weight loss cardiff answers:
All this would not have happened, I suppose:
Only one church existed in Western Europe in the year 1500. The Roman Catholic Church. At the top was the Pope in Rome who literally governed everything. The Protestant Reformation resulted with the split in Western Christendom. These three things greatly affected the Reformation: The Renaissance, both Italian (in how secularization was beginning to dominate thought) and Northern (how Church Reform led eventually to Reformation by Luther); The Printing Press (which w/o the reformation would not have happened); and last the rise of powerful nation-states headed by a monarch. Now reformation is not how this guy Luther changed everything, Reformation is more about how the Church and its ideals split within different people, Reformation is Complex, Intriguing, and Compelling (It would make a good fiction book).
The Church was in disarray on the eve of Reformation. For example the Black Death struck the population of Europe. Growing Anticlericalism: Disrespect towards the clergy. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a perfect example of Anticlericalism. And in addition to that the schism as mentioned before. Other problems was that the clergy was becoming increasingly poorly educated. Simony: the selling of church offices, was another problem.
Enter Martin Luther: The central figure of this story. Luther (1483-1546) had his initial beef concerning indulgences. Indulgences began during the crusades, and offered at this early time of the crusades to the knights who were fighting for Christendom. Indulgences is the idea that if you gave the church some money, in essence if you bought indulgences from the church, once you died, your soul would spent less time in purgatory and go faster to Heaven. The Papacy sold this to raise church funds. Johann Tetzel, the seller even had a phrase for it: “As soon as gold in the basin rings, the soul to heaven rings.”
Luther got pissed at this. He posted up his 95 theses at Wittenberg Castle, in which he denounced the selling of indulgences. Part of his anger was that German money was going to Rome. Thanks to the printing press, the 95 theses were printed all over Germany. In Address to the Christian Nobility, he said that secular gov’t had the right to reform the church. Now Luther wasn’t stupid. To a degree he sucked up to the nobles because he knew that if the nobles went with him, that would mean that his ideas, and later his reformation would be successful, because it had support from the VIPs. In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther attacked the sacraments. Finally in Liberty of a Christian Man, he hit it: salvation by faith alone. In response Pope Leo X issued a Bull (papal decree, not the other kind of bull…) and demanded that Luther recant. Luther took the Bull, went outside and publicly burned it, he no longer accepted papal authority, and the pope excommunicated him. In 1521 he went before the Diet of Worms, when asked by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor,
“Do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors that contain?”
Luther responded,
“Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscious is captive to the Word of God; I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me, Amen.”
Luther was banned by the Empire. During his time as an “outlaw” he translated the Bible into German.
Luther went from 7 to 2 sacraments, he only left baptism and communion. He rejected Transubstantiation, died away with monasticism and celibacy of the clergy. And he himself left the monastery (duh!), ran off with some girl, got married, and had several children.
Within 30 years of his 95 theses the Reformation reached N. Germany, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, parts of the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland. Luther and his church were social conservatives and they did not pose a threat to the existing social order. Luther was willing to subordinate his church to the authority of German princes.
Another reason why Reformation was successful: When Max, HRE (Holy Roman Emperor) died his grandson and heir, Charles V became HRE. He was fighting with France’s Francis I. Charles had huge commitments, because he was also ruler of Spain and its colonies in America, of the Netherlands, of Southern Italy, and of the Hapsburg possessions of Austria.
In 1555 Charles V was forced to sign the Peace of Augsburg. This treaty granted legal recognition for Lutheranism in those territories ruled by a Lutheran Leader, while a Catholic Leader remained Catholic.
