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Slide Notes
This presentation traces the origins or causes of Martin Luther's acts of protest against the Catholic Church, how he started the Protestant Reformation, and how it spread to Switzerland and England. The presentation on Religious Warfare will go more into detail on the Reformation in France.
You should be able to answer the following questions after this lecture:
(1) What Catholic practices inspired early reformers and eventually Luther to speak out against the Church?
(2) What actions did Luther take to cause a split in Christianity and how did the Catholic Church and Holy Roman Empire respond?
(3) How was a temporary and small amount of religious toleration achieved in the German provinces by 1555?
You should be able to answer the following questions after this lecture:
(1) What Catholic practices inspired early reformers and eventually Luther to speak out against the Church?
(2) What actions did Luther take to cause a split in Christianity and how did the Catholic Church and Holy Roman Empire respond?
(3) How was a temporary and small amount of religious toleration achieved in the German provinces by 1555?
AP European Luther's Reformation
Published on Nov 18, 2015
AP European History, Martin Luther, Reformation, Protestant Reformation, Lutheran Reformation, Zwingli, Calvin, Peace of Augsburg
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Martin Luther's Reformation
This presentation traces the origins or causes of Martin Luther's acts of protest against the Catholic Church, how he started the Protestant Reformation, and how it spread to Switzerland and England. The presentation on Religious Warfare will go more into detail on the Reformation in France.
You should be able to answer the following questions after this lecture:
(1) What Catholic practices inspired early reformers and eventually Luther to speak out against the Church?
(2) What actions did Luther take to cause a split in Christianity and how did the Catholic Church and Holy Roman Empire respond?
(3) How was a temporary and small amount of religious toleration achieved in the German provinces by 1555?
You should be able to answer the following questions after this lecture:
(1) What Catholic practices inspired early reformers and eventually Luther to speak out against the Church?
(2) What actions did Luther take to cause a split in Christianity and how did the Catholic Church and Holy Roman Empire respond?
(3) How was a temporary and small amount of religious toleration achieved in the German provinces by 1555?
Photo by moria
Skill: Causation
- What caused religious practices to change in Europe from 1450 to 1648?
- Goal: Identify the reasons why religious reformers challenged the Catholic Church.
- Goal: Identify the reasons why these reform efforts spread to political leaders and other countries.
CONTEXT
Fragmented German States
This is the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1500s. It is a collection of city states and imperial cities held together under the rule of Charles V of the Habsburg family. The farther north you traveled in the Empire the more likely you were to find rulers, princes, and other nobility that resented the power and wealth of the Italians and particularly that of the Pope. These rulers had to put up with the Catholic church freely using land and siphoning much of the tax base away. These resentments, combined with theological (religious) disagreement led to the Magisterial Reformation, or the Reformation led by political leaders from the top down. In this way the initial Reformation was as much of a secular event as it was a religious one.
Why did reformers challenge the church?
Lay religious movements, Christian Humanism, Catholic Corruption
Lay Religious Movements
- Led by early reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus
- Translations of the Bible into vernacular or everyday languages
- Goal: simplify the practice of religion
- Laymen = ordinary members of the church and community
- Pressured political leaders to support reformers
Lollards, followers of John Wycliffe, and Hussites, followers of Jan Hus, are two examples of early movements within the Church to make scripture more accessible and to simplify the practice of Christianity. All of these movements have a couple of things in common. (1) They are lay movements which means that they are started and led by individuals NOT in positions of authority within the Catholic Church. (2) They sought to observe their Christian beliefs through inner devotion or piety. These movements were sometimes almost mystical in the way that they focused on the inner life of the believer and how an individual should meditate on the life and sacrifice of Christ.
Christian Humanism
- Erasmus and the Praise of Folly
- Renaissance learning in the service of Church Reform
- Printing Press - quickly spread ideas of reform and reports of corruption
Catholic Corruption
- Indulgences - selling forgiveness in exchange for money
- Benefices and Simony - the purchase and holding of multiple church offices
- Appeared as if the Catholic clergy cared more about accumulating wealth
In addition to reforms that took on a theological character there was also an impulse for reform caused by corruption within the Catholic Church. Nepotism, appointing family members to leadership positions and simony was rampant in the church and many of these individuals collected salaries but did no real work for the populations they were meant to serve. The clergy were conspicuously wealthy and many were known to keep mistresses and father illegitimate children despite their vows of celibacy. The height of the Renaissance in the late 15th century and the money being spent on works like the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgement and the building of St. Peter's Basilica were, for many, not something to be admired but symbols of the greed and corruption of the Church.
Pope Leo X
The Jubilee Indulgence for St. Peter's Basilica
Indulgences were pieces of paper bought with money and had the stated value of being able to absolve you of certain sins and reduce your time in purgatory. The Catholic Church had been selling these for years and continued to use them well after the Reformation but this particular indulgence was the last straw for Martin Luther. Pope Leo X was raising money for the renovation and building of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, the most important church in the Christian world. It's believed that St. Peter's remains are beneath the church along with the first Pope and Bishop of the Catholic Church.
Photo by fe matarucco
John Tetzel
Indulgence Preacher
John or Johann Tetzel was the Dominican Friar tasked with selling these indulgences across the Holy Roman Empire and it was his sales pitch that inspired Martin Luther to write a complaint to the Archbishop of Mainz and then, when he received an unsatisfactory reply, posted his 95 Theses.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
- Justification by faith alone
- Good works are a product of faith but
- Not a requirement of salvation
- Posted 95 Theses to protest Indulgence Preaching
To the Christian Nobility
- Luther's first major work - encouraged German Princes to force reforms on the Catholic Church
- Written in German, not in Latin
- 1 of 30 pamphlets read by over 300,000 people
The Address to the Christian Nobility was written in the vernacular German and had as its audience the princes and rulers of the various Germanic provinces of the Holy Roman Empire. In it Luther states that religious officials should be elected and that religious or spiritual officials have no power over temporal or political authorities; everyone has the authority to interpret scripture; and that political leaders should have the authority to call religious councils. This is a radical and revolutionary call to shift the control of the church away from spiritual leaders and into the hands of political ones.
The Babylonian Captivity of the Church was a passionate and angry criticism of the seven Catholic Sacraments and how they were administered. Luther believed that there were only two sacraments revealed in scripture, Eucharist or Communion and Baptism.
Freedom of a Christian lays out Martin Luther's belief that as we are justified through our faith we are truly free to live as we wish but that we freely keep God's law and serve God's purpose as a living testament to our faith.
The Babylonian Captivity of the Church was a passionate and angry criticism of the seven Catholic Sacraments and how they were administered. Luther believed that there were only two sacraments revealed in scripture, Eucharist or Communion and Baptism.
Freedom of a Christian lays out Martin Luther's belief that as we are justified through our faith we are truly free to live as we wish but that we freely keep God's law and serve God's purpose as a living testament to our faith.
Exsurge Domine
Papal Bull from Leo X
This announcement from Leo X singled out 41 of the 95 Theses written by Luther to be censured or declared as heresy and it prompted Luther to begin to systematically criticize and offer alternatives to the Catholic Church (see previous slide). It also inspired Luther to ball it up and throw it in the fire in plain view of everyone outside of the castle in Wittenberg and to top it all off declared the author of the Bull to be the Antichrist. The Protestant Reformation and antagonism directed at the Catholic Church in the northern German provinces had grown so quickly that the individuals charged with delivering copies of the Papal Bull were often harassed and threatened and many of the copies were torn down or defaced as soon as they were displayed.
Diet of Worms
Emperor Charles V issues Imperial Ban
Luther was summoned to a meeting with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V and officials from the Catholic Church to be questioned about his beliefs and teachings. Luther refused to recant any of his previous statements under the conviction that he had been teaching and writing had a firm foundation in scripture. Fearing that he would meet the same fate of people like Jan Hus who had been executed for their beliefs, Luther fled before the Council could reach an official decision. He was protected and hidden away by Frederick III, elector of Saxony, who had earlier ensured Luther's protection at the Diet. Luther spent his time in hiding translating the Bible into German. While Luther was safe from punishment many others across the German provinces and Spanish Netherlands were punished or put to death for spreading Lutheran doctrine as a result of the Edict of Worms.
John Calvin and Geneva, Switzerland
- Predestination
- Theocracy
- Haven for French Refugees
- Institutes of the Christian Religion - foundational text for most future Protestant churches
In the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther is linked to Magisterial, state and sword, reform while people like John Calvin and Zwingli are part of the Reformed (capital R) Church. John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, did more than any other Reformer to systematize the theology of the Reformed Church. It is the intellectual and theological basis for Reformed Churches.
The extent to which Geneva was really governed as a Theocracy is a matter debated by scholars as Calvin himself argued for the separation of Church and State. The was an Ecclesiastical court for spiritual matters and a Civil Court but the church and it's clergy possessed great political and legal influence. Church and Civil matters were often intertwined and there were strict codes of moral behavior.
The extent to which Geneva was really governed as a Theocracy is a matter debated by scholars as Calvin himself argued for the separation of Church and State. The was an Ecclesiastical court for spiritual matters and a Civil Court but the church and it's clergy possessed great political and legal influence. Church and Civil matters were often intertwined and there were strict codes of moral behavior.
Peace of Augsburg, 1555
Religious Pluralism
The Peace of Augsburg can be understood by one Latin phrase, cuius regio, eius religio, which translates as "whose region, his religion". The Peace of Augsburg, for the first time in the Holy Roman Empire, recognized and legitimized the idea of religious plurality. There was a limit to religious toleration however. Lutheranism was the only Protestant denomination considered legitimate to the exclusion of Calvinism and other more radical branches.
The Treaty was the result of the Schmalkaldic Wars, waged between Charles V and an alliance of northern German provinces. It would be the basis for religious plurality until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 after the Thirty Years War.
The Treaty was the result of the Schmalkaldic Wars, waged between Charles V and an alliance of northern German provinces. It would be the basis for religious plurality until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 after the Thirty Years War.
