I | INTRODUCTION |
Reformation, great 16th-century religious revolution
in the Christian church, which ended the ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope in
Western Christendom and resulted in the establishment of the Protestant
churches. With the Renaissance that preceded and the French Revolution that
followed, the Reformation completely altered the medieval way of life in Western
Europe and initiated the era of modern history. Although the movement dates from
the early 16th century, when Martin Luther first defied the authority of the
church, the conditions that led to his revolutionary stand had existed for
hundreds of years and had complex doctrinal, political, economic, and cultural
elements.
II | CONDITIONS PRECEDING REFORMATION |
From the Revival of the Holy Roman Empire by
Otto I in 962, popes and emperors had been engaged in a continuous contest for
supremacy. This conflict had generally resulted in victory for the papal side,
but created bitter antagonism between Rome and the German Empire; this
antagonism was augmented in the 14th and 15th centuries by the further
development of German nationalist sentiment. Resentment against papal taxation
and against submission to ecclesiastical officials of the distant and foreign
papacy was manifested in other countries of Europe. In England the beginning of
the movement toward ultimate independence from papal jurisdiction was the
enactment of the statutes of Mortmain in 1279, Provisors in 1351, and Praemunire
in 1393, which greatly reduced the power of the church to withdraw land from the
control of the civil government, to make appointments to ecclesiastical offices,
and to exercise judicial authority.
The 14th-century English reformer John
Wycliffe boldly attacked the papacy itself, striking at the sale of indulgences,
pilgrimages, the excessive veneration of saints, and the moral and intellectual
standards of ordained priests. To reach the common people, he translated the
Bible into English and delivered sermons in English, rather than Latin. His
teachings spread to Bohemia, where they found a powerful advocate in the
religious reformer Jan Hus (John Huss). The execution of Huss as a heretic in
1415 led directly to the Hussite Wars, a violent expression of Bohemian
nationalism, suppressed with difficulty by the combined forces of the Holy Roman
emperor and the pope. The wars were a precursor of religious civil war in
Germany in Luther's time. In France in 1516 a concordat between the king and the
pope placed the French church substantially under royal authority. Earlier
concordats with other national monarchies also prepared the way for the rise of
autonomous national churches.
As early as the 13th century the papacy had
become vulnerable to attack because of the greed, immorality, and ignorance of
many of its officials in all ranks of the hierarchy. Vast tax-free church
possessions, constituting, according to varying estimates, as much as one-fifth
to one-third of the lands of Europe, incited the envy and resentment of the
land-poor peasantry. The so-called Babylonian Captivity of popes at Avignon in
the 14th century and the ensuing Western Schism (see Schism, Great)
gravely impaired the authority of the church and divided its adherents into
partisans of one or another pope. Church officials recognized the need for
reform; ambitious programs for the reorganization of the entire hierarchy were
debated at the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418, but no program gained the
support of a majority, and no radical changes were instituted at that time.
Humanism, the revival of classical learning
and speculative inquiry beginning in the 15th century in Italy during the early
Renaissance, displaced Scholasticism as the principal philosophy of Western
Europe and deprived church leaders of the monopoly on learning that they had
previously held. Laypersons studied ancient literature, and scholars such as the
Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla critically appraised translations of the Bible
and other documents that formed the basis for much of church dogma and
tradition. The invention of printing with movable metal type greatly increased
the circulation of books and spread new ideas throughout Europe. Humanists
outside Italy, such as Desiderius Erasmus in the Netherlands, John Colet and Sir
Thomas More in England, Johann Reuchlin in Germany, and Jacques Lefèvre
d'Étaples in France, applied the new learning to the evaluation of church
practices and the development of a more accurate knowledge of the Scriptures.
Their scholarly studies laid the basis on which Luther, the French theologian
and religious reformer John Calvin, and other reformers subsequently claimed the
Bible rather than the church as the source of all religious authority.
III | NATIONAL MOVEMENTS |
The Protestant revolution was initiated in
Germany by Luther in 1517, when he published his 95 theses challenging the
theory and practice of indulgences.
A | Germany and the Lutheran Reformation |
Papal authorities ordered Luther to retract
and submit to church authority, but he became more intransigent, appealing for
reform, attacking the sacramental system, and urging that religion rest on
individual faith based on the guidance contained in the Bible. Threatened with
excommunication by the pope, Luther publicly burned the bull, or papal decree,
of excommunication and with it a volume of canon law. This act of defiance
symbolized a definitive break with the entire system of the Western church. In
an attempt to stem the tide of revolt, Charles V, Holy Roman emperor, and the
German princes and ecclesiastics assembled in 1521 at the Diet of Worms, and
ordered Luther to recant. He refused and was declared an outlaw. For almost a
year he remained in hiding, writing pamphlets expounding his principles and
translating the New Testament into German. Although his writings were prohibited
by imperial edict, they were openly sold and were powerful instruments in
turning the great German cities into centers of Lutheranism.
The reform movement made tremendous strides
among the people, and when Luther left retirement he returned to his home at
Wittenberg as a revolutionary leader. Germany had become sharply divided along
religious and economic lines. Those most interested in preserving the
traditional order, including the emperor, most of the princes, and the higher
clergy, supported the Roman Catholic church. Lutheranism was supported by the
North German princes, the lower clergy, the commercial classes, and large
sections of the peasantry, who welcomed change as offering an opportunity for
greater independence in both the religious and economic spheres. Open warfare
between the two factions broke out in 1524 with the beginning of the Peasants'
War. The war was basically an attempt on the part of the peasants to better
their economic lot. Their program, inspired by the teachings of Luther and
couched in religious terms, called for emancipation from a number of the
services traditionally claimed by their clerical and lay landlords. Luther
disapproved of the use of his demands for reform to justify a radical disruption
of the existing economy, but in the interests of a peaceful settlement of the
conflict he urged the landlords to satisfy the claims of the peasants. He soon
turned against the peasants, however, and, in a pamphlet entitled Against the
Murdering, Thieving Hordes of Peasants (1525), violently condemned them for
resorting to violence.
The peasants were defeated in 1525, but the
cleavage between Roman Catholics and Lutherans increased. A degree of compromise
was reached at the Diet of Speyer in 1526, when it was agreed that German
princes wishing to practice Lutheranism should be free to do so. At a second
Diet of Speyer, convened three years later, the Roman Catholic majority
abrogated the agreement. The Lutheran minority protested against this action and
became known as Protestants; thus the first Protestants were Lutherans, the term
being extended subsequently to include all the Christian sects that developed
from the revolt against Rome.
In 1530 the German scholar and religious
reformer Melanchthon drew up a conciliatory statement of the Lutheran tenets,
known as the Augsburg Confession, which was submitted to Emperor Charles V and
to the Roman Catholic faction. Although it failed to reconcile the differences
between Roman Catholics and Lutherans, it remained the basis of the new Lutheran
church and creed. Subsequently, a series of wars with France and the Ottoman
Empire prevented Charles V from turning his military forces against the
Lutherans, but in 1546 the emperor was finally free of international
commitments; and in alliance with the pope and with the aid of Duke Maurice of
Saxony, he made war against the Schmalkaldic League, a defensive association of
Protestant princes. The Roman Catholic forces were successful at first. Later,
however, Duke Maurice went over to the Protestant side, and Charles V was
obliged to make peace. The religious civil war ended with the religious Peace of
Augsburg in 1555. Its terms provided that each of the rulers of the German
states, which numbered about 300, choose between Roman Catholicism and
Lutheranism and enforce the chosen faith upon the ruler's subjects. Lutheranism,
by then the religion of about half the population of Germany, thus finally
gained official recognition, and the ancient concept of the religious unity of a
single Christian community in Western Europe under the supreme authority of the
pope was destroyed.
B | Scandinavia |
In the Scandinavian countries the
Reformation was accomplished peacefully as Lutheranism spread northward from
Germany. The monarchical governments of Denmark and Sweden themselves sponsored
the reform movement and broke completely with the papacy. In 1536 a national
assembly held in Copenhagen abolished the authority of the Roman Catholic
bishops throughout Denmark and the then subject lands of Norway and Iceland; and
Christian III, king of Denmark and Norway, invited Luther's friend, the German
religious reformer Johann Bugenhagen, to organize in Denmark a national Lutheran
church on the basis of the Augsburg Confession. In Sweden the brothers Olaus
Petri and Laurentius Petri led the movement for the adoption of Lutheranism as
the state religion. The adoption was effected in 1529 with the support of Gustav
I Vasa, king of Sweden, and by the decision of the Swedish diet.
C | Switzerland |
The early reform movement in Switzerland,
contemporaneous with the Reformation in Germany, was led by the Swiss pastor
Huldreich Zwingli, who became known in 1518 through his vigorous denunciation of
the sale of indulgences. Zwingli expressed his opposition to abuses of
ecclesiastical authority by sermons, conversations in the marketplace, and
public disputations before the town council. As did Luther and other reformers,
he considered the Bible the sole source of moral authority and strove to
eliminate everything in the Roman Catholic system not specifically enjoined in
the Scriptures. In Zürich from 1523 to 1525, under Zwingli's leadership,
religious relics were burned, ceremonial processions and the adoration of the
saints were abolished, priests and monks were released from their vows of
celibacy, and the Mass was replaced by a simpler communion service. These
changes by which the city revolted from the Roman Catholic church were
accomplished legally and quietly through votes of the Zürich town council. The
chief supporters of the innovations, the commercial classes, expressed through
them their independence from the Roman church and from the German Empire. Other
Swiss towns, such as Basel and Bern, adopted similar reforms, but the
conservative peasantry of the forest cantons adhered to Roman Catholicism. As in
Germany, the authority of the central government was too weak to enforce
religious conformity and prevent civil war. Two short-lived conflicts broke out
between Protestant and Roman Catholic cantons in 1529 and 1531. In the second of
these, which took place at Kappel, Zwingli was slain. Peace was made and each
canton was allowed to choose its religion. Roman Catholicism prevailed in the
provincial mountainous parts of the country, and Protestantism in the great
cities and fertile valleys. Substantially the same division has continued to the
present time in Switzerland.
In the generation after Luther and Zwingli
the dominating figure of the Reformation was Calvin, the French Protestant
theologian who fled religious persecution in his native country and in 1536
settled in the newly independent republic of Geneva. Calvin led in the strict
enforcement of reform measures previously instituted by the town council of
Geneva and insisted on further reforms, including the congregational singing of
the Psalms as part of church worship, the teaching of a catechism and confession
of faith to children, the enforcement of a strict moral discipline in the
community by the pastors and members of the church, and the excommunication of
notorious sinners. Calvin's church organization was democratic and incorporated
ideas of representative government. Pastors, teachers, presbyters, and deacons
were elected to their official positions by members of the congregation.
Although church and state were officially
separate, they cooperated so closely that Geneva was virtually a theocracy. To
enforce discipline of morals, Calvin instituted a rigid inspection of household
conduct and organized a consistory, composed of pastors and laypersons, with
wide powers of compulsion over the community. The dress and personal behavior of
citizens were prescribed to the minutest detail; dancing, card playing, dicing,
and other recreations were forbidden; blasphemy and ribaldry were severely
punished. Under this severe regime, nonconformists were persecuted and even put
to death. To encourage the reading and understanding of the Bible, all citizens
were provided with at least an elementary education. In 1559 Calvin founded a
university in Geneva that became famous for training pastors and teachers. More
than any other reformer, Calvin organized the contemporary diversities of
Protestant thought into a clear and logical system. The circulation of his
writings, his influence as an educator, and his great ability in organizing
church and state in terms of reform created an international following and gave
the Reformed churches, as Protestantism was called in Switzerland, France, and
Scotland, a thoroughly Calvinistic stamp, both in theology and
organization.
D | France |
The Reformation in France was initiated
early in the 16th century by a group of mystics and humanists who gathered at
Meaux near Paris under the leadership of Lefèvre d'Étaples. Like Luther, Lefèvre
d'Étaples studied the Epistles of St. Paul and derived from them a belief in
justification by individual faith alone; he also denied the doctrine of
transubstantiation. In 1523 he translated the entire New Testament into French.
At first his writings were well received by church and state officials, but as
Luther's radical doctrines began to spread into France, Lefèvre d'Ètaples's work
was seen to be similar, and he and his followers were persecuted. Many leading
Protestants fled from France and settled in the republic of Geneva or
Switzerland until strengthened in numbers and philosophy by the Calvinistic
reformation in Geneva. More than 120 pastors trained in Geneva by Calvin
returned to France before 1567 to proselytize for Protestantism. In 1559
delegates from 66 Protestant churches in France met at a national synod in Paris
to draw up a confession of faith and rule of discipline based on those practiced
at Geneva.
In this way the first national Protestant
church in France was organized; its members were known as Huguenots. Despite all
efforts to suppress them, the Huguenots grew into a formidable body, and the
division of France into Protestant and Roman Catholic factions led to a
generation of civil wars (1562-1598). One of the notorious incidents of this
struggle was the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in which a large number of
Protestants perished. Under the Protestant Henry IV, king of France, the
Huguenots triumphed for a short time, but as Paris and more than nine-tenths of
the French people remained Roman Catholic, the king deemed it expedient to
become a convert to Roman Catholicism. He protected his Huguenot adherents,
however, by issuing in 1598 the Edict of Nantes, which granted Protestants a
measure of freedom. The edict was revoked in 1685, and Protestantism was stamped
out of the country.
E | The Netherlands |
Protestantism was welcomed in the
Netherlands by the powerful literate bourgeoisie that had developed during the
Middle Ages. Militarily more powerful in this territory than in the German
states, Emperor Charles V attempted to halt the spread of Protestant doctrines
by public burnings of Luther's books and by the establishment in 1522 of the
Inquisition. These measures were unsuccessful, however, and by the middle of the
16th century Protestantism had a firm hold on the northern provinces, known as
Holland; the southern provinces (now Belgium) remained predominantly Roman
Catholic. Most of the Dutch embraced Calvinism, which served as a potent bond in
their nationalistic struggle against their Spanish Roman Catholic overlords.
They revolted in 1568 and warfare continued until 1648, when Spain relinquished
all claims to the country by the terms of the Peace of Westphalia. The former
Spanish Netherlands then became an independent Protestant nation.
F | Scotland |
In Scotland as in other countries the
Reformation originated among elements of the population already hostile to the
Roman Catholic church. The Roman Catholic clergy was held in general disrepute
by the people, and remnants of Lollardy, or the doctrines of John Wycliffe, were
still prevalent. The merchants and the minor nobility were especially active in
furthering the Scottish Reformation as a vehicle for national self-determination
and independence from England and France as well as for religious reform.
Consequently, Protestantism spread rapidly despite repressive measures by the
pro-Roman Catholic Scottish government. The early religious reform movement,
initiated by such leaders as the martyr Patrick Hamilton, was under Lutheran
influence. The actual revolution, accomplished under the leadership of the
religious reformer John Knox, an ardent disciple of Calvin, established
Calvinism as the national religion of Scotland. In 1560 Knox persuaded the
Scottish Parliament to adopt a confession of faith and book of discipline
modeled on those in use at Geneva. The Parliament subsequently created the
Scottish Presbyterian church and provided for the government of the church by
local kirk (Scottish word for church) sessions and by a general assembly
representing the local churches of the entire country. The Roman Catholic Mary,
Queen of Scots, attempted to overthrow the new Protestant church, but after a
7-year struggle, she herself was forced to leave the country. Calvinism was
triumphant in Scotland except for a few districts in the north, in which Roman
Catholicism remained strong, particularly among the noble families.
G | England |
The English revolt from Rome differed
from the revolts in Germany, Switzerland, and France in two respects. First,
England was a compact nation with a strong central government; therefore,
instead of splitting the country into regional factions or parties and ending in
civil war, the revolt was national—the king and Parliament acted together in
transferring to the king the ecclesiastical jurisdiction previously exercised by
the pope. Second, in the continental countries agitation for religious reform
among the people preceded and caused the political break with the papacy; in
England, on the other hand, the political break came first, as a result of a
decision by King Henry VIII to divorce his first wife, and the change in
religious doctrine came afterward in the reigns of King Edward VI and Queen
Elizabeth I. Henry VIII wished to divorce his Roman Catholic wife, Catherine of
Aragón, because the marriage had not produced a male heir and he feared
disruption of his dynasty. His marriage to Catherine, which normally would have
been illegal under ecclesiastical law because she was the widow of his brother,
had been allowed only by special dispensation from the pope. Henry claimed that
the papal dispensation contravened ecclesiastical law and that the marriage was
therefore invalid. The pope upheld the validity of the dispensation and refused
to annul the marriage. Henry then requested the opinion of noted reformers and
the faculties of the great European universities.
Eight university faculties supported his
claim. Zwingli and the German-Swiss theologian Johannes Oecolampadius also
considered his marriage null, but Luther and Melanchthon thought it binding. The
king followed a course of expediency; he married Anne Boleyn in 1533, and two
months later he had the archbishop of Canterbury pronounce his divorce from
Catherine. Henry was then excommunicated by the pope, but retaliated in 1534 by
having Parliament pass an act appointing the king and his successors supreme
head of the Church of England, thus establishing an independent national
Anglican church. Further legislation cut off the pope's English revenues and
ended his political and religious authority in England. Between 1536 and 1539
the monasteries were suppressed and their property seized by the king. Henry had
no interest in going beyond these changes, which were motivated principally by
political rather than doctrinal considerations. Indeed, to prevent the spread of
Lutheranism, he secured from Parliament in 1539 the severe body of edicts called
the Act of Six Articles, which made it heretical to deny the main theological
tenets of medieval Roman Catholicism. Obedience to the papacy remained a
criminal offense. Consequently, many Lutherans were burned as heretics, and
Roman Catholics who refused to recognize the ecclesiastical supremacy of the
king were executed.
Under King Edward VI, the Protestant
doctrines and practices abhorred by Henry VIII were introduced into the Anglican
church. The Act of Six Articles was repealed in 1547, and continental reformers,
such as the German Martin Bucer, were invited to preach in England. In 1549 a
complete vernacular Book of Common Prayer was issued to provide uniformity of
service in the Anglican church, and its use was enforced by law. A second Prayer
Book was published in 1552, and a new creed in 42 articles was adopted. Mary I
attempted, however, to restore Roman Catholicism as the state religion, and
during her reign many Protestants were burned at the stake. Others fled to
continental countries, where their religious opinions often became more radical
by contact with Calvinism. A final settlement was reached under Queen Elizabeth
I in 1563. Protestantism was restored, and Roman Catholics were often
persecuted. The 42 articles of the Anglican creed adopted under Edward VI were
reduced to the present Thirty-nine Articles. This creed is Protestant and closer
to Lutheranism than to Calvinism, but the episcopal organization and ritual of
the Anglican church is substantially the same as that of the Roman Catholic
church. Large numbers of people in Elizabeth's time did not consider the Church
of England sufficiently reformed and non-Roman. They were known as dissenters or
nonconformists and eventually formed or became members of numerous Calvinist
sects such as the Brownists, Presbyterians, Puritans, Separatists, and
Quakers.
H | Minor Sects |
Besides the three great
churches—Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican—formed during the Reformation, a large
number of small sects also arose as a natural consequence of Protestant
repudiation of traditional authority and exaltation of private judgment. One of
the most prominent of the smaller sects, the Anabaptists, found many adherents
throughout Europe, particularly in Germany, where they played an important part
in the Peasants' War. They were persecuted by Catholics as well as by Lutherans,
Zwinglians, and other Protestants, and many of them were put to death. Another
prominent denomination, the Unitarians, included a considerable number of
followers in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland.
IV | RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION |
Despite the diversity of revolutionary
forces in the 16th century, the Reformation had largely consistent results
throughout Western Europe. In general, the power and wealth lost by the feudal
nobility and the Roman Catholic hierarchy passed to the middle classes and to
monarchical rulers. Various regions of Europe gained political, religious, and
cultural independence. Even in countries such as France and the region now known
as Belgium,where Roman Catholicism continued to prevail, a new individualism and
nationalism in culture and politics developed. The Protestant emphasis on
personal judgment furthered the development of democratic governments based on
the collective choice of individual voters. The destruction of the medieval
system of authority removed traditional religious restrictions on trade and
banking, and opened the way for the growth of modern capitalism. During the
Reformation national languages and literature were greatly advanced by the wide
dissemination of religious literature written in the languages of the people,
rather than in Latin. Popular education was also stimulated through the new
schools founded by Colet in England, Calvin in Geneva, and the Protestant
princes in Germany. Religion became less the province of a highly privileged
clergy and more a direct expression of the beliefs of the people. Religious
intolerance, however, raged unabated, and all the sects continued to persecute
one another for at least a century.
See also Counter Reformation.
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