5.14 The Protestant Reformation

In the early 16th century, a revolution of sorts began. Depending on what part of Europe you are considering, the Middle Ages ended and a new period, one historians call the Early Modern Era begins. In this era, wars dominate everything and while most of the motives for these conflicts are religious in nature, there are other factors at play too.

Although the Protestant Reformation ended the singular influence of the Catholic Church (the Church) and allowed the people to decide for themselves what their relationship with God might look like, this was not an easy transition. Eventually, Europeans came to realize that unity of faith could not be achieved on a grand scale.

The Protestant Reformation was the permanent split within the Catholic Church that resulted in multiple competing denominations of Christian practice and belief. From the perspective of the Catholic hierarchy, these new denominations – lumped together under the category of “Protestant” – were nothing more or less than new heresies, sinful breaks with the correct, orthodox beliefs and practices of the Church. The difference between Protestant churches and earlier heretical movements was that the Church proved unable to stamp them out or re-assimilate them into mainstream Catholic practice. Thus, what began as a protest movement against corruption within the Church very quickly evolved into a number of widespread and increasingly militant branches of Christianity itself.

The Context of the Reformation

The Protestant Reformation, the Counterreformation, and the wars of this period allowed for the flourishing of new thought, new works, and new philosophies. The dissemination of this information was greatly helped along by the invention of the movable type printing press at roughly the same moment. The impact of all these new ideas was much greater than ever before because more and more people had access to copies of these thoughts through the proliferation of print. This is connected to a great movement sometimes called the Intellectual Reformation and, even, the Scientific Revolution.

Finally, although much of the conflict of this era was religious in nature, secular rulers were also impacted. Justification for ruling was couched in religious terms as we will see in the next module and the tug of war between church and state was settled by the end of this period.

The context of the Reformation was the strange state of the Catholic Church as of the late fifteenth century. The Church was omnipresent in early-modern European society. About one person in seventy-five was part of the Church, as priests, monks, nuns, or members of lay orders. Practically every work of art depicted Biblical themes. the Church oversaw births, marriages, contracts, wills, and deaths – all law was, by implication, the law of God Himself. Furthermore, in Catholic doctrine, spiritual salvation was only accessible through the intervention of the Church; without the rituals (sacraments) performed by priests, the soul was doomed to go to hell. Finally, popes fought to claim the right to intervene in secular affairs as they saw fit, although this was a fight they had never had much luck with, losing even more ground as the new, more powerful and centralized, monarchies rose to power in the fifteenth century.

Simply put, as of the Renaissance era, all was not well with the Church. The Babylonian Captivity and the Great Western Schism both undermined the Church’s authority. The stronger states of the period claimed the right to appoint bishops and priests within their kingdoms, something that the monarchs of England and France were very successful in doing. This led both laypeople and some priests themselves to look to monarchs, rather than the pope, for patronage and authority.

Laypeople were well aware of the slack morality that also pervaded the Church. Medieval and early-modern literature is absolutely shot through with satirical tracts mocking immoral priests, and depictions of hell almost always featured priests, monks, and nuns burning alongside nobles and merchants. These patterns affected monasticism as well. The idea behind monastic orders had been imitating the life of Christ, yet by the early modern period, many monasteries ran successful industries, and monks often lived in relative luxury compared to townspeople.

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. Within the Church, there were widespread and persistent calls for reform to better address the needs of the laity and to better live up to the Church’s own moral standards. Numerous devout priests, monks, and nuns abhorred the corruption of their peers and superiors in the Church and called for change – the Spanish branch of the Church enjoyed a strong period of reform during the fifteenth century, for example. Despite this reforming zeal within the Church and the growing popularity of lay movements outside of it, however, almost no one anticipated a permanent break from the Church’s hierarchy itself.

Indulgences

The specific phenomenon that brought about the Protestant Reformation was the selling of indulgences by the Church. An indulgence was a certificate offered by the Church that offered the same spiritual power as the sacrament of confession and penance: to have one’s sins absolved. Each indulgence promised a certain amount of time that the individual would not have to spend in Purgatory after death. Catholic doctrine held that even the souls of those who avoided hell did not go straight to Heaven on death. Instead, they would spend years (centuries, usually) in a spiritual plane between earth and heaven called Purgatory. Once sin was purged in Purgatory, they could ascend to Heaven. Naturally, most people would much rather proceed directly to Heaven if possible, and so the Church found that the sale of indulgences to avoid time in Purgatory was enormously popular.

At first, indulgences were granted by the pope for good acts that were supported by the Church. 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. By the early sixteenth century the practice was completely out of control. Roaming salesmen, contracted by the Church, sold indulgences without the slightest concern for the moral or spiritual status of the buyer. From this context, of widespread corruption and the fairly blatant abuse of the notion of spiritual salvation through the Church, Martin Luther emerged.

“The Power of an Idea.” Reformation: The Individual Before God. 2009. Films on Demand. Through “The Start of the Reformation.” Reformation: The Individual Before God. 2009. Films on Demand. 4:52.

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