Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation, also called the Protestant Revolt or simply The Reformation, was the European Christian reform movement that established Protestantism as a constituent branch of contemporary Christianity. It was led by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to ("protested") the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Catholic Church, led to the creation of new national Protestant churches. The Catholics responded with a Counter Reformation, led by the Jesuit order, which reclaimed large parts of Europe, such as Poland. In general, northern Europe, with the exception of Ireland and pockets of Britain, turned Protestant, and southern Europe remained Catholic, while fierce battles that turned into warfare took place in the centre. The largest of the new denominations were the Anglicans (based in England), the Lutherans (based in Germany and Scandinavia), and the Reformed churches (based in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scotland). There were many smaller bodies as well. The most common dating begins in 1517 when Luther published The Ninety-Five Theses, and concludes in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia that ended years of European religious wars.[1]
Religious situation in Europe
The Reformation window at St. Matthew's German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Charleston, South Carolina depicts key events in the Protestant Reformation.
The Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church, carried out by Western European Catholics who opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice — especially the teaching and the sale of indulgences or the abuses thereof, and simony, the selling and buying of clerical offices — that the reformers saw as evidence of the systemic corruption of the Church's Roman hierarchy, which included the Pope. Both issues were dealt with in an altogether different manner by the Roman Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation.
Martin Luther's spiritual predecessors included John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, who likewise had attempted to reform the Catholic Church. The Protestant Reformation began on 31 October 1517, in Wittenberg, Saxony, where Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Castle Church, in Wittenberg.[2] The theses debated and criticized the Church and the Pope, but concentrated upon the selling of indulgences and doctrinal policies about purgatory, particular judgment, Catholic devotion to Mary, Jesus’s Mother, the intercession of and devotion to the saints, most of the sacraments, the mandatory clerical celibacy, including monasticism, and the authority of the Pope. In the event, other religious reformers, such as Ulrich Zwingli, soon follo
wed Martin Luther’s example.
Moreover, the reformers soon disagreed among themselves and divided their movemen
t according to doctrinal differences — first between Luther and Zwingli, later between Luther and John Calvin — consequently resulting in the establishment of different and rival Protestant Churches (denominations), such as the Lutheran, the Reformed, the Puritans, and the Presbyterian. Elsewhere, the religious reformation causes, processes, and effects were different; Anglicanism arose in England with the English Reformation, and most Protestant denominations derive from the Germanic denominations. The reformers also accelerated the development of the Counter-Reformation by the Catholic Church.
[edit]History and origins
All mainstream Protestants generally date their doctrinal separation from the Catholic Church to the 16th century, occasionally called the Magisterial Reformation, because the ruling magistrates supported them; unlike the Radical Reformation, which the State did not support. Older Protestant churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren), Moravian Brethren (Bohemian Brethren) date their origins to Jan Hus in the early 15th century. As it was led by a Bohemian noble majority, and
recognized, for a time, by the Basel Compacts, the Hussite Reformation was Europe’s first Magisterial Reformation. One hundred years later, in Germany the protests erupted simultaneously, whilst under threat of Islamic Ottoman invasion 1, which especially distracted the German princes responsible for military defense.
See also: History of Protestantism
[edit]Corruption
Unrest due to the Great Schism of Western Christianity (1378–1416) excited wars between princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the church. The first of a series of disruptive and new perspectives came from John Wycliffe at Oxford University, then from Jan Hus at the University of Prague. The Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of Constance (1414–1417). The conclave condemned Jan Hus, who was executed by burning in spite of a promise of safe-conduct. Wycliffe was posthumously burned as a heretic.[3]
The Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of church and empire. It did not address the national tensions, or the theological tensions which had been stirred up during the previous century. The council could not prevent schism and the Hussite Wars in Bohemia.
[4]
Martin Luther was shocked by the corruption of the clergy on a trip to Rome in 1510. Sixtus IV (1471–1484) was the first Pope to impose a license on brothels and a special tax on priests who kept a mistress. He also established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, thereby establishing a virtually infinite source of revenue.[5] Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) was one of the most controversial of the Renaissance Popes. He fathered seven children, including Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, by at least two mistresses.[6] Fourteen years after his death, the corruption of th
e papacy that Pope Alexander VI exemplified – particularly the sale of indulgences – prompted Luther to write the The Ninety-Five Theses which, as legend has it, he nailed to the door of a church at Wittenberg in Germany.
[edit]16th century
earnestLuther's 95 Theses
The protests against the corruption emanating from Rome began in earnest when Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk at the university of Wittenberg, called in 1517 for a reopening of the debate on the s
ale of indulgences and the authority to absolve sin and remit one from purgatory. Luther's dissent marked a sudden outbreak of a new and irresistible force of discontent. The Reformers made heavy use of inexpensive pamphlets (using the relatively new printing press) so there was swift movement of both ideas and documents, including The Ninety-Five Theses.
Loci Communes (Latin for "Common Points") were summaries of Luther's theological points and were widely distributed.
Parallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli. These two movements quickly agreed on most issues, as the recently introduced printing press spread ideas rapidly from place to place, but some unresolved differences kept them separate. Some followers of Zwingli believed that the Reformation was too conservative, and moved independently toward more radical positions, some of which survive among modern day Anabaptists. Other Protestant movements grew up along lines of mysticism or humanism (cf. Erasmus), sometimes breaking from Rome or from the Protestants, or forming outside of the churches.
After this first stage of the Reformation, following the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere.
The Reformation foundations engaged with Augustinianism. Both Luther and Calvin thought along lines linked with the theological teachings of Augustine of Hippo. The Augustinianism of the Reformers struggled against Pelagianism, a heresy that they perceived in the Catholic Church of their day. In the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 swept through the Bavarian, Thuringian and Swabian principalities, leaving scores of Catholics slaughtered at the hands of Protestant bands, including the Black Company of Florian Geier, a knight from Giebelstadt who joined the peasants in the general outrage against the Catholic hierarchy. Martin Luther, however, condemned the revolt, thus contributing to its eventual defeat. Some 100,000 peasants were killed.[7]
Even though Luther and Calvin had very similar theological teachings, the relationship between their followers turned quickly to conflict. Frenchman Michel de Montaigne told a story of a Lutheran pastor who declared over dinner that he would rather hear a hundred masses than take part in one of Calvi
n's sacraments.[8][9]
The political separation of the Church of England from Rome under Henry VIII, beginning in 1529 and completed in 1536, brought England alongside this broad Reformed movement. However, religious changes in the English national church proceeded more conservatively than elsewhere in Europe. Ref
ormers in the Church of England alternated, for centuries, between sympathies for Catholic traditions and Protestantism, progressively forging a stable compromise between adherence to ancient tradition and Protestantism, which is now sometimes called the via media.[10]
Life of Martin Luther and the heroes of the Reformation
Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli are considered Magisterial Reformers because their reform movements were supported by ruling authorities or "magistrates". Frederick the Wise did not support Luther, who was a professor at the university he founded, but he protected him by hiding Luther in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach. Frederick the Wise was a very devout Catholic, but only protected Luther in hopes of obtaining greater political autonomy from the Church. Zwingli and Calvin were supported by the city councils in Zurich and Geneva. Since the term "magister" also means "teacher", the Magisterial Reformation is also characterized by an emphasis on the authority of a teacher. This is made evident in the prominence of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as leaders of the reform movements in their respective areas of ministry. Because of their authority, they were often criticized by Radical Reformers as being too much like the Roman Popes. For example, Radical Reformer Andreas Karlstadt referred to the Wittenberg theologians as the "new papists".[11]
[edit]The central issue: Free Will
In his work, Luther: Right or Wrong?, Fr. McSoreley pinpoints the true and abiding reason for the Reformation, according to Luther himself:[12]
What was the central issue of Luther’s protest? With unmistakable clarity Luther himself answers this question in the closing paragraph of De servo arbitrio (1525), his powerful reply to the long-awaited attack made by Desiderius Erasmus in De libero arbitrio (1524). Fully confident that he has refuted Erasmus, Luther offers him a singular word of consolation:
“Moreover, I give you hearty praise and commendation on this further account – that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue [res ipsa; summa causae]. You have not wearied me with those extraneous issues about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like – trifles, rather than issues – in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns [cardo rerum], and aimed for the vital spot. For that I heartily ”
Not the doctrines of the papacy, purgatory or indulgences, but the doctrine of the freedom of the will was the real issue –the res ipsa of Luther’s re
formation protest!
This was not merely an isolated, passing statement. Already in 1520, in the Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X, novissimam damnatorum, Luther signaled out the thirty-sixth article – the one in which he defends the thesis that the free will, after Adam’s fall, is a name devoid of content (res de solo titulo; eyn eytteler name) – as the real issue of his reformation. Again he speaks of the other questions about the papacy, councils and indulgences as “trifles” (nugae) but explicitly insists that this article is the most important point of his doctrine.
Did Luther change his mind after 1525 about the importance of his doctrine of the unfree will? It seems unlikely that he did. Twelve years after he wrote De servo arbitrio, Luther could still write to Wolfgang Capito (July 9, 1537), in reference to the forthcoming publication of his collected works: “I consider none of my books to be worthwhile, except perhaps De servo arbitrio and the Catechism.”
[edit]Humanism to Protestantism
The frustrated reformism of the humanists, ushered in by the Renaissance, contributed to a growing impatience among reformers. Erasmus and later figures like Martin Luther and Zwingli would emerge from this debate and eventually contribute to another major schism of Christendom. The crisis of theology beginning with William of Ockham in the 14th century was occurring in conjunction with the n
ew burgher discontent. Since the breakdown of the philosophical foundations of scholasticism, the new nominalism did not bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God. New thinking favored the notion that no religious doctrine can be supported by philosophical arguments, eroding the old alliance between reason and faith of the medieval period laid out by Thomas Aquinas.
Erasmus
The major individualistic reform movements that revolted against medieval scholasticism and the institutions that underpinned it were humanism, devotionalism, (see for example, the Brothers of the Common Life and Jan Standonck) and the observantine tradition. In Germany, "the modern way" or devotionalism caught on in the universities, requiring a redefinition of God, who was no longer a rational governing principle but an arbitrary, unknowable will that cannot be limited. God was now a ruler, and religion would be more fervent and emotional. Thus, the ensuing revival of Augustinian theology, stating that man cannot be saved by his own efforts but only by the grace of God would erode the legitimacy of the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works and get into heaven. Humanism, however, was more of an educational reform movement with origins in the Renaissance's revival of classical learning and thought. A revolt against Aristotelian l
ogic, it placed great emphasis on reforming individuals through eloquence as opposed to reason. The European Renaissance laid the foun

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