Daily Life During The Reformation (2 page)

1 - HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE
REFORMATION

Prior
to the Reformation, Europeans believed in God, Christ, saints, and the Bible as
interpreted by the Catholic Church. Any criticism of Catholic views or
tradition, any questioning of its dogma, could elicit dire consequences.
Nevertheless, some men dared to question.

EARLIER DISSENTERS

In the 1300s, John Wycliffe, in England, denounced
corruption in the Catholic Church and questioned its orthodoxy and
compatibility with the Bible. He was posthumously declared a heretic, and by
order of the pope his bones were disinterred, burned, and thrown into the
river.

Later in the century, Jan Hus, in Bohemia, placed emphasis
on the word of the Bible as the sole religious authority. Offered safe conduct
to Constanz to explain his views, he was betrayed and burned there at the
stake. Giralamo Savonarola, from Florence, an Italian Dominican monk, also
spoke out for reform of the Church in the fifteenth century, denouncing the
prevalent corruption and immorality. He and two disciples, still professing
their adherence to Catholicism, were hanged and burned.

The loudest and most energetic opponents of Church abuse
were mostly northern Europeans, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, who reflected the
spirit of humanism and had a great influence on reformers. At the beginning of
the sixteenth century, he condemned the failings of the Church and society as
well as the religious practices of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that had lost
all resemblance to the apostles they were supposed to represent. Nonetheless,
Erasmus remained true to the Catholic faith.

Some European monarchs, tired of seeing their wealth
drained away by the Vatican, succeeded in their demands for the right to make
their own ecclesiastical appointments, but they still resented the flow of
wealth from their states to Rome in the form of
annates
, Peter’s Pence,
indulgence sales, Church court fines (Church courts shared judicial power with
state courts), income from benefices, fees for bestowing the pallium on
bishops, and perhaps even the money citizens paid to the priest for the many
Masses they often had performed for the sake of loved ones languishing in
purgatory.

They also enviously eyed Church lands and could see the
waste of money tied up in vast Church and monastic holdings that could be freed
for expansion. The peasants, too, who shouldered most of the financial burdens,
expressed similar sentiments in occasional riots.

MARTIN LUTHER

An Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, born in 1483 at
Eisleben, Saxony, in eastern Germany, also found fault with the Church’s
policies.

Luther was infuriated by a fellow Catholic, Johann Tetzel,
a Dominican friar who preached to the people that the purchase of a letter of
indulgence from the pope would ascertain the forgiveness of sins and lessen the
time they or their ancestors would spend in the fires of purgatory. A good
salesman, Tetzel vividly described the torments in purgatory with unrestrained
imagination.

On October 31, 1517, Luther, now a professor at the
University of Wittenberg, nailed 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle
church, intending for these points, critical of the Church and the pope, to be
subjects of academic debate. The most controversial points centered on the
selling of indulgences and the Church’s policy on purgatory. He was not trying
to create a new religious movement.

Luther sent a copy of the theses to Archbishop Albrecht of
Mainz, Tetzel’s superior, requesting the Archbishop put a stop to Tetzel’s
high-pressure sales of indulgences. He also sent copies to friends. There were
direct references to reform in the document: thesis 86, for example, referring
to money collected from indulgences supposed to help fund the construction of
Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, asked “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is
to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of
St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?”

Luther directs the posting of
his 95 Theses, protesting against the sale of indulgences, to the door of the
Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, 1830.

Archbishop Albrecht, who held three benefices (contrary to
canon law), acted as chief commissary for the disposal of money from
indulgences. Pope Leo X had granted him a dispensation for the sum of 24,000
ducats that Albrecht raised by borrowing from private bankers. To pay off his
debt, half of the income from indulgences was to go to Albrecht and his bankers
and the other half to the pope. How much Luther knew of the secret and shady
deals at the Vatican may never be known. The fall in revenues worried Albrecht,
and he reported Luther’s interference and questionable orthodoxy to the pope
who at first considered the theses the work of a drunken German. Luther wrote
to the pope that faith alone, not priests, was the way to salvation. Such an
opinion was anathema to the Catholic Church and resulted in his condemnation.

In August 1518, Luther was summoned to Rome to be examined
on his teachings, but his territorial ruler, Elector Frederick III of Saxony,
knowing the journey would not be safe, intervened on his behalf and supported
Luther’s wish to have an inquiry conducted in Germany since he felt it was his
responsibility to ensure his subject was treated fairly. After seeing what had
befallen Jan Hus, who could be sure of what would happen in Rome?

The pope agreed to Frederick’s demands because he needed
German financial support for a military campaign against the Ottoman Empire,
whose forces were poised to march on central Europe, and because Frederick was
one of the seven electors who would choose the successor of the ailing Emperor
Maximilian. The Papacy had a crucial interest in the outcome of this election,
hoping for a dedicated Roman Catholic.

Luther was summoned to the southern German city of Augsburg
to appear before an imperial Diet in October 1518, where he met with Cardinal
Cajetan, who demanded that the monk repudiate his beliefs. Luther refused, and
nothing was accomplished.

By the end of the same year, Luther came to some new
conclusions regarding the Christian notion of salvation. In the view of the Church,
good works were pleasing to God and aided in the process leading to salvation.
Luther rejected this, asserting that people can contribute nothing to their
salvation, which is fully a work of divine grace. His insight that faith alone
provided the road to salvation came to him while meditating on the words of
Saint Paul. For Luther, neither indulgences nor good works played any part in
this. Man could not buy his way into Heaven.

The controversy prompted Johann Eck, a Catholic theologian,
to set up a public debate with Luther in Leipzig in July 1519. Eck attacked
Luther, and the debate over Church authority grew fierce. Eck demanded to know
how God could let the Church go astray. Luther responded by pointing out that
the Greek Orthodox Church did not acknowledge Rome; hence it had already gone
astray. Luther was then charged with taking the point of view of the heretics,
Wycliffe and Hus. He also demanded to know if Luther considered the Council of
Constanz (which had condemned Hus) had made a bad judgment, and Luther affirmed
that councils could err, a heretical statement in itself.

Arguments on other matters such as purgatory and penance
continued for several more days. Convinced that through Christ alone lay the
road to redemption; Luther asserted that he recognized only the sole authority
of scripture. After Luther departed Leipzig, a war of books and pamphlets by
both factions ensued.

Luther’s writings in 1520 included his belief in the
priesthood of all believers, and he tried to convince secular rulers to use
their God-given authority to rid the Church of immoral prelates including
popes, cardinals, and bishops.

Attacks on the holy sacraments followed. A Papal Bull,
issued by Pope Leo X on June 15, 1520, gave Luther 60 days to repent.

On December 10, 1520, sympathetic Wittenberg students lit a
bonfire burning up books of canon law as well as others written by Luther’s
enemies. Luther himself threw a copy of the pope’s Bull into the flames.
Another Papal Bull issued on January 3, 1521 excommunicated Luther and gave
orders to burn all his writings. The aging Holy Roman emperor, Maximilian I,
had meanwhile died in 1519, and Charles V, a rigid Catholic, was now at the
helm of the Empire.