Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [96]
The Social Impact of the Protestant Reformation
What impact did the Protestant Reformation have on society in the sixteenth century?
The Catholic Reformation
What measures did the Roman Catholic Church take to reform itself and to combat Protestantism in the sixteenth century?
Politics and the Wars of Religion in the Sixteenth Century
What role did politics, economic and social conditions, and religion play in the European wars of the sixteenth century?
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CRITICAL THINKING
Where and how did the reform movements take hold, and how did the emergence of these reform movements affect the political and social realms where they were adopted?
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ON APRIL 18, 1521, a lowly monk stood before the emperor and princes of Germany in the city of Worms. He had been called before this august gathering to answer charges of heresy, charges that could threaten his very life. The monk was confronted with a pile of his books and asked if he wished to defend them all or reject a part. Courageously, Martin Luther defended them all and asked to be shown where any part was in error on the basis of “Scripture and plain reason.” The emperor was outraged by Luther’s response and made his own position clear the next day: “Not only I, but you of this noble German nation, would be forever disgraced if by our negligence not only heresy but the very suspicion of heresy were to survive. After having heard yesterday the obstinate defense of Luther, I regret that I have so long delayed in proceeding against him and his false teaching. I will have no more to do with him.” Luther’s appearance at Worms set the stage for a serious challenge to the authority of the Catholic Church. This was by no means the first crisis in the church’s fifteen-hundred-year history, but its consequences were more far-reaching than anyone at Worms in 1521 could have imagined.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Christian church continued to assert its primacy of position. It had overcome defiance of its temporal authority by emperors and kings, and challenges to its doctrines had been crushed by the Inquisition and combated by new religious orders that carried its message of salvation to all the towns and villages of medieval Europe. The growth of the papacy had paralleled the growth of the church, but by the end of the Middle Ages, challenges to papal authority from the rising power of monarchical states had resulted in a loss of papal temporal authority. An even greater threat to papal authority and church unity arose in the sixteenth century when the unity of Christendom was shattered by the Reformation.
The movement begun by Martin Luther when he made his dramatic stand quickly spread across Europe, a clear indication of dissatisfaction with Catholic practices. Within a short time, new forms of religious practices, doctrines, and organizations, including Zwinglianism, Calvinism, Anabaptism, and Anglicanism, were attracting adherents all over Europe. Although seemingly helpless to stop the new Protestant churches, the Catholic Church also underwent a reformation and managed to revive its fortunes by the mid-sixteenth century. All too soon, the doctrinal divisions between Protestants and Catholics led to a series of religious wars that dominated the history of western Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century.
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Prelude to Reformation
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FOCUS QUESTION: What were the chief ideas of the Christian humanists, and how did they differ from the ideas of the Protestant reformers?
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Martin Luther’s reform movement was by no means the first. During the second half of the fifteenth century, the new Classical learning that was part of Italian Renaissance humanism spread to northern Europe and spawned a movement called Christian or northern Renaissance humanism whose major goal was the reform of Christianity.