"As at Augsburg, one only question was raised. Luther had broken the laws of the Church. He had taught doctrines which the Pope had declared to be false. Would or would he not retract? As at Augsburg, he replied briefly that he would retract when his doctrines were not declared to be false merely but were proved to be false. Then but not till then. This was his answer, and his last word. There, as you understand, the heart of the matter indeed rested. In those words lay the whole meaning of the Reformation. Were men to go on forever saying that this or that was true, because the Pope affirmed it? Or were the Pope's decrees thenceforward to be tried like the words of other men, by ordinary laws of evidence1."Events of the Reformation and CounterReformation
James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905] p. 92
The success of the Protestant Reformation was not inevitable; indeed, reformers who seriously challenged the supremacy of the papacy had, in the end, lost every battle with the church for well over 500 years. To believe that Martin Luther, a poor, albeit well-educated, monk from a rural backwater in the middle of nowhere, would arise to lead a successful challenge, not only to the papacy, but also to the Holy Roman Emperor himself, was a completely ludicrous idea.
Nonetheless, the ideas which undergirded Luther's theology had been circulating in Europe in one form or another for centuries. The corruption of the church was still unchecked; indeed, with the selling of indulgences, the corruption had even worsened. Popes, now humanists in their own right, alternately tried unsuccessfully to reform the church and wallowed in luxury and sexuality in their papal palaces.
The most recent theological challenge to the church had come from Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca. 1469-1536) -- educated, polished, sophisticated, worldly, urbane -- who understood, as did so many of his time, that the church was corrupt and needed to be reformed. Anything other than a martyr to a cause, or even the leader of the loyal opposition2, Erasmus, did, however, from time to time, turn his pen on the defects of the church, and began to arouse the conscience of Europe. In his satire of half-trained priests, In Praise of Folly (1509), Erasmus skewered the pompous posturings of uneducated priests and inquisitors. Yet, because he never challenged the authority of the pope or attacked the theological ideas from which papal power was derived, he was allowed to remain a faithful son of the church. Indeed, the more worldly popes, sons of the Renaissance and humanists themselves, enjoyed his wit and wisdom in more earthly matters. In a sense, a freedom to speak one's mind -- as long as one maintained the supremacy of the pope and the church in all earthly matters -- was developing among the educated .
Protestant Reformation
Men's lives where changing, straining the bonds which held society together. The printing press, invented about 1450, enabled ideas to circulate relatively cheaply and quickly. The influx of Catholic Christians to western Europe fleeing the sack of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 brought the great classic writings of Roman and Greek writers into prominence. The first voyages of discovery to Africa, America, and the Orient showed men alternate ways of organizing society and viewing the world. Feudalism was giving way to capitalism, trade was expanding, the importance of cities was on the rise at the expense of the countryside. Humanism had superseded scholasticism as the dominant philosophy in the universities. The rise of nation-states with relatively strong central governments removed courts of justice from the hands of local barons to magistrates in far-away cities. Gold was flooding into Spain from the New World. Even women were agitating for a more honored position in society.
At times, the Protestant Reformation would be as much a conflict over modernization, class, nationalism, political expediency, and changing culture as about religious dogma, freedom from church taxes, the desire to be free of papal control, and the corruption in the church. For instance, in Germany3 , the supporters of the Roman Catholic church, the established order, included the emperor, most of the princes, and the higher clergy. The supporters of the Protestant church, those desiring changes to the system, included the North German princes, the lower clergy, the commercial classes, impoverished minor nobility who hoped to become wealthy by confiscating church property, and large sections of the peasantry, who believed the new religion offered religious and economic independence. In Switzerland, while the chief Protestant supporters again came from the commercial classes in the towns such as Basel, Bern, and Zürich, the peasantry in the rural areas continued to support the papacy.
The two antagonists during the beginning of the German Protestant Reformation were Martin Luther (1483-1546), on the side of the reformers, and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, (1500-58) on the side of the established powers.
Martin Luther's childhood4 and youth give no hint that in his maturity, he would lead a rebellion against the established church. Obedient first to his father, Hans, a copper miner in Mansfeld, later to his religious superiors, Luther received a sound primary and secondary education. In 1501, at the age of 17, Luther enrolled at the University of Erfurt, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1502 and a master's degree in 1505. Intending to study law, as his father wished, in the summer of 1505, suddenly aware of the fleeting nature of life after several brushes with death, Luther abandoned his studies, sold his books, and entered the Augustinian monastery in his hometown, Erfurt, surprising his friends and appalling his father. Observing the rules imposed on a novice, Luther did not find the peace in God he had expected. Nevertheless, Luther took his vows as a monk in the fall of 1506, was selected for the priesthood, and was ordained in 1507.
Asked by his superiors to study theology in order to become a professor at one of the many new German universities, in 1508 Luther was assigned to the new University of Wittenberg (founded in 1502) to give introductory lectures in moral philosophy. Receiving his bachelor's degree in theology in 1509, he returned to Erfurt where he taught and studied (1509-1511). In November 1510, he went to Rome to perform the customary religious duties. Shocked by the worldliness of the Roman clergy, upon his return to Erfurt, he was sent to Wittenberg, again, and asked to study for the degree of doctor of theology, which he received in 1512. He took over the chair of biblical theology, which he held until his death.
Papal emissary Johann Tetzel (1465?-1519), whose motto was "as soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs", arrived in the city to sell indulgences to finance the building of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, indulgences that he claimed, by some accounts, were so efficacious that they would get someone out of purgatory for "raping the Virgin Mary herself." Appalled by the concept of purchasing God's pardon for sins, Martin Luther posted 95 Thesis, ideas which he was willing to debate, on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, sparking the great German Protestant Reformation. Luther's spirited defense of his 95 Thesis lead to an investigation by the Roman Curia: his teachings were condemned on June 15, 1520 and he was excommunicated in January 1521.
In an earlier time, in a place where the Inquisition had long been established, that would have been the end of the matter; Luther would have gone to the stake. Instead, Luther was summoned to appear before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in April 1521, where he was asked before the assembled secular and ecclesiastical rulers to recant. Believing strongly in the supremacy of the Scriptures over church teachings, legend has it that he firmly refused using the words, "Here stand I, I cannot do otherwise." On points of doctrine, Luther would never yield unless he was convinced that his interpretation of Scripture was wrong. Again, the church, contrary to earlier custom, allowed Luther to depart in spite of his condemnation, by both the emperor and the Diet. On his return home, Luther was "waylaid by highwaymen" and, for his safety, kept in hiding at Wartburg Castle by his prince, the elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony. To fill the long solitary hours, Luther began his translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into German, a seminal contribution to the development of a standard German language. He would later (1532) translate the Old Testament into German from Hebrew.
Charles, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V5 (1519-58), Charles I, King of Spain (1516-56), was born in Ghent (now in Belgium) on February 24, 1500. His mother, Joanna the Mad, was a daughter of Ferdinand V of Castile and Isabella I; his father, Philip I, King of Castile, was a son of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I; and his great-grandfather was Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy.
Charles inherited vast properties in Europe from several people: Burgundy in 1506 from his father, the vast Spanish kingdom in 1516 from his paternal grandfather Ferdinand, and the hereditary Hapsburg lands in central Europe from his great-grandfather, Maximilian, in 1519. His landholdings included the Spanish kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, the Spanish Netherlands (today Belgium and the Netherlands), Spanish conquests in America and Africa, the Italian states of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and the hereditary Hapsburg lands. Bribing the electors, in 1519, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor; he was crowned king of Germany in Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen, Germany), on October 23, 1520, extending his influence over many of the German lands.
Gold flowed into Spain in the sixteenth century from the New World, which should have enriched the crown, but the money was quickly spent on luxuries, retainers, and foreign wars. Yet, as we saw, the Spanish Golden Age was short-lived, in large part due to the devastation wrought on the country by the Inquisition.
The vast extent of his landholdings alarmed many other monarchs in Europe. France, essentially surrounded by lands controlled by Charles V, would remain an opponent throughout his lifetime. Similarly, the papacy, alternately friend and foe, would challenge Charles for control of his Italian lands throughout his lifetime. At the same time, the Ottoman Turks, under the leadership of Suleiman the Magnificent, would march to the very gates of Vienna itself in 1529 from their base in the Balkans. Almost throughout his entire reign, Charles was either at war with the French, Italians, or Turks, or attempting to subdue the Protestant rebellion in the German lands. He could never decisively defeat any of his foes for as soon as he began to be occupied in one area, he was attacked in another.
The Inquisition had never been instituted in Germany for a number of reasons. The German lands, unlike France and Spain, did not have a strong central government; indeed, at the time of the Reformation, there were about 300 independent German city-states. Even if a few of these independent city-states had wanted to institute the Inquisition, there was little profit in it to either the church or the Inquisitor. The church owned about one-third of German lands; and ecclesiastics were not anxious to invite Inquisitors into their midst who could one day come to control, not only their subjects, but the church leaders themselves.
So, as the Protestant Reformation in Germany began, there was not an established Inquisition there to deal with heretics and local ecclesiastics dealt with the heretics as best as they could. On the other hand, German nobles had learned from the episode of Jan Hus a century earlier and did not trust the church to abide by any promises it made for they knew the church did not keep faith with those who "did not keep faith with God." The preoccupation of the Catholic monarchs with their wars with one another together with the initially timid response of the church to the challenge posed by Martin Luther, the political sophistication of the secular nobility vis-a-vis the church, nationalist rebellions within Charles' inherited lands, and the youth and inexperience of the Holy Roman Emperor during the first crucial years of the Reformation (Charles was 17 when Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door in Wittenberg) would enable the Protestant Reformers to become so thoroughly entrenched in their local areas that they were impossible to dislodge when the papacy finally grew alarmed enough to try to subdue them through the use of force.
A timeline at the end of this page illustrates the interrelationship of these forces as well as the spread of the Reformation throughout Europe and the actions of the Roman Catholic Church's CounterReformation to halt the spread of Protestantism.
Counter-Reformation
As time passed, the Roman Catholic church concluded that the Protestants would not be so easy to defeat. To meet the challenges posed by the Protestant movement, the Catholic church instituted a CounterReformation, partly an internal reform of the Catholic church, partly a renewed reliance on the time-tested techniques of fire and sword. Historians generally consider the time period from about 1542 with the official reinstitution of the Inquisition to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to encompass the Catholic CounterReformation.
The Council of Trent, meeting in three phases between 1545 and 1563, issued a series of formal statements of Catholic dogma and decrees to reform the worst abuses inside the church. The Council affirmed the seven sacraments (including transubstantiation, purgatory, the necessity of the priesthood, and justification by works as well as by faith), clerical celibacy, monasticism, the efficacy of relics and indulgences, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the saints. The Church claimed the sole right to interpret the Bible and, in the process of interpretation, tradition would be equal to Scripture. The council issued decrees requiring episcopal residence, limiting the number of benefices an individual could acquire, reforming some monastic orders, and providing for the education of the clergy through the creation of a seminary in every diocese. But as with previous attempts to reform the system from within, many of the old abuses continued and the church continued to rely on the Inquisition to enforce the new decrees, initiating another bloody period in the church's history. - Galileo would be condemned for heresy for claiming that the earth revolved around the sun in 1633, almost a hundred years later.
The CounterReformation inaugurated a series of civil wars, in France, the Netherlands, in the Bohemian lands, and in Germany, pitting Catholic against Protestant subjects. With the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, each individual prince could determine which religion would prevail in his domains. The idea was still widespread that to avoid disturbances of the peace, the populace had to be of a common culture and religion. With the Peace of Westphalia, the individual was not granted religious freedom or the freedom of his own conscience.
In the Protestant lands, each individual was encouraged to read the Bible for himself, leading to higher literacy, the start of mass education, and the spread of printing ands seizure of church lands enriched the crown.
Timeline6.
1483 Martin Luther born
1500 Charles born
1516 Charles becomes Charles I, King of Spain
1517 Luther posts 95 Thesis to church door in Wittenberg, Germany
1518 Huldreich Zwingli vigorously denounces the sale of indulgences and abuses of the clergy in Switzerland.
1519 Charles becomes Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
1521 Diet of Worms where Luther defended of his doctrines and was condemned by Charles, Luther's writings prohibited, but sold well nonetheless .
1523 Frenchman and leader of a group of mystics, Lefèvre d'Étaples translates the entire New Testament into French
1523-15257. Through quiet, but quite legal, votes of the Zürich town council, under Zwingli's leadership, Catholicism was all but driven from the city by burning religious relics, abolishing ceremonial processions and the adoration of the saints, releasing priests and monks from their vows of celibacy, and replacing the Mass by a simpler communion service.
1524 - 1526 German Peasant's War8. Peasants, wanting a return to old ways, looted and burned castles and monasteries, used some of Luther's ideas to justify their actions. Luther emerges from Wartburg Castle to restore order and urges the princes to crush the rebellion, which they did. The peasants lost even more of their traditional rights, while the princes set up state churches where the services were in German and clergy were permitted to marry supported by confiscated Catholic lands.
1524 - 1525 War between Charles, Henry VIII of England, and Charles of Burbon against Francis I, King of France. Francis taken prisoner
1526 Francis signed Treaty of Mardid in January, relinquishing his claim to Italy and Burgundy
1526 Ferdinand I, Charles' brother, claims throne of Hungry
1526 Diet of Speyer agreed that German princes wishing to practice Lutheranism would be free to do so
1527 Francis, aided by Henry VIII and Pope Clement VIII, renews war against Charles
1527 Pope captured, Rome sacked
1526-1529 Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent march from the Balkan, through Hungry to the gates of Vienna.
1529 Peace of Cambrai ends war between Charles and Francis. Burgundy ceded back to France.
1529 A second Diet of Speyer, dominated by Roman Catholics, abrogated the earlier agreement. Lutherans protesting this action and became known as Protestants, a term that was subsequently extended to include all the Christian sects which revolted against Rome.
1529 Turks laid siege to Vienna
1529 Swedish brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri successfully advocated the adoption of Lutheranism as the state religion which was accepted with the support of Gustav I Vasa, King of Sweden, and the Swedish diet.
1530 Pope crowns Charles Holy Roman Emperor, the last coronation of a German emperor by a pope, in Bologna.
1530 German scholar and religious reformer Melanchthon writes a statement of the Lutheran tenets, known as the Augsburg Confession and submits it to the Emperor at the Diet of Augsburg.
1529, 1531 Two short-lived conflicts between Protestant and Roman Catholic cantons in Switzerland. The peace treaty allowed each canton to choose its religion.
1531 Protestant princes formed the Schmalkaldic League9, a defense association of German princes, including the future elector of Saxony, John Frederick, and the landgrave of Hesse, Philip the Magnanimous.
1532 Peace of Nuremberg signed between Charles and his Protestant subjects
1532 Luther's translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew was published
1534 Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547) established the Church of England as the official Anglican church and breaks with the Roman Catholic church in response to his excommunication by the Pope. Because Henry's successor, his son Edward, was the youngest of the three children borne to him by his successive wives, the religious policies of Edward's regents retained the Protestant religion for if they had instituted the Catholic religion, Mary, not Edward, would have been considered the legitimate successor to Henry. Edward would have been declared a bastard. When Edward died, Mary, daughter of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, rose to the English throne, declared her mother's divorce null and void, and instituted the Catholic religion, purging her domains of Protestant supporters. Mary died after a brief reign (about 5 years) and Elizabeth I ascended to the throne. Elizabeth's mother, Anne Bolyn, was married to Henry while Catherine of Aragon was still alive. In order to be considered a legitimate child of Henry's, Elizabeth once again declared Henry's divorce from Catherine valid and returned England to the Protestant religion. Unlike her predecessors, Elizabeth extended some religious tolerance to her subjects, as long as they were politically loyal to her and to England.
1534 Pope Paul III (r. 1534-49) selected Pope
1535 Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, in the service of Charles, leads an expedition to Africa and defeats the Turks at Tunis
1536 Authority of the Roman Catholic bishops in Denmark and lands subject to Denmark (Norway and Iceland) is abolished by a national assembly held in Copenhagen. Christian III, King of Denmark and Norway, invites Johann Bugenhagen, German religious reformer and Luther's friend, to create a Danish national church based on the Augsburg Confession.
1536 - 1539 Roman Catholic monasteries are suppressed and church property is confiscated in England.
1536 French Protestant John Calvin (1509-1564) flees to Geneva
1536-1538 War between Charles V and France ends with the Treaty of Nice in 1538, granting Francis most of the Piedmont region of Italy.
1538 Charles formed an ultimately unsuccessful anti-Turkish alliance with Pope Paul III and the city-state of Venice.
1539 The English Parliament passes the Act of Six Articles, which made it heretical to deny the main theological tenets of medieval Roman Catholicism. Lutheran were burned because their theology differed from that of Medieval Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholics burned because they supported the Pope, not the King of England, as the head of the church.
1542 John Calvin writes the Heidelberg Catechism
154210. Inquisition reestablished. The first lists of Forbidden Books were published.
1542 - 1544 War between Charles and France resumed, ended with the Treaty of Crépy, which largely reaffirmed the earlier Peace of Cambrai.
1546 - 1547 Charles moves against and defeats the Schmalkaldic League. Charles transfers the electoral privileges and electoral lands from the Saxe-Wittenberg branch of the House of Saxony to Maurice, duke of Saxony11, for his support against the Schmalkaldic League.
1545 Paul III calls the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to deal with doctrinal and disciplinary questions raised by the Protestants.
1546 Martin Luther dies.
1547 English Parliament repeals the Act of Six Articles.
1547 Ferdinand signed a 5-year treaty with the Turks
1549 The Anglican Book of Common Prayer in the vernacular was issued.
1551-1552 Magdeburg, a great stronghold of Protestantism, falls to Maurice, duke of Saxony, fighting for Charles. Maurice deserts Charles and allies himself with King Henry II of France. Charles flees before the Protestants. The House of Saxony would, henceforth, remain in the Protestant camp.
1552 Through his brother Ferdinand, Charles concludes the Peace of Passau, by which the Lutheran states were allowed the exercise of their religion.
1552 A new edition of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, with 42 articles of creed, is adopted.
1552 French King Henry II seized the bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Verdun. An attempt by the Emperor to reconquer Metz failed.
1553 Mary I (1516-1558), Queen of England (r.1553-1558), attempts to restore Roman Catholicism as the state religion.
1555 Charles signs the Peace of Augsburg by which each of the rulers of the approximately 300 German states could chose between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and force the chosen faith upon the ruler's subjects, granting Lutheranism official recognition
1555 Charles resigns the Netherlands to his son, Phillip
1556 Charles resigns Spain, to his son Philip II
1556 Beginning of the Wars of the Spanish Netherlands where the modern day Belgium, Holland, and the United Netherlands fought for their independence from Spain. Eventually all would become free: Belgium remained Catholic, Holland and the United Netherlands, united to form today's Netherlands, mostly Protestant.
1558 Charles abdicates the imperial crown in favor of his brother, Ferdinand I, and retires to the monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste in Estremadura, Spain.
1558 On September 21, Charles dies.
1558 The Church of England again becomes the official religion in England under Elizabeth I.
1559 Calvin founds a university in Geneva
155912. The first edition of the Index of Forbidden Books is published during the papacy of Pope Paul IV.
1559 Delegates from 66 Protestant churches in France meet at a national synod in Paris to draw up a confession of faith and rule of discipline based on those practiced at Geneva.
1560 John Knox (c.1514-1572) persuades the Scottish Parliament to adopt a confession of faith and book of discipline modeled on those in use at Geneva. The Scottish 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.
1562 Beginning of the French wars of religion.
1568 Embracing Calvinism as a form of nationalism, the Dutch revolted against their Spanish Roman Catholic overlords. Warfare continued until 1648, when, in the Peace of Westphalia, the former Spanish Netherlands became an independent Protestant nation.
1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Abut 20,000 Protestants murdered in coordinated attacks throughout France.
1593 Henry of Navarre, a popular Protestant leader, next in line for the French throne converts to Catholicism.
1598 Henry of Navarre, now Henry IV of France, issues the Edict of Nantes, granting religious liberty to his subjects, ending the French wars of religion that began in 1562.
1618-1648 Thirty Years War which encompassed most of the countries of Europe but was mainly fought on German soil was the last of the great European wars of religion between Protestant and Catholic forces.
164813. On October 24, the Treaty of Westphalia ended a century of European religious warfare. In this treaty, the Holy Roman Emperor was virtually stripped of power by acknowledging the independence of each German state. Further, each German prince was allowed to pick the religion for his lands. The Reformed (Calvinist) faith, in addition to the Lutheran faith, was recognized as an acceptable religion. The Habsburg lands, southern Europe, and western Europe would remain Catholic, Protestants could retain their acquired lands. Germany had been devastated by the war, loosing about one-third of her population to war, famine, and plague, as well as, loosing much of its livestock, capital, and trade. Displaced persons, refugees, and mercenaries, roamed the countryside, seizing what they could.
End Notes
References
References:
James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905]
Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.