The Reformation

The providence of restoration centering on the medieval papacy did not bear fruit due to the secularization and decadence of the Church leadership.

Consequently, as the people advocated humanism, they also rebelled against the ritualism and rules of the Church which were constraining their free devotion.

They fought against the stratified feudal system and papal authority which deprived them of autonomy. They protested the medieval view that faith required unquestioning obedience to the dictates of the Church in all areas of life, which denied them the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience based on their own reading of the Bible. They also questioned the other-worldly and ascetic monastic ideal which devalued the natural world, science and the practical affairs of life. Out of these grievances, many medieval Christians revolted against the rule of the papacy.

Accordingly, as medieval Europeans sought to realize the external aspirations of their original nature, they also began to pursue its repressed internal aspirations. They called for the revival of the spirit of early Christianity, when believers zealously lived for the Will of God, guided by the words of Jesus and the apostles.

This medieval movement to revive Hebraism began with John Wycliffe (1324-1384), a professor of theology at Oxford University, who translated the Bible into English. He asserted that neither the papacy nor the priesthood could determine the standard of faith, but only the Bible itself. Demonstrating that many of the dogmas, ceremonies and rules of the Church had no basis in Scripture, he denounced the priesthood for its decadence, exploitation of the people and abuse of power.

The Protestant Reformation thus had roots in fourteenth-century England, when papal dignity was at a low point. Similar movements for reform also arose in fifteenth-century Bohemia and Italy, but they were crushed and their leaders executed. To raise funds to build St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo X began selling indulgences, which Catholic doctrine affirmed would remit the penalty for sin due in the next life.

When this indulgence was proclaimed in Germany in 1517, a movement to protest this abuse ignited a fuse which exploded in the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther (1483-1546), a professor of biblical theology at the University of Wittenberg.

The flames of the Reformation grew strong and soon spread to Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), to France as led by John Calvin (1509-1564), and into such nations as England and the Netherlands.

The wars of religion which swirled around the Protestant movements continued for more than one hundred years until 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War. Protestantism triumphed in Northern Europe, while among the peoples of Southern Europe, the Roman Catholic church solidified its influence.

The Thirty Years’ War between Protestants and Catholics was fought on the soil of Germany. However, this conflict was not simply a religious war. More than that, it was a civil and political conflict to decide the fate of the German states.

The Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded this war, was both a religious settlement that established an accommodation between the Protestants and Catholics and a political settlement that resolved international territorial disputes among such nations as Austria, France, Sweden, and Spain.