IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: In the sixteenth century, an attempt to reform the Christian Church developed into a Protestant movement that shattered the religious unity of Europe.
Key Ideas
• In the second decade of the sixteenth century, a German cleric,
Martin Luther, created a rival theology based on the belief that salvation was achieved by faith alone.
• As Luther's theology spread, it was transformed into a Protestant movement with social and political dimensions.
• In England, Henry VIII used the Protestant movement as an excuse to break with the papacy in Rome and to create an English national church, known as the Church of England or the Anglican Church.
• The Catholic Church responded to the Protestant movement with both reforms and aggressive counter measures.
Key Terms
Papal States
indulgences
millenarianism
salvation by faith alone
scripture alone
priesthood of all believers
95 theses
Peace of Augsburg
Huguenots
Edict of Nantes
Anglican Church
dissenters
predestination
the elect
Anabaptists
Society of Jesus
Council of Trent
the Inquisition
Introduction
The Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe began as an effort to reform the Christian Church, which many believed had become too concerned with worldly matters. Soon, however, the Church found itself facing a serious challenge from a brilliant German theologian, Martin Luther, and his followers. What began as a protest evolved into a revolution with social and political overtones. By the end of the century, a Europe that had been united by a single Church was deeply divided, as the Catholic and Protestant faiths vied for the minds and hearts of the people.
The Need for a Religious Reformation
By the onset of the sixteenth century, the Christian Church of Europe was facing a serious set of interconnected problems. Concern was growing that the Church had become too worldly and corrupt in its practices. The Church, and particularly the papacy in Rome, was widely seen to be more concerned with building and retaining worldly power and wealth than in guiding souls to salvation. The pope was not only the head of a powerful Church hierarchy, but he was the ruler of the Papal States, a kingdom that encompassed much of the central portion of the Italian peninsula. He collected taxes, kept an army, and used his religious power to influence politics in every kingdom in Europe.
Such practices as the selling of indulgences (which allowed people to be absolved from their sins, sometimes even before they committed them, by making a monetary contribution the Church) were just one way in which the Church seemed more concerned with amassing power and wealth than with guiding the faithful to salvation. To many common people who yearned for a powerful, personal, and emotional connection with God, the Church not only failed to provide it but worked actively to discourage it by:
• protecting the power of the priesthood
• saying the mass in Latin, a language understood by only the educated elite
• refusing to allow the printing of the Bible in the vernacular
The Lutheran Revolt
Martin Luther was an unlikely candidate to lead a revolt against the Church. The son of a mine manager in eastern Germany, Luther received a humanistic education, studying law before being drawn to the Church and being ordained as a priest in 1507. Continuing his education, Luther received a doctorate of theology from the University of Wittenberg and was appointed to the faculty there in 1512.
The revolutionary ideas that would come to define Lutheran theology were a product of Luther’s personal search. Luther believed that he was living in the last days of the world and that God’s final judgment would soon be upon the world. This view, now referred to as millenarianism and widespread in sixteenth-century Europe, led Luther to be obsessed with the question of how any human being could be good enough to deserve salvation. He found his answer through the rigorous study of scripture, and he formulated three interconnected theological assertions:
• salvation by faith alone, which stated that salvation came only to those who had true faith
• scripture alone, which stated that scripture was the only source of true knowledge of God’s will
• the priesthood of all believers, which argued that all true believers received God’s grace and were, therefore, priests in God’s eyes
Each of Luther’s assertions put him in direct opposition to the Church’s orthodox theology:
• Salvation by faith alone contradicted the Church’s assertion that salvation was gained both by having faith and by performing works of piety and charity.
• Scripture alone contradicted the Church’s assertion that there were two sources of true knowledge of God: scripture and the traditions of the Church.
• The priesthood of all believers contradicted the Church’s assertion that only ordained priests could read and correctly interpret scripture.
Creation and Spread of the Protestant Movement
In the autumn of 1517, Luther launched his protest by tacking 95 theses or propositions that ran contrary to the theology and practice of the Church to the door of the Wittenberg castle church. His students quickly translated them from Latin into the German vernacular and distributed printed versions throughout the German-speaking kingdoms and provinces. With the aid of the printing press, Luther attracted many followers, but the survival of a Protestant movement was due to the political climate.
Had the papacy moved quickly to excommunicate Luther and his followers, the movement may not have survived. However, Luther found a powerful protector in Frederick of Saxony, the prince of Luther’s district. Frederick was one of seven electors, the princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor, to whom the princes of the German districts owed their allegiance. Frederick’s protection caused the pope to delay Luther’s excommunication until 1520. By that time, it was too late: Luther and his followers had established throughout Germany congregations for the kind of Christian worship that, after 1529, would be known as Protestant.
Luther promoted his theology to both the nobility and common people. To the nobility, he wrote an “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation” (1520), which appealed to the German princes’ desire for both greater unity and power and to their desire to be out from under the thumb of an Italian Pope. To the common people, he addressed “The Freedom of the Christian Man” (1520), in which he encouraged common men to obey their Christian conscience and respect those in authority who seemed to possess true Christian principles. Through this strategy, Luther offered the noble princes of Germany an opportunity to break with the Roman Church and papacy without losing the obedience of the common people. It was an opportunity that was too good to pass up. By 1555, the German princes made it clear that they would no longer bow to Rome; they signed the Peace of Augsburg, which established the principle of “he who rules; his religion” and signaled to Rome that the German princes would not go to war with each other over religion.
Once it gained a foothold in northern Germany, Protestantism flourished in those areas where the local rulers were either unwilling or not strong enough to enforce orthodoxy and loyalty to Rome. Accordingly, the Protestant movement spread with success to the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Scotland, and England, but it encountered more difficulty and little or no success in southern and eastern Europe. The site of the most bloodshed was France, where Protestantism was declared both heretical and illegal in 1534. Initially French Protestants, known as Huguenots, were tolerated, but a civil war pitting Catholics against Protestants erupted in 1562. Peaceful coexistence was briefly restored by the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which established the principle of religious toleration in France, but the edict would be revoked in 1685.
The English Reformation
The English Reformation was unique. England had long traditions of dissent and anticlericalism that stemmed from a humanist tradition. In that context, Protestantism in England grew slowly, appealing especially to the middling classes, and by 1524, illegal English language Bibles were circulating. But as the English monarch, Henry VIII, tried to consolidate his power and his legacy, he took the existence of a Protestant movement as an opportunity to break from Rome and create a national church, the Church of England or Anglican Church.
Henry needed a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she could not provide him with a male heir to the throne. He also needed money and land with which to buy the loyalty of existing nobles and to create new ones that would owe their position to him. In 1534, he officially broke with the Church in Rome and had himself declared the head of the new Church of England. In 1536, he dissolved the English monasteries and seized Church lands and properties, awarding them to those loyal to him. It soon became apparent, however, that the church that Henry had created was Protestant only in the sense that it had broken from Rome. In terms of the characteristics opposed by most Protestant reformers—its episcopal or hierarchical nature, the existence of priests, and the retention of the sacraments and symbols of the traditional Roman church—the Church of England was hardly Protestant at all.
For the rest of the century, the unfinished Reformation left England plagued by religious turmoil. During the reign of Edward VI, the son of Henry and Jane Seymour, England was officially Anglican, but communities of those who refused to honor it and organized themselves along more Protestant lines grew to sufficient numbers for them to be known collectively as Dissenters. Upon the accession of Mary I (the daughter of Henry and his first wife Catherine of Aragon), England was returned to Catholicism and Protestants were persecuted. Under the subsequent reign of Elizabeth I (the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn), England was again Anglican. While Catholics were initially persecuted under Elizabeth, there emerged during her long reign a kind of equilibrium in which a modicum of religious toleration was given to all.
Calvin and Calvinism
Once the break from the Roman Church was accomplished, Protestant leaders faced the task of creating new religious communities and systematizing a theology. The most influential of the second-generation Protestant theologians was John Calvin. Converting to Protestantism around 1534, Calvin was forced to leave his native France and flee to Switzerland, whose towns were governed by strong town councils who had historically competed with the Church bishops for local power. Calvin settled in Geneva where, in 1536, the adult male population had voted to become Protestant. For the next 40 years, Calvin worked in Geneva, articulating the theology and a structure for Protestant religious communities that would come to be known as Calvinism.
Calvinism accepted both Martin Luther’s contentions that salvation is gained by faith alone and that scripture is the sole source of authoritative knowledge of God’s will. But on the subject of salvation, Calvin went further, developing the doctrine ofpredestination, which asserted that God has predetermined which people will be saved and which will be damned. Those that are predestined to salvation were known as the elect and, although their earthly behavior could not affect the status of their salvation, Calvin taught that the elect would be known by both their righteous behavior and by their prosperity, as God would bless all their earthly enterprises.
In Calvinist communities, the structure and discipline of the congregation was integrated into that of the town. In place of the hierarchical structure of the Roman Church, Calvinist churches were organized by function:
• Pastors preached the gospel.
• Doctors studied scripture and wrote commentaries.
• Deacons saw to the social welfare of the community.
• Elders governed the church and the community in moral matters and enforced discipline. Geneva soon became the inspirational center of the Protestant movement.
Social Dimensions and the Radical Reformation
The Protestantism of Martin Luther and John Calvin appealed to the industrious and prosperous commercial and merchant classes. At these higher rungs of the social hierarchy, people could read and react to criticism of both the doctrine and practice of the orthodox Roman Church. The strict discipline of the Calvinist communities mirrored the self-discipline their own professions demanded, and the promise that God would bless the worldly endeavors of the elect provided a self-satisfying justification for the wealth and prosperity that many were enjoying. Further down the social ladder, amongst the artisan and peasant classes, a more radical reformation was shaped.
The religious beliefs of the poorer and less educated classes were always less uniform than those of the elites. Their knowledge of Christian theology tended to be superficial and wedded to older folklore that deified the forces of nature. What they cared about was that the suffering they endured in this life would be rewarded in the next. Accordingly, leaders of Protestant movements amongst the artisan and peasant classes interpreted the doctrines of justification by faith alone and predestination to mean that God would never abandon the poor and simple people who suffered, and that they could have direct knowledge of their salvation through an inner light that came to them directly from God. In some circles, this was combined with millenarian notions that the judgment day was near, to create a belief that the poor had a special mission to purge the world of evil and prepare it for the second coming of Christ.
The first and largest group of radical reformers was known as the Anabaptists. In 1534, proclaiming that judgment day was at hand, a group of them captured the German city of Münster, seized the property of nonbelievers, and burned all books except the Bible. To Protestant and Catholic elites alike, the Anabaptists represented a threat to the social order that could not be tolerated. Their rebellion was subsequently put down by an army led by the Lutheran Prince Philip of Hesse, and their movement was violently repressed and driven underground.
The Catholic Response
Although it was slow to believe that Protestantism could pose a threat to its power, the Roman Church—which was increasingly referred to as “catholic” (meaning one, true, and universal)—had begun to construct a response by the middle of the sixteenth century. Although sometimes referred to as the Counter Reformation, the Catholic response actually had two dimensions: one whose aim was to reform the Catholic Church and another aimed at exterminating the Protestant movement.
At the center of both dimensions was the Society of Jesus. Founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits (as they came to be known) were a tightly organized order who saw themselves as soldiers in a war against Satan. Strategically, the Jesuits focused on education, building schools and universities throughout Europe. The Jesuits also served as missionaries, and they were often among the first Europeans to visit the new worlds that the age of exploration was opening up, thereby establishing a beach-head for Catholicism. Internally, they preached a new piety and pushed the Church to curb its worldly practices and to serve as a model for a selfless, holy life that could lead to salvation.
The Catholic reform movement reached its peak with the Council of Trent, which began its deliberations in 1545. Over many years, the Council passed reforms abolishing the worst of the abuses that had led to Protestant discontent. However, the Council of Trent also symbolized a defeat for Protestants who hoped for reconciliation, as the Council refused to compromise on any of the key theological issues and continued to insist that the Catholic Church was the final arbiter in all matters of faith.
At the heart of the Catholic Church’s efforts to defeat Protestantism was the office known as the Inquisition. An old institution within the Church that investigated charges of heresy, its duties were revived and expanded to combat all perceived threats to orthodoxy and the Church’s authority. Those who ran foul of the Inquisition ran the risk of imprisonment, torture, and execution. The Church’s other main weapon in its aggressive response to the Reformation was censorship. Books that were considered unorthodox or at odds with the Church’s teachings were placed on the Index of Banned Books.
• Rapid Review
By the sixteenth century, the Christian Church was faced with mounting criticism of its preoccupation with worldly matters and its failure to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of an increasingly literate population. In 1517, Martin Luther charged that the Church had abandoned scripture and strayed from its mission. He offered an alternative and simplified theology that asserted that salvation came by having faith alone, and that scripture alone was the source of all knowledge about salvation. In the face of the Church’s opposition and prevarication, a Protestant movement grew around Luther’s theology, finding followers amongst both the German princes (who wished to break with Rome) and among the poor (who felt oppressed).
In England, the powerful monarch Henry VIII used the existence of a Protestant movement to break with Rome in 1524 and to confiscate the lands the Church held in his kingdom. He created the Church of England, which retained the hierarchy and trappings of the Catholic Church, thereby creating within his own kingdom a group of Dissenters, who were Protestants for whom the Church of England was not reformed enough.
By mid-century, the Protestant movement had diversified and fragmented, as second-generation Protestant theologians faced the task of articulating the specific beliefs and structure of the new churches and communities they were building. Most influential among this second generation was John Calvin, who added the theological concept of predestination to Martin Luther’s theology and oversaw the creation of Calvinist communities, whose center was Geneva.
Among the poorer classes, Protestantism became mixed with millenarianism and the desire for social reform. That fact, along with the propertied classes’ opposition to such reform, was illustrated by the seizure of the German city of Münster by the Anabaptists in 1534, and by the ruthlessness with which the city was liberated by the Lutheran Prince Philip of Hesse.
The Catholic response to the Protestant movement was two-pronged. The Church, under the auspices of the Council of Trent, carried out many internal reforms that addressed the grievances of the faithful; it also put into motion a counter-Reformation program, executed by the Society of Jesus and the Inquisition, which was aimed at stamping out Protestantism.
• Chapter Review Questions
1. Which of the following was NOT one of the problems facing the Christian Church in the sixteenth century?
(A) the Pope’s status as ruler of the Papal States
(B) its use of Latin in the mass and in the printed Bible
(C) an increasingly literate population
(D) its inability to tend to the physical needs of the poor
(E) its inability to tend to the emotional and spiritual needs of the population
2. Which of the following was part of Luther’s theology?
(A) a belief in the need to create a Protestant Church
(B) the notion that nature could serve as a guide to salvation
(C) the idea that salvation came only through the grace of God
(D) the assertion that charitable works were necessary to go to heaven
(E) the belief that the poor should be given more social and political power
3. Which of the following was NOT a reason that a Protestant movement emerged?
(A) the Society of Jesus took up Luther’s cause
(B) Luther enjoyed the protection of some powerful Protestant princes
(C) Luther’s students used the printing press to spread Luther’s theology
(D) peasants saw Luther’s theology as a justification for their dissatisfaction
(E) the Church was slow to excommunicate Luther and his followers
4. The Peace of Augsburg
(A) ended the war between the Church and the Protestant princes
(B) established Henry VIII’s right to establish the Church of England
(C) established Geneva as the stronghold of Calvinism
(D) unified the German principalities under the Holy Roman Emperor
(E) established the principle of “he who rules; his religion”
5. The theology of Calvin differs from Luther’s in
which of the following ways?
(A) the belief that scripture alone is the guide to salvation
(B) the belief that salvation is earned by faith alone
(C) the belief that the church hierarchy is unwarranted and harmful
(D) the belief that some have been predestined for salvation
(E) the belief that the Bible should be printed in the vernacular
6. The uprising and subsequent repression of the
Anabaptists illustrates all of the following EXCEPT
(A) the poorer classes understood the teachings of Protestantism to mean that the existing social hierarchy should be overthrown
(B) the Catholic Church still had the power to crush its opposition
(C) property-owning Protestant reformers were not looking to reform the social order
(D) the poorer classes linked Protestant theology with millenarianism
(E) Protestantism was a movement that encompassed many different, and sometimes opposing, views
7. The Council of Trent
(A) excommunicated Martin Luther
(B) established the Inquisition
(C) insisted that the Catholic Church was the final arbiter in all matters of faith
(D) reconciled Protestants and Catholics
(E) produced the Treaty of Augsburg
8. The term Dissenters
(A) refers to all Protestants who deny that good works can earn salvation
(B) refers to the Anabaptists
(C) refers to English Protestants
(D) refers to those who refused to sign the Peace of Augsburg
(E) refers to English Protestants who refused to join the Church of England
• Answers and Explanations
1. D. Choice D is the correct answer because the Church’s network of poor relief was functioning as well as it ever had and was not, therefore, the problem. Choices A—C were all problems the Church faced. Choice A is not correct because the pope’s status as ruler of the Papal States meant that the Church was constantly embroiled in the politics of the peninsula, thereby alienating Italians who lived in other city-states. Choice B is not correct because the Church’s use of Latin, a language that only the elite could read, angered and alienated people. Similarly, choice C is incorrect because people were increasingly able to read the vernacular, but they still could not read Latin. Finally, choice E is incorrect because the Church was unable to tend to the emotional and spiritual needs of the population.
2. C. Luther’s conclusion that salvation comes only through the grace of God, rather than through grace and good works as the Church argued, is the foundation of his theology. Choice A is incorrect because Luther’s goal was to reform the Church, not to break with it . Choice B is incorrect because Luther believed that only scripture could give knowledge of how to achieve salvation. Choice D is incorrect because the Roman Church held that charitable works could help gain entrance into heaven; Luther disagreed. Choice E is incorrect because Luther did not advocate a change in the social or political order and denounced the peasant revolts.
3. A. The Society of Jesus was founded in order to combat the spread of Protestantism, not to promote it. Choice B is incorrect because the Protestant princes, sensing an opportunity to break with Rome, gave Luther the protection he needed. Choice C is incorrect because Lutheranism spread quickly thanks to the efforts of Luther’s students and their use of the newly invented printing press. Choice D is incorrect because the peasants did see Luther’s theology, or their own version of it, as a justification for their discontent. Choice E is incorrect because the Church did hesitate in excommunicating Luther, giving the movement valuable time to spread and gain strength.
4. E. The Peace of Augsburg was a treaty signed by the German Princes that established the principle of “he who rules; his religion,” thereby guaranteeing that they would not go to war with each other over the issue of religion. Choice A is incorrect because there was no war between the Church and the Protestant princes. Choice B is incorrect because the Peace of Augsburg was an agreement between the German princes and was not connected to the English Reformation. Choice C is incorrect because Geneva became the center of Calvinism because Calvin settled there and because the male population voted to become Protestant. Choice D is incorrect because, although The Holy Roman Emperor was elected by a group of the most powerful German princes, the process had no connection to the Peace of Augsburg.
5. D. The doctrine of predestination which said that only a group known as the elect would enjoy God’s salvation was a theological conviction of Calvin and his followers; Luther taught that all who came to have true faith were saved. The other four answers are all theological beliefs that were shared by Luther and Calvin.
6. B. The Anabaptist movement was repressed by Protestant princes, not the Catholic Church. Choice A is incorrect because the fact that the Anabaptists seized the German city of Münster and the property of nonbelievers illustrates that the poorer classes understood the teachings of Protestantism to mean that the existing social hierarchy should be overthrown. Choice C is incorrect because the fact that the Protestant princes came to the aid of the property-owning classes demonstrates the fact that that propertyowning Protestant reformers were not looking to reform the social order. Choice D is incorrect because the fact that the Anabaptists proclaimed that judgment day was at hand illustrates the link to millenarianism. Choice E is incorrect because the fact that the Anabaptist movement was crushed by Protestant princes illustrates the way in which Protestantism encompassed many different, and sometimes opposing, views.
7. C. Choice is correct because, although the Council of Trent passed many reforms that pleased Protestants, it failed to reconcile Catholics and Protestants because it insisted that the Catholic Church was the final arbiter in all matters of faith. Choice A is incorrect because the Council of Trent did not excommunicate Luther. Choice B is incorrect because the Council of Trent did not establish the Inquisition; it was established by the pope. Choice D is incorrect because the Council of Trent failed to reconcile Protestant and Catholics. Choice E is incorrect because the Treaty of Augsburg was a secular treaty reached by the Princes of Germany.
8. E. The term “Dissenters” refers to English Protestants who refused to join the Church of England. Choice A is incorrect because the term “Dissenter” implies a refusal to join the Church of England, not a reference to a specific theological stance. Choice B is incorrect because Anabaptists were just one of many groups in England to whom the term “Dissenters” was applied. Choice C is incorrect because the term “Dissenters” does not refer to all English Protestants, because members of the Church of England are Protestants. Choice D is incorrect because the Peace of Augsburg is unrelated to either “Dissenters” or English history.