StudySpace: Western Civilizations, 16 e.

Printer friendly page

1. Introduction
1. General considerations -- Europe in 1500
1. Population growth, an expanding economy, and increased urbanization
2. National monarchies created in England, France, Spain, and Poland
3. Resumption of commercial and colonial expansion
4. Suppression of heresy
5. Popular devotion had increased
2. The Lutheran Upheaval
1. Explaining the success of Martin Luther (1483-1546)
1. Why did Luther break with Rome?
1. Peasants hoped Lutheranism would free them from the exactions of their lords
2. Why did ordinary Germans rally to his cause?
1. Towns and princes were trying to consolidate their political independence
3. Why did German princes impose Lutheranism in their territories?
1. Nationalist demands for liberation from foreign popes
4. From reforming the Church to a frontal assault on the Church
2. Luther's quest for religious certainty
1. Luther and his father
2. Sent to the University of Erfurt to study law
3. 1505: Luther enters an Augustinian monastery
4. 1513: Conversion experience -- the quest for spiritual peace
5. The problem of the justice of God
1. How could God issue commands man could not obey?
2. Eternal damnation as punishment
6. The "tower experience"
1. Meditates upon the Psalms ("deliver me in thy justice")
2. God's power lay in His mercy to save sinful mortals through faith
7. Paul's Letter to the Romans (1:17) -- "the just shall live by faith"
8. God's justice does not depend on "good works" and religious ceremonies
9. Humans are saved by grace alone ("justification by faith alone")
10. Piety and charity as visible signs of the faithful
11. Salvation and the Church
1. The Church (sacraments) and the believer (piety and charity) could effect salvation
2. The Church "quantified" the process of salvation
3. The "Treasury of Merits"
4. The indulgence
1. Remission of the penitential obligations imposed by priests
2. Indulgences "earned" by demanding spiritual exercises (11th/12th centuries)
3. Indulgences "granted" with a monetary payment
12. Indulgences seen by many as just another form of "simony" (selling grace in return for cash)
13. "Here I stand; God help me, I can do no other."
3. The Reformation begins
1. Albert of Hohenzolern
1. Debt and simony
2. The bargain with Pope Leo X
1. Grants Albert an indulgence
2. Half the money goes to build St. Peter's Basilica at Rome
3. Half the money goes to Albert
2. Johann Tetzel
1. Hawking indulgences in northern Germany with Fugger support
2. Selling indulgences as "tickets to heaven"
3. October 31, 1517: Luther's Ninety-Five Theses
1. Written in Latin, intended for academic dispute
2. Translated and published in German
3. 1519: public disputation in Leipzig
1. Luther maintains that the pope and all clerics were merely fallible men
2. The highest authority for an individual's conscience was the truth of Scripture
4. Pope Leo charges Luther with heresy
5. Luther's pamphlets of 1520 -- general ideas
1. Justification by faith alone
2. The primacy of Scripture
1. The literal meaning of Scripture takes precedence over Church traditions
3. The "priesthood of all believers"
1. All Christian believers are spiritually equal before God
6. General consequences
1. Good works do not lead to salvation
1. fast, pilgrimages, and the veneration of relics were valueless
2. The dissolution of all monasteries and convents
3. Proposed substituting German for Latin in church services
4. Reduced the number of sacraments from seven to two (baptism and the Eucharist)
5. Denied that the Mass was a repetition of Christ's sacrifice on the cross
6. Proposed the abolition of the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy of popes and bishops
4. The break with Rome
1. The role of the printing press in spreading Luther's message
2. Luther's defiance touched off a national religious revolt against the papacy
1. Popes bribed the cardinals to gain the papacy
2. Moral corruption
3. Popes wage war to gain territory
3. There were no agreements (concordats) between pope and German emperor
4. Princes complained that taxes were too high
5. Many German princes side with Luther as a way to attack Roman influence and corruption
5. The Diet of Worms (1521)
1. Luther handed over to Elector Frederick the Wise for punishment as a heretic
2. Frederick convened a Diet (formal assembly) to give Luther a "fair hearing"
3. Initiative lay with presiding officer, Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor)
4. Would not tolerate attacks on the Church or the Emperor
5. Luther "kidnapped" by Frederick and brought to the castle of the Wartburg
6. Edict of Worms declared Luther an outlaw (never enforced)
6. The German princes and the Lutheran Reformation
1. The new religion prevailed in those areas where princes formally established Lutheranism
2. Rulers sought control appointments to church offices/restrict flow of money to Rome
1. 1487: Innocent VIII consents to the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition
2. 1516: Concordat of Bologna -- French king to choose bishops and abbots
3. The consolidation of the authority of the German princes
4. Free cities adopted Lutheranism in order to establish supreme governing authority
5. Luther and "temporal authority"
1. 1523: On Temporal Authority -- God must be obeyed in all things
2. 1525: Against the Thievish, Murderous Hordes of Peasants
3. The Spread of Protestantism
1. German Imperial Diet (1529) originated the term "Protestant"
2. The Reformation in Switzerland
1. The independence of prosperous Swiss cities
2. Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)
1. Theologically moderate form of Lutheranism
2. Catholic theology and practice conflicted with the Gospels
3. Condemned religious images and hierarchical authority
4. The eucharist was a reminder of Christ's sacrifice, not the real presence of Christ's body (Luther)
1. Prevented Lutherans an Zwinglians from joining forces in a united front
3. Anabaptism
1. Radical Protestant sect
2. Convinced that baptism was effective only if administered to willing adults
3. Men and women are not born into any church
4. Feared by both Catholics and Protestants
5. Münster (1534)
1. Sectarianism and millenarianism
2. The New Jerusalem
3. John of Leyden
4. v. Obligatory religious practices, private property abolished, polygamy permitted
6. Anabaptists persecuted across Europe
1. Menno Simons (c.1496-1561) and the Mennonite sect
4. John Calvin's reformed theology
1. John Calvin (1509-1564
1. Born near Paris, studied law, became a humanist
2. Institutes of the Christian Religion
3. The omnipotence of God
4. v. Man is by nature a sinner
5. Predestination and "the Elect"
6. An active life of piety and morality
2. Calvin and church government
1. Rejected popery outright
2. Eliminated all traces of hierarchy
3. Congregational election of ministers and assemblies of ministers and electors
4. v. "Four bare walls and a sermon"
5. Calvinism in Geneva
1. Calvin begins preaching in 1536, expelled in 1538, returns in 1541
2. Calvinist theocracy
3. The Consistory -- 12 lay elders, 10-20 pastors
4. The supervision of morality
5. Spread of Calvinism
1. John Knox (c.1513-1572) -- brought Calvinism to Scotland (Presbyterians)
2. The Dutch Reformed Church
3. French Huguenots
4. v. English Puritans
4. V. The Domestication of the Reformation, 1525-1560
1. Reform and discipline
1. The problem of enforcing discipline
2. Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498)
1. Campaign of moral reform in Florence (1494-1498)
3. Protestant rulers and godly discipline
4. The depravity of human nature - people must be compelled to be good
5. Luther and the education of children
1. Catechisms to teach children the tenets of their faith
2. All children to read the Bible in the vernacular
3. Protestant family as a "school of godliness"
6. Methods of discipline
1. Counseling, public confession, public penance, exclusion, imprisonment all met with moderate success
7. The necessity of godly authority in church and state
2. Protestantism, government and the family (Germany and Switzerland)
1. Protestant attacks on monasticism and clerical celibacy
1. Resented immunity of monastic houses from taxation
2. Guilds and town governments also interested in increasing control by town elites
3. Reinforced control of individual craftsmen over their households
4. Family as a "school of godliness"
5. New religious ideals for women
1. The married and obedient Protestant "goodwife"
2. Resolving the tension between piety and sexuality
3. Reinforcement of male and female roles
6. Shutting down convents
1. Property handed over to the town
3. Protestantism and control over marriage
1. Increased parental control over children
2. Parents wanted the power to prevent unsuitable matches
3. Luther declares marriage to be a secular matter only
5. The English Reformation
1. Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) and the break with Rome
1. 1527: Henry seeks a divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn
2. Appealed to Rome for an annulment of his marriage
1. If the pope agreed, doubt would be cast on the validity of all papal dispensations
2. It would also provoke the wrath of Charles V, Catherine's nephew
3. 1531: Henry declares himself to be "protestor and supreme head" of the church in England
4. 1534: the Act of Supremacy
5. Consequences
1. Pilgrimages and relics were prohibited
2. English Church remained Catholic in organization, doctrine, ritual, and language
3. 1539: the Six Articles of the faith
2. Edward VI (r. 1547-1553)
1. Came to the throne at nine years of age
2. Altered ceremonies of the English Church
1. Priests were permitted to marry
2. English was substituted for Latin
3. The veneration of images was abolished
4. New articles of faith were drawn up repudiating all sacraments except baptism and communion
5. Justification by faith alone
3. Mary Tudor (r. 1553-1558) and the restoration of Catholicism
1. Reversed Edward's religious policies
2. Many were burned at the stake for refusing to give up their Protestantism
3. Asked Parliament to vote a return to papal allegiance
4. "Bloody Mary"
4. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement
1. Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603)
1. Daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn
2. The new Act of Supremacy (1559)
1. Repealed Mary's Catholic legislation
2. Prohibited foreign powers from exercising authority within England
3. Declared herself "supreme governor" of the English church
4. Retained some Catholic vestiges
3. 1562: the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith
4. Protestantism and English nationalism: God has chosen England for greatness
6. Catholicism Transformed
1. The Catholic Reformation
1. First phase (c. 1490s)
1. A movement for moral and institutional reform within the religious orders
1. Papacy showed little interest in this
2. Influence of northern humanists (Erasmus and More)
1. Encouraged the laity to lead lives of simple but sincere religious piety
2. Second Phase (c. 1530s)
1. More aggressive phase of reform
2. New style of papal leadership
1. "Excessive" holiness
2. Accomplished administrators
3. Reorganized papal finances
3. Third Phase: the Council of Trent (1545-1563)
1. Reaffirmed Catholic doctrine
1. Good works declared necessary for salvation
2. The seven sacraments
3. Papal supremacy
2. Bishops and priests were forbidden to hold more than one spiritual office
3. Establishment of theological seminaries
4. Established the Index of Forbidden Books (1564)
4. St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556)
1. Spanish noble wounded in battle (1521) became a "spiritual solider of Christ"
2. Ecstatic visions
3. The Spiritual Exercises
1. Practical advice on how to master the will
2. A program of meditations on sin and the life of Christ
4. The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) founded at Paris in 1534
1. Formally constituted as a holy order by Pope Paul III (1540)
2. A company of soldiers sworn to defend the faith
3. Eloquence, persuasion, and instruction
4. v. The suppression of individuality
5. Proselytizing Christians and non-Christians alike
6. Establishing schools
7. Became an international movement
5. Counter-Reformation Christianity
1. Defending and revitalizing the faith
2. Spreading literacy and intense concern for acts of charity
3. New importance given to religious women
1. St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
2. The Ursulines and the Sisters of Charity
7. Conclusion: The Heritage of the Protestant Reformation
1. The Reformation and the Renaissance
1. Christian humanist influences
1. Exposing abuses
2. Close textual study of the Bible
2. Luther and Erasmus
1. Erasmus had no sympathy with Lutheran principles
2. Most humanists believed in free will and that human nature was somehow good
2. Consequences
1. Increasing power of Europe's sovereign states
2. The growth of German cultural nationalism
3. Protestantism and the role of women

 

Section Menu

Organize

• Study Plan
• Chapter Summary
• Chapter Outline
• Focus Questions
• Progress Report

Learn

• iMaps & GeoQuiz
• Map Worksheets
• Chapter Quiz
• Documents Quiz
• Flashcards
• Chrono-Sequencer

Connect

• Research Topics
• MapPlayer
• Images
• Documents