Reformation

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.

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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.

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