The Magisterial Reformation. Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin are considered Magisterial Reformers because their reform movements were supported by.THE REFORMATIONTHE REFORMATIONEurope's Search For Stability. One of the greatest of all revolutions was the. Reformation. This stormy, often. Christians of Western Europe into Protestants and. Catholics. So far- reaching were the results of the separation that the. Reformation has been called a turning point in history. It ushered in the Modern. Age because, once the people's religious unity was destroyed, they began to. From the diversity of those. Background of the Revolt. Christian Denominations Where did all the Christian Denominations come from? At the start of the 1. Western Europe had only one religion, Roman. Catholicism. The Catholic church was rich and powerful and had preserved. Europe's classical culture. However, despite General Councils called to impose. Churchmen criticized the administration of the church and began to doubt some. For example, the church insisted that it alone had the. Bible for the people. As early as the. 1. John Wycliffe, an English priest and teacher at Oxford. University, declared that people had the right to read the Bible and interpret.
Despite protests by the church, followers of Wycliffe. Bible from Latin into English in 1. Wycliffe's ideas spread into Bohemia, where Jan Hus. The work of Wycliffe and Hus greatly. Saxon monk named Martin Luther. Luther Sparks Revolt in Germany. What is Protestantism? The Diet voted to end the. Luther became the leader of the Reformation in Germany. For some years he had. He especially attacked the monk Johann Tetzel for deceiving the. In 1. 51. 7 the angry Luther wrote a list of 9. Wittenberg. Luther developed new ideas opposed to the church. He rejected the authority. Wycliffe and Hus before him- -set up the Bible as the sole. Christian truth. He denied that priests had any power that laymen did. He declared that the vows taken by monks and nuns were not binding and. He rejected the celibacy of the clergy. Of. the seven sacraments Luther kept only two- -baptism and the Lord's Supper. Eucharist). The Reformation Spreads. When Pope Leo X condemned Luther's teachings in a bull, or papal decree. Luther subsequently burned the document and a copy of the church's canon law. Luther. declared he would not do so until he was . Philipp Melanchthon. Luther's colleague at the University of Wittenberg, became the chief theologian. Reformation in Germany. Johannes Reuchlin of Heidelberg enlarged the. Hebrew and Greek. Knowledge of these. Bible in its original forms. From. Johannes Tauler of Strasbourg had come the mystic idea of . Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great. Dutch forerunner of Luther, spurred the study of the early church through his. Greek New Testament and writings of the church fathers. In England John Colet worked for reform within the church. The uneasy. political situation in Europe also helped to extend the religious revolt because. Charles V. Finally. Widely different groups- -from princes to peasants- -hailed him. Gradually, however, they all saw that he was not. By that time, however, the Reformation had spread beyond the. Luther. Memorable Events in the Reformation. Although the Reformation swept through all Western Europe, the most dramatic. Germany. It was in. Wittenberg, Saxony, that Luther posted his list of propositions (9. A year later he was condemned by the. Diet of Worms. In 1. German nobles, encouraged by Luther, put down the. Peasants' Revolt. Another great event in the Reformation occurred in 1. Protestant was first used formally. In Germany the Diet of Speyer decreed that. Catholic church be. The Lutheran minority in the Diet signed a protest against that. From this protest comes the modern term for the religious. Protestantism The fury and suffering of war added to the turmoil of the Reformation through. Thirty Years' War in 1. Time and again Charles V fought to. Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic church against the claims of. France and the German princes. But he needed their aid as he battled the Muslims. Germany. Then he fought the Schmalkaldic War. Although he defeated the Protestants, he could not turn back the. Reformation. Peace treaties, however, followed the religious wars. The most important of. Peace of Augsburg in 1. By that treaty Charles V was at last. German state the right to choose. Catholicism or Lutheranism. The state's religion was still imposed by the ruler. Germany. The Lutheran faith spread chiefly in northern Germany and in Scandinavia. The. Swiss were influenced early by Huldrych Zwingli, but like the French and Dutch. Protestantism from a movement led by John Calvin a generation. From this grew the zealous work of John Knox, who brought Presbyterianism. Scotland. The English Reformation began in 1. Henry VIII broke with. Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The. introduction of Protestant doctrine in the Church of England, however, did not. Edward VI. The Catholic Counter- Reformation. Catholic church authorities underestimated the extent of the Reformation at. Soon, however, they saw. The church took action. From 1. 54. 5 to 1. Council of Trent issued decrees. The most. vigorous program was set up by the Society of Jesus, commonly called the. Jesuits. This order was started in 1. Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish. The Jesuit order was sanctioned by. A succession of able popes during the latter half of the 1. Counter- Reformation. Their conscientious. By the close of the 1. Roman Catholic church had regained the. Protestantism. Europe. Christianity along almost the same. Martin Luther - New World Encyclopedia. Martin Luther (November 1. February 1. 8, 1. Christianity, subsequently known as the Protestant Reformation. Essentially, Luther sought to recover core New Testament teachings that he claimed had been obscured by corruption and worldly traditions of medieval Catholicism. In particular, Luther opposed the idea, popularized by certain indulgence- sellers of his day, that one could buy salvation through monetary donations to the Church. Ever against this, Luther held that human beings could be saved by faith alone (sola fides). He came to this understanding over the course of a long and tortuous personal struggle. Having resolved his inner conflicts by means of an . He was of peasant stock though his father had risen from the peasantry to own a coppermine. Two major influences characterized Luther’s upbringing. One was the severity of his parents and early teachers. Their punishments, which included beatings, may have been typical of the historical period in which he was raised. Nevertheless, Luther’s anxiety and fear of God as a severe judge was at least in part the result of his experience at home and in school. Luther, himself, later stated that the harshness and severity of the life he led compelled him later to run away to a monastery and become a monk. The second important influence upon Luther’s upbringing was education. His father was ambitious for Martin and desired that he pursue a career in law. Having studied at schools in Mansfield, Magdenburg, and Eisenach, Luther entered the University of Erfurt in 1. In 1. 50. 2, he received the degree of bachelor of philosophy and in January 1. The University of Erfurt was self- consciously modern, a leading light of the humanist movement in Germany, enthusiastically committed to the study of the Bible and church fathers in the original Greek and correspondingly critical of medieval scholastic theology. Luther entered the law school at Erfurt in May 1. Then, in July, he suddenly abandoned his legal studies and entered a monastery of Augustinian friars. Struggle to find peace with God. According to tradition, a near brush with death during a fierce thunderstorm was the immediate cause of Luther entering the cloister. He is reputed to have cried out, . Anne help me! I will become a monk. At a deeper level, Luther took monastic vows in order to cope with a pervasive sense of personal sinfulness and accompanying fear of an all- powerful, all- righteous God. Unfortunately, Luther’s monastic sojourn accentuated rather than resolved his anxiety. Brother Martin fully dedicated himself to life in the monastery, the effort to do good works to please God, and to serve others through prayer. Yet peace with God eluded him. He devoted himself to fasts, flagellations, long hours in prayer and pilgrimage, and constant confession. The more he tried to do for God, it seemed, the more aware he became of his sinfulness. His superior, Johann von Staupitz, advised him to study the mystics, following their path of surrender to the love of God. However, on self- examination, Luther found what he felt for God was not love but hatred. Luther’s spiritual crisis had thereby driven him to commit blasphemy, which for him was the unpardonable sin. Evangelical breakthrough. Rather than counseling him out of the Augustinian order, Staupitz took the bold step of ordering Luther to study for his doctor’s degree, to begin preaching and to assume the chair of Bible at the recently established University of Wittenberg. By serving others, Staupitz reasoned, Luther might best address his own problems. In 1. 50. 7, Luther was ordained to the priesthood. In 1. 50. 8, he began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. Luther earned his bachelor's degree in biblical studies on March 9, 1. Sentences by Peter Lombard, the main textbook of theology in the Middle Ages, in 1. On October 1. 9, 1. Martin Luther became a doctor of theology, more specifically Doctor in Biblia, and became university professor of Bible. He offered exegetical lectures on Psalms (1. Romans (1. 51. 5- 1. Galatians (1. 51. Hebrews (1. 51. 7- 1. In 1. 51. 2, he was appointed director of studies in his Augustinian cloister, and in 1. In 1. 51. 1, he began preaching within the cloister and in 1. Wittenberg parish church. Luther’s . However, a turning point came in 1. Romans, in particular the passage on the . Luther previously regarded God’s righteousness as an impossible standard by which human beings were punished. Now, based on his immersion in Psalms and Romans, he came to see that the righteousness of God was a gift to be received. Christ, through the cross, had taken on all human iniquity and desolation. To be righteous, one simply needed to accept this. Luther, following Saint Paul, affirmed that one who is righteous through faith . This is known as the . Erikson (1. 99. 3) identifies this experience as one that transformed Luther from a . This transformation may have been spiritual and psychological, but also physical—since until this experience Luther had suffered from constipation and urinal problems. However, he was also struggling with his father's disappointment as well as with his hatred for the justice of God. Erikson says that the revelation in the tower occurred after Luther had a dream of an early death, and that it represented recovery from a deep depression. His subsequent redefinition of the relationship between God and Man . Erikson says that Luther underwent the type of . He refers four times in his writing at this time to Augustine's' conversion. Of course, faithful Christian believers often find this sort of . Internally, gratitude rather than compulsion served as the source of motivation for his work. Externally, Luther’s breakthrough set him on a collision course with medieval Catholicism. The indulgence controversy. In 1. 51. 0, Luther went on a pilgrimage to Rome. This visit contributed significantly to his growing disillusionment with the power that the Catholic Church exercised over the people. He saw hundreds of people spending the little money they had to buy indulgences (remission from sin) for their deceased relatives. Initially, he did not perceive the challenge that his view of salvation presented to the Church. However, he did see the inconsistency between justification by faith alone and some of the major tenets of medieval scholastic theology. In September 1. 51. Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, in the form of 9. God on the basis of their works. Luther’s position was favorably received by colleagues at the university but did not spark any wider debate. Later that year, Luther wrote another set of 9. His 9. 5 theses, which attacked the practice of selling indulgences, produced a firestorm which ignited the Protestant Reformation. Controversy over Luther’s 9. Indulgences were a time- honored component of the Catholic penitential system. Technically, an indulgence was a remission of temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been forgiven. According to Catholic theology, the sacrament of baptism not only removes all the guilt from sin but also all penalties attached to sin. In the sacrament of penance the guilt of sin is removed, and with it the eternal punishment due to mortal sin; but there still remains the temporal punishment required by Divine justice, and this requirement must be fulfilled either in the present life or in the world to come, i. Purgatory. The Church possesses the extra- sacramental power to remit these punishments through indulgences based on the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints. The ancient and early medieval church emphasized the spiritual conditions necessary for granting indulgences. However, in the later medieval period, the selling of indulgences became an important source of Church revenue. By Luther’s time, the situation had become extreme. Luther’s attack on indulgences, occasioned by a Church- wide campaign to raise funds for the completion of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, galvanized opponents of the practice and threatened the financial interests of the Pope and church. The 9. 5 Theses were quickly translated into German, widely copied and printed. Within two weeks they had spread throughout Germany, and within two months throughout Europe. This was one of the first events in history that was profoundly affected by the printing press, which made the distribution of documents easier and more widespread. For his part, Luther naively sent a copy of his theses to the archbishop of Mainz who was using his share from indulgence- selling in Germany to obtain a dispensation from the Pope allowing him to hold two bishoprics. The archbishop, who forwarded the theses to Rome, lodged formal charges against Luther in early 1. The breach widens. Pope Leo X initially dismissed Luther as . Luther traveled incognito to Heidelberg, having been warned of the possibility of assassination along the road. However, to his surprise, he was well- received and returned as if from a triumph. This emboldened Luther to question the primacy of the Roman Church and the power of excommunication. He then affirmed that popes and councils might err and that the only final authority was scripture. Soon afterwards, Luther was ordered to appear in Rome to answer charges of heresy. Due to the intervention of Luther’s territorial ruler, Fredrick the Wise, the proceedings were transferred to Germany. Luther’s interview with Cardinal Cajetan, the papal legate, at Augsburg, was inconclusive. Luther refused to recant, wrote that the cardinal was no more fitted to handle the case than . The German electors, though preferring one of their own, were reconciled to accept the head of one of the great powers, either Francis I of France or Charles V of Spain. However, the pope objected to them both on the grounds that either’s election would upset the balance of power upon which the church’s security rested. Instead the pope favored Fredrick the Wise, Luther’s territorial lord.
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