he returns while reaping the benefits of his presence. Luther was elated by the success of his message; he happily accepted the use of the term Lutheranism to describe the new religious movement he had started, and he felt certain that the correctness of his position was so appealing that even the Jews would abandon their traditional beliefs and convert (they did not, and Luther swiftly launched a vituperative anti-Semitic attack entitled Against the Jews and their Lies). Charles V had enormous prestige and some ability to influence his subjects, but practically speaking each prince was sovereign in his own domain. He also enforced the stance of the Church that the Bible was not to be translated into vernacular languages but had instead to remain in Latin, an explicit rejection of the Protestant practice of translating the Bible into everyday language for Christians to read and interpret themselves. Find out about Bible & Theology events at TGC23. Luther was swiftly taken into the custody of a sympathetic German prince, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, who spirited Luther away and allowed him to continue his work writing anti-papal propaganda. Almost from the beginning of his rule, Paul was on the offensive: he commissioned a report in 1536 to evaluate the possibility and necessity of reform, which concluded that there were numerous abuses within the Church that had to be corrected (e.g. Meanwhile, Protestant leaders were equally hardened in their beliefs and actively inculcated devotion and loyalty in their followers. 3. The Protestant Reformation was a religious reform movement that swept through Europe in the 1500s. In other words, when Protestants began fighting each other with the same vigor as their attacks on Rome, they no longer seemed like a clear and simple alternative to Roman corruption. Practically speaking, the German states ended up being divided roughly evenly, with a concentration of Lutheranism in the north and Catholicism in the south. Soon, however, the 95 Theses were translated into German and reprinted, which led to an unexpected and, at least initially, unwanted celebrity. They believed justification is a one-time, unassailable verdict predicated on nothing more than the triune Gods election of a person. The citizens of Geneva became Protestant in the course of declaring independence from the town's lords, the local bishop and the Catholic Dukes of Savoy. The popes that followed Paul III were similar in their focus on re-emphasizing orthodoxy and creating institutions to combat heresy. April 1, 2017 "Foreword" by Archbishop Donald Bolen Those who work in the field of Christian unity for any length of time are quick to point out that ecumenism is the work of the Holy Spirit. From this context, of widespread corruption and the fairly blatant abuse of the notion of spiritual salvation through the Church, Martin Luther emerged. Luther received both a scholastic and a humanistic education, eventually becoming a professor at the small university in the city of Wittenberg in the Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately, not. Martin Luther (1483 1546) was a German monk who endured a difficult childhood and a fraught relationship with his father. The Church supervised births, marriages, contracts, wills, and deaths all law was, by implication, the law of God Himself. The idea was that, predestination or not, Geneva would be the model Christian community. The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation issue a joint statement, giving thanks for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation and recalling the commemorative events that have taken place over the past year. The Catholic Reformation was happening in earnest by the 1530s. the Church adopted the use of the printing press and began reaching out to both priests and educated laypeople, often in the vernacular languages rather than Latin (although, as noted above, the Bible itself was to remain untranslated). Zwinglis departure, Luther snorted, was sacrilege. At the same time, neither is oneborn in under-privilege becausethe Reformation made it startlingly clear: Golgothas ground is level. Heres a possible reason: Luther, Calvin, and the rest simply couldnt envision a church independent from the state. Instead, they would spend years (centuries, usually) in a spiritual plane between earth and heaven called purgatory there, their sins would be purged (note the overlap between the words purge and purgatory) through fire until they were purified. Its greatest leaders undoubtedly were Martin Luther and John Calvin. This concept was potentially revolutionary because in one stroke it did away with the entire edifice of church ritual. These denominations included Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, and other (generally smaller and less historically significant at the time) denominations like Anabaptism. And the Eucharist was a one-man show, wherein the priest would engage in a confusing act of metaphysical hijinks, transubstantiating bread to flesh and wine to blood for the supposed edification of all. Under Paul III, the Inquisition became a permanent part of the Church. A: The Reformation happened for two main reasons. He concluded that God, who transcended both time and space, chose some people as the elect, those who will be saved, before they are even born. Thanks both to the perceived purity of its doctrine and the support of rulers, nobles, and converted priests, Lutheranism started spreading in earnest among the general population starting in the 1530s. Once the separation between the Roman Catholic and new Protestant churches was complete, people on both sides tried to restore unity. While some pragmatic alliances between Protestant groups would eventually emerge because of persecution or war, for the most part each Protestant denomination claimed to have exclusive access to religious truth, regarding all others as hopelessly ignorant and, in fact, damned to hell. Summary: The Catholic Council of Trent quickly discounted the reformers' teaching and reaffirmed unBiblical doctrines that had been disputed. But after reading two delightful works of intellectual history (Timothy Georges Theology of the Reformers and Michael ReevessThe Unquenchable Flame), its clear Luther and his fellow Protestant reformers changed the course of church history. Many became influential advisors to kings across Europe, ensuring that Catholic monarchs would actively persecute and root out heresy (including, of course, Protestantism). From the perspective of the Catholic hierarchy, these new denominations - lumped together under the category of "Protestant . Quakers, Baptists, Mennonites, and Hutterites all have their origins in the Anabaptist movement. Students had to apply for admittance, and the Jesuits working at the schools were far closer to their students than were the very aloof professors at traditional universities at the time. Copyright 2023 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved. Religious Divide in the Holy Roman Empire The Thirty Years' War was a series of wars between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire between 1618 and 1648. In the 1520s most Lutherans were reform-minded clerics, regarding Luthers movement as an effective and radical protest against all of the problems that had plagued the Church for centuries. Christianity - Reformation, Ecclesiology, Theology, and Ecumenical Unity Those who were among the elect acted in certain ways: they lived according to the standards of behavior defined in the Bible, they refrained from worldly pleasures, and they strove to conduct themselves within the legal and social framework of their societies. There, far from the centers of both spiritual and secular power, he contemplated the Bible, the Church, and his own spiritual salvation. In the end, Luther argued that the pope, and by extension the entire Church, were irrelevant to spiritual salvation. Many religious people disagreed during this time, but after the church received imperial recognition in 313 A.D., it exercised enough power to silence opposition with the sword. For decades, popes remained focused on the politics of central Italy or simply continued beautifying Rome and enjoying a life of luxury; this was the era of the Renaissance popes, men from elite families who regarded the papal office as little more than a political position that happened to be at the head of the Church. The English Reformation The moral qualities of members of the Church, while not universally exemplary, did come to more closely resemble their purported standards over time as a result. Later, popes came to succumb to the temptation to sell them in order to raise revenue, especially as the Renaissance-era popes built up both their own secular power and patronized the art and architecture associated with the Vatican. Charles V was in an unenviable position. The establishment of many Protestant churches, groups, and movements, including Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, the Society of Friends (also known as Quakers), among others. There was also a very significant minority of Huguenots French Calvinists in the southern half of France. Lecture 5: The Catholic Reformation To sum up: Christian unity is based on shared life in Christ; is a major source for witness to the world; and is expressed through common love, purpose, and mission. the lack of education of the clergy, the practice of earning incomes from parishes that bishops never visited, etc. Lutheranism also spread much more quickly than had earlier heresies, which tended to be limited to certain regions; here, the fact that Luther and his followers readily embraced the printing press to spread their message made a major impact, with word of the new movement spreading across Europe over the course of the 1520s. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society | Chapter 14: The In the Chinese case, the Jesuits failed to make many converts, but they did bring back an enormous amount of information about China itself. The result of such attempts . They raised young men, often nobles or rich members of the non-noble classes, with both an excellent humanist education and a fierce devotion to the Church. This loose overall control was disastrous for Catholic uniformity in the empire, as Luthers doctrines, soon referred to as Lutheranism, rapidly spread. One German prince had his court preacher calculate the total number of years that his (the rulers) large collection of relics would eliminate from his and his subjects time in Purgatory; the total was 1,902,202 years and 270 days. Everywhere, Calvinists set themselves apart by their plain dress and their dour outlook on merriment, celebrations, and the pleasures of the flesh. History of Christianity - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Unity in Christ means that all believers are in a relationship with Christ and, by extension, to every other believer. The Reformation was a mixture of theology, ecclesiology, politics, and nationalism, all of which led to breaks in fellowship and created institutional alienation between Christians throughout Western Christendom. He was obsessively afraid of being damned to hell, feeling totally unworthy of divine forgiveness and plagued with doubt as to his ability to achieve salvation. The end result of the English Reformation was that England and Scotland were divided between competing Christian factions, but ones very distinct to the British Isles in comparison to the more straightforward Catholic versus Protestant conflicts on the continent of Europe. The reform movement splinters. This idea salvation through faith alone was a major break with Catholic belief. Christianity was (and remains, although the enmity between the different groups is much less pronounced in the modern era) divided as follows: The Catholic Church remained dominant in almost all of southern Europe, including Italy, Spain, Austria, parts of the Balkans, and kingdoms like Poland as well. Simultaneously, Henry petitioned the pope for a divorce a practice that was strictly forbidden. The Counter Reformation and the Council of Trent. In Catholic doctrine, salvation is achieved through a combination of the sacraments, faith in God, and good works, which are good deeds that merit a persons admission into heaven. To deny the bodily presence of Christ in his Supper is to deny his omnipresence. Fourteen Key Reasons for the Breakdown of Church Unity After about 1550, however, when it became clear that the split was permanent, the Church itself became much more hardline and intolerant. Who were some of the key figures of the Reformation? It was the most populous and had large armies. The best known Calvinists in the American context were the Puritans, English Calvinists who left Europe (initially fleeing persecution) to try to create a perfect Christian community in the New World. The initial period of Catholic Reformation, from about 1540 1550, was a fairly moderate one that aimed to bring Protestants back into the fold. In turn, the secular authorities stepped in. As a former soldier, he founded the Jesuits to be faithful soldiers of the pope. The purpose of the Jesuits was to fight Protestantism and heresy, forming a militant arm of scholar-soldiers available to the pope. Henry decided he needed a new wife and another chance at a male heir, so he started an affair with Anne Boleyn, a young noblewoman in his court. His increasing desperation to secure release from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon forced him to . During these two centuries there was an eclipse of official, church-to-church attempts at unity. Christianity is the religion that is based on the birth, life, death, resurrection and teaching of Jesus Christ. The purpose of this international movement was to revive a Catholic or universal Christianity. Like other schisms, this one does not yield to simple analysis or explanation. Laypeople were well aware of the slack morality that pervaded the Church. Paul urged us "to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, diligently keep the unity of the Spirit with the peace that binds us" (Ephesians 4: 1-3, HCSB). History of Christianity - Wikipedia Since we are all members of one body, we . Catholic minorities existed either openly or in secret depending on the relative hostility of the local rulers throughout much of the rest of Europe. For practical political reasons, the pope and various rulers were either unwilling or unable to use force to crack down on Protestantism at first, as witnessed with Charles Vs failed attempts to curtail Lutheranisms spread. The Inquisition existed to search out signs of heresy, including Protestantism, in areas under Catholic control. October 31st 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the day on which . Likewise, there was a wave of Protestant conversions that spread very rapidly by the 1530s, but then as the Protestant denominations splintered off and turned on one another, the purity of the appeal of Protestantism faded. As a brotherhood or society, the Jesuits sought to bypass local corruption and appealed to the papacy to leading international movement -- they would not attach themselves to local bishops or local authorities. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also serves Third Avenue Baptist Church as the director of youth ministry and ecclesiological training. Nonetheless, the Reformations reframing of the Lords Supper had overwhelmingly positive results. Written in Latin, the 95 Theses were intended to spark debate and discussion within the Church. 4 Ways the Reformation Changed the Church - The Gospel Coalition According to Catholic belief, reiterated under Paul IV, the Bible had to remain in Latin because only trained priests had the knowledge and authority to interpret it for laypeople. The very nature of breaking with a single authoritarian institution brought about a number of competing movements, some of which were directly inspired by and connected to Luther, but many of which, soon, were not.