Fluent Essays

In two or more paragraphs, answer the following question. Your response must be single-spaced, in 10pt. Times Roman font. Answer the question thoroughly based on the files. How did the Protestant Reformation/Catholic Reformation affect the lives of women? Lecture 5: The Catholic Reformation It can be assumed that the Catholic Church could never have predicted the force of the Protestant Reformation. This is especially so in terms of the numbers of noblemen and other wealthy individuals who were attracted to the theology of Luther and Calvin. The Church did try respond but their response -- internal reform -- was weak. One reform did come, it came from man who was not even a member of the clergy. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was a soldier and Spanish reformer who sought to create a new religious order. He fused the best of the humanist tradition of the Renaissance with a reformed Catholicism that he hoped would appeal to powerful economic and political groups, that is, those types of people now attracted to Luther and Calvin. Founded in 1534, the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits, formed the backbone of the Catholic or Counter Reformation. The Jesuits combined the ideas of traditional monastic discipline with a dedication to teaching and preaching. Why they did this is pretty clear -- they wanted to win back converts. 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. The purpose of this international movement was to revive a Catholic or universal Christianity. As theologians, the Jesuits highlighted one central flaw in Protestant theology, that of predestination. Predestination offered hopes of salvation for the literate and prosperous. It also, however, included the possibility of doom, despair and the abyss for other individuals. In response, the Jesuits offered hope -- and that hope to the form of religious revival based on ceremony, tradition in the power of the priest to offer forgiveness. In essence, the Jesuits made Christianity more emotional. Keep in mind, that one of the reasons why the Reformation indeed took place was because the people wanted a more emotional and direct spiritual life. The Jesuits urged princes to strengthen the Church in their territories. They even developed the theology that permitted "small sins" in the service of a just cause. In other words, a small sin was okay if and only if it led to some greater good. By the 17th century, the Jesuits had become some of the greatest teachers in your, especially in France. They had also become one of the most controversial religious groups within the Church. Was their religion merely a disguise for political power? Or, where they the true voice of a reformed Church? The Jesuits helped to build schools and universities, design churches and even helped to produce a unique style of art and architecture. This style -- called the Baroque -- was emotional and was intended to move the heart. By the 1540s, the Counter Reformation was well underway. There were several attempts to reform the Church from within. For example, the Jesuits imitated the Dominicans and Franciscans. Oddly enough, many looked to humanists like Erasmus as a key to the Church's total reformation. Many reformers attacked abuses as had Luther, but they avoided any clash with the spiritual authority of the clergy or the Pope. The Counter Reformation also took aggressive and somewhat hostile measures against the followers of Luther and Calvin. The Church tried to counteract Protestantism by offering something more dramatic, emotional and sentimental to the faithful. For individuals unmoved by the appeal of the Jesuits and who still adhered to Protestant heresy, the Church resorted to more severe measures. The Inquisition, founded in the 13th century, expanded its activities and heretics were subject to punishment, torture and death. Keep in mind, however, that wherever Protestantism obtained official status -- England, Scotland, Geneva, Germany, and Scandinavia -- Catholics were persecuted. One instrument that the Catholic Church had at its disposal was censorship. After 1520, the Church was quick to censor and burn books which might have spread the Protestant Faith. The Church intended to destroy all heretical literature: all Protestant books were burned; so too were the works written by reform- minded Catholic humanists; Petrarch and Erasmus had to go as well. The Index of Prohibited Books became an institution within the Church and was not abolished until 1966. The policies of the Counter Reformation -- education, preaching, church building, persecution, and censorship -- did succeed in bringing some people back to the Church. And, in 1545, the Council of Trent met to institute concrete changes in policy and doctrine. Between 1545 and 1563, the Council modified and unified Church doctrine: it abolished numerous corrupt practices and abuses and also gave final authority to the Pope. In general, the Council purged the Church. It clarified issues like faith, good works, and salvation. It passed a decree that said the Church would be the final judge in biblical matters. The Council demanded that the Scriptures be understood literally. All compromise between Protestant and Catholic was rejected. The Reformation had split Europe and the repair of that split was just not to be. The Reformation shattered the religious unity of Europe -- to this end, the Christian matrix was demolished. Within the matrix more windows were opened and more walls smashed, and the Church, as an institution, suffered a severe setback in terms of its moral authority and political power. By strengthening the power of monarchs, the Reformation helped to produce the modern state. Protestant rulers, of course, rejected papal claims to power. Not only that, these rulers asserted their own authority over their own churches (e.g. Henry VIII in England). In an indirect way, Protestantism contributed to the growth of political liberty. Liberty as an ideal, however, was still 200 years in future. There were tendencies unleashed during the Reformation that provided justification for challenging the authority of monarchs. Since all men are governed by the laws of God, punishment should be given to those who break these laws -- kings included. So, in 1649, the English execute Charles I. the Reformation also contributed to the establishment of an ethic of individualism. Protestants interpreted the Bible for themselves. They faced salvation or damnation on their own. The Reformation has also been seen as involving out of early capitalism. For Max Weber, Protestants found salvation without assistance. How? By hard work, thrift, sobriety and a work ethic. So, Protestants to fill the calling by a work ethic, the Protestant work ethic, an individualistic work ethic with. The end result of the Reformation was basically this: (1) Luther, Calvin, the Anabaptists and Jesuits all forced every man woman to make a choice. The Medieval Matrix implied that one had to conform to the standards of the Church and everything it represented. But what was now different was that the individual had a choice regarding what it was he wished to conform to. (2) The Reformation also split Europe, a division which would eventually lead to European wars, civil wars, king killing, revolts and rebellion. Europe would not truly recover from Martin Luther's Reformation until the 18th century, if it can be said it ever did recover.   1 Lecture 4: The Impact of Luther and the Radical Reformation By the early 1520s, Luther had attracted a vast following while the printing presses spread his message and reputation across Germany. With his death in 1546, we can find people of all social classes who had clearly sided with Luther and Lutheranism. The major question we must ask remains this: why did Lutheranism cut across class lines and appeal to so many people? What was so passionate about Luther's message that made people turn their back on the Roman Church? The explanations for Luther's success may be endlessly debated by scholars but for the most part, and leaving theological opinion aside, we can say that the people were prepared for the message Luther delivered. Is it simply a matter of Luther appearing at the right time and in the right place? Perhaps. Since the 15th century there had been a growing resentment against clerical privilege. The clergy paid no taxes and were exempt from those civic responsibilities that increasingly fell on the shoulders of the urban dweller. Added to this simple fact was the increased visibility of the clergy -- there in the cities the common person could witness the luxury and splendor of a church whose purpose was to minister the spiritual needs of its flock but which now seemed indifferent, lax and, in a word, corrupt. Luther, then, offered an alternative that was appealing perhaps for the simple reason that is was an alternative. Luther's religion was also spread by preachers who were to deliver approximately one hundred sermons per year, each lasting about forty-five minutes. Although Luther thought the Eucharist to be one of the most important sacraments in the Lutheran religious gathering, it was clearly the sermon that became the central focus of the service. Meanwhile, German peasants in the countryside flocked to Luther's camp. Such a development was perhaps unsurprising since Luther himself was of peasant stock. The peasants also backed Luther's criticism of the authority of the Roman Church. In 1520, Luther had written, "A Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none" (On Christian Liberty). Such a statement would have fallen on ready ears since there were numerous instances of social unrest throughout the 15th century. The situation was made worse in the 16th century by crop failures in 1523 and 1524. In 1525, representatives of the peasants of Swabia drew up what were called the "Twelve Articles," a document that expressed their grievances. The Articles focused on social and economic grievances and clearly were not intended to raise debate about theological issues. Furthermore, the peasants complained that the nobility had seized the common lands of the villages and had increased dues and taxes at the same time. So, the peasants appealed to Luther because they believed that he could prove that their demands were in accordance with Scripture. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/cclib-1.html http://www.uni-duisburg.de/Institute/CollCart/es/sem/s6/txt07_8.htm But Luther was no revolutionary and wished to avoid social rebellion at all costs. In his An Admonition to Peace, he took the side of the peasantry and criticized the manorial lords. However, he did not justify armed force. In Swabia, Thuringia, the Rhineland and elsewhere, the peasants spoke of "God's righteousness," and the "Word of God," in an effort to have their social and economic grievances addressed. But support from Luther was not to come. Luther had, of course, spoken many times of the freedom of the Christian, but he was speaking in terms of religious faith and not matters pertaining to society. Freedom meant independence from Rome. In response to the peasant's rebellion Luther wrote AGAINST THE MURDEROUS, THIEVING HORDES OF PEASANTS. In the wake of this tract the nobility quelled the rebellion and by 1525, it is quite possible that 100,000 peasants had been killed. There were also across Europe a growing number of humanists who were attracted by Luther's message. Luther's call for a more personal and immediate religion based on faith, the focus on the Scriptures in the liturgy and in life as well as the abolition of Catholic ceremony were just the kind of reforms that northern Christian humanists had been willing to address. For instance, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) took Luther's message into the city of Zurich and, as we have already seen, John Calvin took Lutheranism into Geneva (see Lecture 3). In 1523 Luther offered his German translation of the New Testament. Since Luther had argued persuasively that everyone at the right to read and comments on the Scriptures, his translation attracted supporters from the literate middle classes. For the merchant and other members of the commercial classes, Luther perhaps http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/peasants1525.html http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15772a.htm http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture3c.html offered hope that salvation may even be possible for the person whose sole interest was financial gain. Meanwhile Luther wrote hymns, psalms and a variety of other works. His A Mighty Fortress Is Our God was perhaps his most important hymn (indeed, it is the one hymn truly attributable to Luther's pen), since it reflected deep human feelings and gave to be listener key points of Luther's doctrine. The Large Catechism, intended for an adult audience, contained brief expositions on the main articles of a Lutheran faith. The Small Catechism did pretty much the same thing only in a condensed version and was intended for the education of children. By the mid-16th century, many inhabitants of towns and villages had deviated from Christian dogma: many of these people were heretics; many believe that Nature was God (pantheism); and still more believe that witches had just as much spiritual power as did priests. The number of radical groups which appeared during the 16th century makes them difficult to classify. They make up what historians call the Radical Reformation. There were men and women, many of them poor and illiterate, who claimed to have knowledge of their own salvation through an inner light. That is, these men and women believed they had a direct an immediate communication from God to his chosen people. Should this be that surprising? Such a knowledge made his chosen people free. These Saints, as they called themselves, said the poor shall inherit the earth which they believed was now governed by the anti-Christ, i.e., the Pope. Their task was to purge the world of evil and make the world ready http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh110.sht http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-01.html http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/little.book/web/book-1.html for the second coming of Christ. For these people, the Holy Scriptures became inspiration for their brand of social revolution. All of this, as you might have expected, was condemned by both Luther and Calvin (as well as the Church). The largest group of radical reformers were the Anabaptists (literally "re-baptizers," used as a term a derision). Luther and Zwingli had argued that infant baptism marked the moment of one's entry into the Church, even though this had no sanction in the Bible. The Anabaptists believed the first baptism did not count since only mature adults could make a conscious choice for Jesus not to young children who are totally incapable of understanding God's grace. The Anabaptists were a diverse group of people. Some rejected the Trinity while others refused to take oaths, pay taxes, hold public office or serve in the army. Since the Anabaptists gave the individual free choice, it was indeed possible that Church organization was unnecessary since many believed in personal communication with God. Many radicals formed their own voluntary associations and abandoned the world in order to pursue their faith, regardless of what Luther or the Church might think. Many practiced a primitive communism in which everything was held in common, including property and wives. When all of this was coupled with their idea that the end of the world was imminent, their mission was one of urgency. Of course, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli detested the radicals. By practicing a Protestant faith that deviated from Lutheranism or Calvinism, Luther and Calvin both argued that the radicals were damned. At an imperial Diet held in 1529, the death penalty was issued against all Anabaptists. http://www.gty.org/~phil/anabapt.htm In 1534, the Melchiorites, an inflammatory sect of Anabaptists, captured the German city of Münster. They immediately burned all books except the Bible, banned the use of money and seized the property of non- believers. They killed Protestants and Catholics and practiced polygamy and sexual excess. Their leader, John of Leyden, had sixteen wives. As to be expected, they proclaimed the Day of Judgment was close at hand. Lutheran princes and Catholic bishops joined forces to condemn and defeat the Anabaptists, who were placed in cages and hung from the church steeples where they were eventually tortured and left to die. The radicals were pursued wherever they found themselves and to survive, many of them fled to Poland, the Low Countries, England and to the New World. While Luther and Calvin struggled against the Anabaptists and other radical sects, the Roman Church was also gathering momentum to enact a genuine reform movement -- the Catholic Reformation (see Lecture 5).   http://www.mb-soft.com/believe/txc/melchior.htm http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH35/howard1.html http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture5c.html 1 Lecture 3: The Protestant Reformation Arise, O Lord, and judge Thy cause. A wild boar has invaded Thy vineyard. Arise, O Peter, and consider the case of the Holy Roman Church, the mother of all churches, consecrated by thy blood. Arise, O Paul, who by thy teaching and death hast illumined and dost illumine the Church. Arise all ye saints, and the whole universal Church, whose interpretations of Scripture has been assailed. (papal bull of Pope Leo X, 1520) It truly seems to me that if this fury of the Romanists should continue, there is no remedy except that the emperor, kings, and princes, girded with force and arms, should resolve to attack this plague of all the earth no longer with words but with the sword. . . . If we punish thieves with the gallows, robbers with the sword, and heretics with fire, why do we not all the more fling ourselves with all our weapons upon these masters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes, and all this sink of Roman sodomy that ceaselessly corrupts the church of God and wash our hands in their blood so that we may free ourselves and all who belong to us from this most dangerous fire? (Martin Luther, 1521) Young people have lost that deference to their elders on which the social order depends; they reject all correction. Sexual offenses, rapes, adulteries, incests and seductions are more common than ever before. How monstrous that the world should have been overthrown by such dense clouds for the last three or four centuries, so that it could not see clearly how to obey Christ's commandment to love our enemies. Everything is in shameful confusion; everywhere I see only cruelty, plots, frauds, violence, injustice, shamelessness while the poor groan under the oppression and the innocent are arrogantly and outrageously harassed. God must be asleep. (John Calvin) The 16th century in Europe was a great century of change on many fronts. The humanists and artists of the Renaissance would help characterize the age as one of individualism and self-creativity. Humanists such as Petrarch helped restore the dignity of mankind while men like Machiavelli injected humanism into politics. When all is said and done, the Renaissance helped to secularize European society. Man was now the creator of his own destiny -- in a word, the Renaissance unleashed the very powerful notion that man makes his own history (on the Renaissance, see Lecture 1). But the 16th century was more than just the story of the Renaissance. The century witnessed the growth of royal power, the appearance of centralized monarchies and the discovery of new lands. During the great age of exploration, massive quantities of gold and silver flood Europe, an event which turned people, especially the British, Dutch, Italians and Germans, money-mad. The year 1543 can be said to have marked the origin of the Scientific Revolution -- this was the year Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus (see Lecture 10) and set in motion a wave of scientific advance that would culminate with Newton at the end of the 17th century. In the meantime, urbanization continued unabated as did the growth of universities. And lastly, the printing press, perfected by the moveable type of Gutenberg in http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture1c.html http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture10c.html 1451, had created the ability to produce books cheaply and in more quantities. And this was indeed important since the Renaissance created a literate public eager for whatever came off the presses. Despite all of these things, and there are more things to be considered, especially in the area of literature and the arts, the greatest event of the 16th century -- indeed, the most revolutionary event -- was the Protestant Reformation. It was the Reformation that forced people to make a choice -- to be Catholic or Protestant. This was an important choice, and a choice had to be made. There was no real alternative. In the context of the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, one could live or die based on such a choice. We have to ask why something like the Reformation took place when it did. In general, dissatisfaction with the Church could be found at all levels of European society. First, it can be said that many devout Christians were finding the Church's growing emphasis on rituals unhelpful in their quest for personal salvation. Indeed, what we are witnessing is the shift from salvation of whole groups of people, to something more personal and individual. The sacraments had become forms of ritualized behavior that no longer "spoke" to the people of Europe. They had become devoid of meaning. And since more people were congregating in towns and cities, they could observe for themselves and more important, discuss their concerns with others. Second, the papacy had lost much of its spiritual influence over its people because of the increasing tendency toward secularization. In other words, popes and bishops were acting more like kings and princes than they were the spiritual guides of European men and women. And again, because so many people were now crowding into cities, the lavish homes and palaces of the Church were noticed by more and more people from all walks of life. The poor resented the wealth of the papacy and the very rich were jealous of that wealth. At the same time, the popes bought and sold high offices, and also sold indulgences. All of this led to the increasing wealth of the Church -- and this created new paths for abuses of every sort. Finally, at the local level of the town and village, the abuses continued. Some Church officials held several offices at once and lived off their income. The clergy had become lax, corrupt and immoral and the people began to take notice that the sacraments were shrouded in complacency and indifference. Something was dreadfully wrong. These abuses called for two major responses. On the one hand, there was a general tendency toward anti- clericalism, that is, a general but distinct distrust and dislike of the clergy. Some people began to argue that the layperson was just as good as the priest, an argument already advanced by the Waldensians of the 12th century (see also my lecture, "Heretics, Heresies and the Church"). On the other hand, there were calls for reform. These two responses created fertile ground for conflict of all kinds, and that conflict would be both personal and social. The deepest source of conflict was personal and spiritual. The Church had grown more formal in its organization, which is hardly unsurprising since it was now sixteen centuries old. The Church had its own elaborate canon law as well as a dogmatic theology. All of this had been created at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. That Council also established the importance of the sacraments as well as the role of the priest in administering the sacraments (see the Canons of the http://www2.kenyon.edu/projects/margin/walt1.htm http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture27b.html http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09018a.htm http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp Fourth Lateran Council). 1215 also marks the year that the Church further elaborated its position on Purgatory (see Purgatory: Fact or Fantasy). Above all, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 established the important doctrine that salvation could only be won through good works -- fasting, chastity, abstinence and asceticism. The common people, meanwhile, sought a more personal, spiritual and immediate kind of religion -- something that would touch them directly, in the heart. The rituals of the Church now meant very little to them - - they needed some kind of guarantee that they were doing the right thing – that they would indeed be saved. The Church gave little thought to reforming itself. People yearned for something more while the Church seemed to promise less. What seemed to be needed was a general reform of Christianity itself. Only such a major transformation would effect the changes reflected in the spiritual desires of the people. Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries the Church was faced with numerous direct challenges. Heretics had been assaulting the Church since the 12th century. The heretics were Christians who deviated from Christian dogma. Many did not believe in Christian baptism -- the majority felt left out of the Church. There were also numerous mystics who desired a direct and emotional divine illumination. They claimed they had been illuminated by an inner light that assured them of salvation. There was an influential philosophical movement called nominalism that stressed the reality of anything concrete and real, thus doubting faith. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp http://www.religioustolerance.org/purgatory.htm http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/nominali.htm Renaissance humanism rejected the Christian matrix almost completely and instead turned to the Classical World, the true source of virtue and wisdom. The breakdown of feudalism and the discovery and exploitation of the New World gave way to commerce and trade, as well as an increasing tendency to view life in the here and now as something good. The Church was also challenged by an increasing awareness of ethnicity and nationalism, e.g. Joan of Arc and the 100 Years' War. Merchants and skilled workers living in cities were growing wealthy and influential as they began to supply Europe with more and more "stuff." European kings consolidated their power over their nobility. There was an awareness, thanks to the age of discovery, that there was a pagan world outside the world of Europe that needed to be tamed. The Reformation was dominated by the figure of MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546). Luther was the son of Hans Luther, a copper miner from the district of Saxony. Hans was a self-made man. As a youth he worked menial jobs in copper mines -- but by the time Martin was born at Eisleben, he had risen to prominence and owned several mines. Hans Luther wanted his son to do even more with his life so while Martin was in his teens, it was decided that he would study law. So, after his preliminary education was complete, at the age of 17 young Martin Luther entered the University of Erfurt. At the time, Erfurt was the most important university in Germany (more on German universities). It was also the center of a conflict between the Renaissance humanists and those people known as the Scholastics, who were http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/luther.html http://www.luther.de/e/uniwes.html adept at combining medieval philosophy and theology. Luther enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and studied theology and law as well. It was at this time that he read widely in the classical authors, especially Cicero and Virgil. He obtained his Masters degree and finished second in a class of seventeen students. In 1505, a promising legal career seemed certain. But at this point, Luther rejected the world. He was twenty-one at the time. In 1505, Luther tells us that he experienced the "first great event" of his life. In that year he experienced some kind of conversion after having been struck by a bolt of lightning. He cried out, "Help, St. Anne, I will become a monk." He was struck by the hand of God and felt that God was in everything. He felt doubt within himself – he simply could not reconcile his faith with his worldly ambitions. And so, Luther was plagued by an overwhelming sense of guilt, fear and terror. To relieve his anxiety he joined the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine. There he would be shielded from worldly distractions. There he would find the true path to heaven. He fasted, prayed and scourged himself relentlessly. But he still felt doubts. One day, as he sat in his cell, he threw his Bible on the table and pointed at a passage at random. The passage was from the Epistles of St. Paul: "For the justice of God is revealed from faith to faith in that it is written, for the just shall live by faith." (Romans 1:17) By 1508, Luther was transferred from the monastery at Erfurt to Wittenberg. At Wittenberg, Luther joined the university faculty as professor of philosophy and quickly became the leader in the fight to make Wittenberg a center of humanism rather than Scholasticism. In the end, Luther was more interested in preaching a religion of piety than he was studying philosophy or theology. In http://www.luther.de/e/blitz.html http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/3f.htm 1510, he devoted himself to discovering God and during a trip to Rome on official business he acted more the part of a pilgrim than humanist scholar. He climbed the steps of St. Peters, he knelt before the altars and prayed. He was soon shocked by the apparent immoral life of the priests and cardinals whom he found cynical and indifferent toward Church rituals. In 1512, he returned to Wittenberg to teach and preach. He ignored the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages and concentrated on the Psalms and Epistles of St. Paul. By 1517, there would be no reason to think that Luther was a particularly dissatisfied member of the Church. But 1517 is a very important year. Albert of Hohenzollern was offered the archbishopric of Mainz if he would pay the required fee (Albert already held two bishoprics, even though he had not yet reached the required age to be a bishop!). Pope Leo X asked Albert to pay 12,000 ducats for the twelve apostles but Albert would only offer 7,000 for the seven deadly sins. A compromise was reached and Albert paid 10,000 ducats. Leo proclaimed an indulgence in Albert's territories for eight years with half of the money going to Albert and the other half to construct the basilica of St. Peter's. The storm broke on October 31, the eve of All Saints Day. On that day Luther nailed a copy of the NINETY- FIVE THESES to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg. The Theses (actually 95 statements), all related to the prevalence of indulgences and Luther offered to dispute them all. The day chosen by Luther -- All Saints Day -- was important. All of Wittenberg was crowded with peasants and pilgrims who had come to the city to honor the consecration of the Church. Word of Luther's Theses spread throughout the crowd and spurred on by Luther's friends at the university, many http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/95theses.html http://www.luther.de/e/tanschl.html people called for the translation of the Theses into German. A student copied Luther's Latin text and then translated the document and sent it to the university press and from there it spread throughout Germany. It was the printing press itself, that allowed Luther's message to spread so rapidly. [Note: Following the research of Erwin Iserloh, Richard Marius has suggested that perhaps Luther never posted the Ninety-Five Theses. We know, for instance, that Luther wrote a letter to his archbishop complaining about indulgences. The story that Luther nailed the Theses to the church door comes from Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), a professor of Greek and one of Luther's colleagues. However, Melanchthon did not arrive in Wittenberg until August of the following year. Luther never mentioned this incident in any of his table talk. See Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (Harvard, 1999), pp. 137-139.] The particular indulgence which attracted Luther's attention was being sold throughout Germany by Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar. Tetzel was trying to raise money to pay for the new Church at St. Peters in Rome. In general, an indulgence released the sinner from punishment in Purgatory before going to Heaven. The system was permitted by the Church (since 1215) but had been abused by the clergy and their agents such as Tetzel. Luther also attacked indulgences in general, and he voiced his objections to the sale of indulgences in his LETTER to the Archbishop of Mainz in 1517. According to the Church, indulgences took their existence from the surplus grace that had accumulated through the lives of Christ, the saints and martyrs. The purchase of an indulgence put the buyer in touch with this grace and http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14539a.htm http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/mainz_letter.html freed him from the earthly penance of a particular sin, but not the sin itself. But Tetzel's sales pitch implied that the buyer was freed from the sin as well as the penance attached to it. Tetzel also sold people on the idea that an indulgence could be purchased for a relative in Purgatory – this meant the relative's soul would now fly to Heaven. For Tetzel: "As soon as pennies in the money chest ring, the souls out of their Purgatory do spring." Luther answered (Theses 28) in the following way: "It is certain that when the money rattles in the chest, avarice and gain may be increased, but the Suffrage of the Church depends on the will of God alone." (my emphasis). Luther claimed that it was not only Tetzel but the papacy itself which spread the false doctrine of the indulgence. By attacking the issue of the indulgences, Luther was really attacking the entire theology and structure of the Church. By making salvation dependent on the individual's faith, Luther abolished the need for sacraments as well as a clergy to administer them. For Luther, faith alone, without the necessity of good works, would bring salvation. This was obviously heretical thinking. Of course, Luther couched his notion of "justification by faith alone" within a scheme of predestination. That is, only God knows who will be saved and will be damned. Good works did not guarantee salvation. Faith did not guarantee salvation. God alone grants salvation or damnation. This discussion all begs the question: why did people follow Luther? It is simply amazing that within a relatively brief period of time, that so many people turned their back on the Roman Church, and followed Luther. For the wealthy, becoming a Lutheran was one way to keep their wealth yet still be given a chance for salvation without paying homage to Rome. In other words, it can be said that the wealthy followed Luther as a form of protest against the Church. For the very poor, Luther offered individual dignity and respect. Not good works or servitude to Rome could guarantee salvation. Instead, faith held out the possibility of salvation. For most Germans of the mid-16th century, Lutheranism was a way to attack the Holy Roman Empire and Charles V (1500-1558). Voltaire once wrote that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor truly an Empire. Therefore, Germany became Lutheran for reasons other than religion or theology. The bottom line is this: Luther told people exactly what they want to hear. Luther appeared as an alternative to the Roman Church. Whereas the Roman Church appealed to men and women as members of a group (i.e., members of the Church), Lutheranism meant that faith was now something individual, and this would have profound consequences.. JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564) represents the second wave of the Protestant Reformation. Although Luther and Calvin were more less contemporaries of one another, Calvin was an entirely different man. John Calvin acquired his early education in Paris -- here he learned to develop a taste for humanism. In the mid-1520s he studied law at the University of Paris and then left to study law at Orleans and Greek art at Bourges. I mention all this simply to show that Calvin was indeed a humanist scholar in his own right. He studied Hebrew, Greek, and Latin and thrived on the humanist texts of the classical world and his own. By 1533, Calvin fell under the influence of the New Testament translation by Erasmus as well as certain writings of Martin Luther. So, before Calvin became a Calvinist, he was clearly a Lutheran. http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/charles5.htm http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/calvin.html On All Saints Day in 1533, Calvin delivered an address at Paris which clearly defended the doctrine of "justification by faith alone." Renouncing his Catholicism, Calvin settled at Basel, in Switzerland, and there wrote a draft for his book, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a book which contains more than 80 chapters and took him almost the rest of his life to complete. The core of what became known as Calvinism, was that man was a helpless being before an all-powerful God. He concluded that there was no such thing as free will, that man was predestined for either Heaven or Hell. Man can do nothing to alter his fate. It was Calvin, and not Luther, who gave to the Swiss and French reformers of this time a rallying point for Church reform. So, it was almost natural that when a few men were trying to convert the town of Geneva to their reformed doctrines that they called upon Calvin's help. Calvin came to Geneva and immediately imposed a social order of harsh discipline and order. The people of Geneva groaned under his repressive measures but they also felt that Calvin was good for them and their children. Calvin was kicked out of the city for three years but eventually returned -- those who objected to his terms left the city or were jailed or executed. Calvin urged -- actually forced -- all citizens of Geneva to succumb to his rigorous ideals of a religious life. In this way his career at Geneva is remarkably similar to that of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence. Genevan men and women were told to wake up early, work hard, be forever concerned with good morals, be thrifty at all times, abstain from worldly pleasures, be sober, and above all, serious. There was, then, very little laughing in Calvin's Geneva. What we're talking about here can http://www.reformed.org/books/institutes/index.html http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13490a.htm only be called a "worldly asceticism," that is, the denial of all worldly pleasure while living in this world. Of course, foundation of Calvinism was clearly the doctrine of predestination, that is, the idea that all of mankind is assigned to either Heaven or Hell at birth. There is nothing you can do that would change your destiny since it was in the hands of all-powerful God. Such an opinion logically leads to anxiety -- after all, no one knew just what to do. While Calvin would not argue, as did the Church, that good works were one needed to go to Heaven, he did admit that good works served a purpose. Good works, then, became a divine sign, a sign that the individual was making the best of their life here on earth. It was, however, still no guarantee. Calvin also introduced his concept of the "calling." Some men and women seemed ill-fitted for life on earth. They were avaricious, slothful, amoral. However, there were others who seemed to work happily in their lifetime, accomplishing much and in the right spirit. In other words, they had been "called" to do a certain thing here on earth. Of course, if one wakes up early, works at their calling, and are thrifty, sober and abstain from frivolity, there is an unintended consequence. That consequence was the acquisition of wealth. So, while Calvin did not invent free enterprise, nor did he invent capitalism, or the desire for wealth, he did rationalize that desire by arguing that certain men are imbued with the spirit of acquisition, the correct spirit. That spirit has often been called the Protestant Work Ethic. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) asked why it is that the world's most wealthy men were of Protestant origin. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/toc.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/ His answer was that it was these men who were also Calvinists, men who had internalized the religious code set down first by Calvin and then by the Puritans of 17th century England. In other words, the ethic says to work hard, save what you have made, and reinvest any profit in order to increase wealth. That is capitalism in a nutshell. Calvin does not invent this idea, he simply rationalizes it by ascribing a certain spirit or calling to certain men of his own age, all of whom just happened to be Calvinists. Of course, such a scheme could and did lead to tension, conflict and anxiety. How much of a calling was a good thing? When did one know when enough was enough? Anxiety and its sister guilt, then, seemed to become one of the guiding principles of Calvinism. While Lutheranism spread widely in Germany and Scandinavia, Calvinism made inroads across Europe. In general, Calvin produced an organization unmatched by any other Protestant faith at the time. The Institutes spelled out faith and practice in fine detail. Tight discipline within each cell, or synod, held the entire system together. Calvinist ministers traveled throughout Europe winning adherents and organizing them into new cells. From the city of Geneva flowed an endless wave of pamphlets, books and sermons whose purpose was to educate the Calvinist congregation. By 1564, the year of Calvin's death, there were more than a million French Calvinists or Huguenots, Scotland had been won over to Calvinism, and the religion also found a home in England, the Low Countries and Hungary.   1