11.4: Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation

Print shows Luther burning the papal bull of excommunication, with vignettes from Luther's life and portraits of Hus, Savonarola, Wycliffe, Cruciger, Melanchton, Bugenhagen, Gustav Adolf, & Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...tin_Luther.jpg

The Protestant Reformation

Revolutionary changes emerged in Christian Europe during the 16^th century. Criticism of the Catholic Church's authority and traditions led to the Protestant Reformation that would end the religious unity of Europe and lead to devastating wars between Catholics and Protestants. The Reformation would help strengthen the power of secular rulers, paving the way for the emergence of the modern nation-state.

By 1500, many forces had weakened the power of the Catholic Church. The most important were the new ideas of the Renaissance, the new technology of the printing press, and the increasing skepticism of Church authority generated from events such as the Great Schism and Black Death. There was also a growing awareness of widespread corruption with the Church. Many people entered the clergy to gain power and wealth rather than because of faith. The Papacy experienced a growing loss of spiritual influence, as the Pope and members of the Church hierarchy acted more like secular princes than spiritual leaders. Further, church leaders were slow to respond to calls for reform.

In the early 16^th century, the Church had fallen into the practice of selling indulgences. Indulgences were pardons from punishment for committing a sin, allowing the sinner to enter Heaven. This practice brought in a great deal of revenue for the Church. The Pope used some of these funds to construct St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, believed that neither priests nor the Pope had special powers. In 1517, he posted Ninety-Five Thesis, or statements, on a church door in Germany that challenged the Pope’s right to sell indulgences. Luther asserted that, “Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.”

Martin Luther; (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German friar, priest and professor of theology who was a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.

Luther’s Ninety-Five Thesis sought reform of the Catholic Church. His teachings rested on three main ideas:

• People could win salvation only by faith in God’s gift of forgiveness. (The Church taught that faith and “good works” – your behavior, practicing the sacraments of the Church, etc. - were needed for salvation).
• All Church teachings should be clearly based on the words of the Bible. The Pope and church traditions were false authorities.
• All people with faith were equal. Therefore, people did not need priests to interpret the Bible for them.

Increasingly, the Pope realized that this monk was a serious threat. In one angry reply to Church criticism, Luther actually suggested that Christians drive the pope from the Church by force. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued a decree threatening Luther with excommunication unless he took back his statements. Instead, Luther gathered his students together around a bonfire in Wittenberg, Germany, and threw the pope’s decree into the flames. Leo excommunicated Luther (expelled him from the Church).

Then, Luther was summoned by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, a devout Catholic, to stand trial in the German city of Worms. When told to recant, or take back, his statements, Luther refused. Charles issued the Edict of Worms that declared Luther an outlaw and a heretic. Accordingly, no one in the empire was to give Luther food or shelter. All his books were to be burned.

Luther would be sheltered and protected within a castle by a powerful prince who supported his views. There, he would translate the New Testament into vernacular German, so people could read the Christian Bible on his or her own. Returning to Wittenberg in 1522, he discovered that many of his ideas were already being put into practice. Priests dressed in ordinary clothes and called themselves ministers, and led church services in German instead of Latin. Some ministers had married, a practice not permitted to priests within the Catholic Church.

The reformers became known as Protestants, and many German princes adopted Protestantism. Eventually, the term Protestant was applied to Christians who belonged to non-Catholic churches. Instead of continuing to seek reforms within the Catholic Church, Luther and his followers become a separate religious group and established the Lutheran Church, the first of the Protestant churches that would eventually be established.

By 1524, German peasants, excited by Protestant talk of Christian freedom, demanded an end to serfdom. Bands of angry peasants went about the countryside raiding monasteries, pillaging, and burning. Luther was horrified by the violence and sided with the Princes who had supported him, urging them to ruthlessly put down the revolt. Though he had attacked the Pope, he supported secular authority. As many as 100,000 people were massacred during this event known as the Peasant’s Revolt.

Some German princes liked Luther’s ideas for selfish reasons, seized Church lands and property, and claimed independence from the Holy Roman Empire. In 1529, German princes who remained loyal to the pope agreed to join forces against Luther’s ideas. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V led the war against the Protestant princes of Germany. Even though he defeated them in 1547, he failed to force them back into the Catholic Church.

Weary of fighting, Charles ordered all German princes, both Protestant and Catholic, to assemble in the city of Augsburg. At that meeting, it was agreed that the churches in Germany could be either Lutheran or Catholic. Furthermore, the prince of every state would decide the religion of his state. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) temporarily ended the religious wars in Germany. (Later, the war reignited in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1658), in which Germany would be ravaged. It is estimated that about 2/3rds of the German population perished or fled Germany during this conflict.)

Outside of Germany

King Henry VIII had become concerned that his Queen, Catherine of Aragon would not be able to give birth to a male heir. When the Pope refused his request to annul the marriage so that he could remarry, Henry broke with the Catholic Church, closed the English monasteries, and seized all Church lands. In 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which declared the English King to be the official head of the English Church. To raise money, Henry sold much of the land he had seized to nobles and to members of the rising middle class. Suddenly there were many English landowners who stood to lose property if England returned to the Catholic Church. This group formed a solid base of support for the Protestant Reformation in England.

In Geneva, Switzerland John Calvin started a new Protestant Church. Calvin taught that since God was all-knowing, it was predestined (already decided by God) who would be saved and who would be damned. While faith was the key to salvation, it was God who gave faith to some and denied it to others. Only the “Elect” would be saved. Such ideas encouraged hard work and a strict moral code. In Geneva, worldly success was interpreted as a sign of God’s favor.

The Catholic Counter-Reformation

As Protestantism swept across many parts of Europe, the Catholic Church reacted by making limited reforms, curbing earlier abuses, and combating the further spread of Protestantism. This movement is known as the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Ignatius Loyola was one such leader of Catholic reform. He established the Society of Jesus. Commonly called Jesuits, they sought to defend and spread the Catholic faith. Stressing absolute discipline and obedience to the Pope, the Jesuits were like a spiritual army. They founded superb schools throughout Europe, converted non-Christians to Catholicism in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and were successful in preventing the further spread of Protestantism in areas such as Bavaria and Poland, which remain predominantly Catholic today.

In 1545, at the request of Pope Paul III, Catholic bishops and cardinals met at the Council of Trent and agreed on the following doctrines:

• The pope’s interpretation of the Bible was final. Any Christian who substituted his or her own interpretation was a heretic.

• Christians were not saved by faith alone, as Luther argued. They were saved by faith and good works.

• The Bible and Church tradition shared equal authority for guiding a Christian’s life.

• Indulgences, pilgrimages, and venerations of holy relics were all valid expressions of Christian piety, though the selling of indulgences was banned.

The Church also drew up a list of books, the Index of Forbidden Books, that were considered dangerous to the Catholic faith. Catholic bishops throughout Europe were ordered to gather up the offensive books, including Protestant Bibles, and burn them in great bonfires. The Church established the Inquisition, a court whose purpose was to punish heretics (those who denied or contradicted Church teachings). Trials were held to examine, often by torture, those who denied or opposed Church teachings.

Because of the Reformation, religion no longer unified Europe. The Reformation tended to strengthen the power of secular rulers, paving the way for the emergence of the modern nation-state. In Protestant countries, people no longer had allegiance to the Pope: the secular ruler became the highest authority. In Catholic countries, the Church gave more power to secular rulers to help fight Protestantism. In general, France, Italy, Spain, and Southern Germany remained Catholic. Northern Germany, England, Holland, and Scandinavia became Protestant. Finally, the reformers’ successful revolt against Church authority laid the groundwork for a rejection of Christian belief that occurred in Western culture in later centuries.

Attribution: Material modified from CK-12 6.2 The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation