Chapter 14 Beginnings of Revolutionary European Civilization, 1300-1650

Section 5 The Reformation

Both the questioning spirit of the Renaissance and the new discoveries of the Age of Exploration helped to shatter the certainties of life, death, and the means of salvation that most Europeans had found in the church. Some Christians began to seek a more personal, inward faith as a means of achieving salvation, while others continued to rely on the outer guidance of the church and the priesthood. As the church became mired in the struggle for earthly power and wealth, a new cry went up for reform. In the 1500s and 1600s this cry broke apart the unity of western Christendom as some people challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and others called for reforms that would restore the purity of the Christian faith. As those who left the Catholic Church clashed with those who remained, the old medieval world was swept away. In its place a new, increasingly secular sense of European identity emerged.

The Protestant Reformation

Erasmus and other humanists, who openly complained about corruption in the church, were not alone in their views. Many Europeans were troubled by the ignorance and moral laxity of many among the clergy. They also increasingly feared and resented the power of the popes, who raised armies, conquered territory, and ruled the church more like territorial princes than priests. Above all, perhaps, they wanted reassurance that they had the means to achieve salvation and eternal life after death.

Indulgences. People also resented church efforts to raise money. Among the most despised practices was the selling of indulgences. Since the days of Pope Gregory the Great, Catholics had believed that after dying people went to a kind of halfway house called purgatory, where their souls worked off the sins they had committed while alive. Indulgences were pardons issued by the pope that people could buy in order to reduce their time in purgatory. In the early 1500s, Pope Leo X[xc][xc] approved the sale of indulgences in Germany to raise money for the construction of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. For Martin Luther,[xci][xci] a monk in the German town of Wittenberg,[xcii][xcii] this was the last straw.

Luther's Revolt. On October 31, 1517,[xciii][xciii] Luther posted a list of 95 theses, or statements, on the door of the church at Wittenberg Castle. In these statements he challenged the sale of indulgences and other papal practices and stated his own views on doctrine. Although the action was not unusual—this was the way church scholars generally put forward ideas for debate—Luther's attack struck a chord throughout Germany. His action began what is known as the Protestant Reformation, because its supporters protested the Catholic Church.

            BIO  Martin Luther was born in 1483[xciv][xciv] in Eisleben,[xcv][xcv] a mining town in Saxony.[xcvi][xcvi] His parents were fairly prosperous and saw to it that their son received a good education. Following his father's wishes, Luther entered the university at Erfurt[xcvii][xcvii] to study law. On a trip back to Erfurt from visiting his family, he was caught in a violent thunderstorm. When a blinding bolt of lightning struck close to him Luther cried out: “Saint Anne, help! I will become a monk!” Surviving the storm, he kept his promise and entered an Augustinian monastery.

            Luther had always been troubled by the question of how he could overcome his sins and enter heaven. One evening, as he studied the Bible, the answer came to him: salvation could be achieved through faith in God alone; no acts or works that people performed would assure them salvation. Luther later wrote, “As the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works.”[xcviii][xcviii] He came to believe that Christian practices must come from the Bible alone. All others should be abolished.

            Luther had not initially intended to break away from the Roman Catholic Church. All he wanted was reform. His actions at Wittenberg, however, came at a sensitive time. Many German princes resented the influence of the clergy. The church owned vast tracts of the best land throughout the German states, land that could not be taxed by the rulers. Moreover, Germany was not a united kingdom like England or France; thus the princes found it difficult to put pressure on the church to prevent abuses. When Luther's defiance became public, therefore, all over Germany people gathered to support him, including many of the princes.

The Diet of Worms. Pope Leo responded to Luther’s claims by branding him a heretic and ordering him excommunicated. To enforce the pope’s ruling, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ordered Luther to the city of Worms[xcix][xcix] in 1521[c][c] to appear before the Imperial Diet, a council of rulers in the empire.  Luther was shown a pile of his writings. When asked if he would take back what he had written he replied: 

“My conscience 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. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.” 

The full Diet refused to take action, since many of the princes supported the rebellious monk. However, the emperor himself, supported by the remaining members of the Diet, condemned Luther as an outlaw. Quickly, Luther's patron, the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony,[ci][ci] whisked him out of town and hid him in Wartburg Castle.

            Although officially condemned as a heretic, Luther was quickly hailed as a new religious leader by many German knights who opposed not only the wealthy bishops but also the rule of the emperor. In 1522[cii][cii] these knights openly revolted against both emperor and pope. Three years later a revolt also broke out among the peasants. The rebellions were all crushed with Luther’s approval. Remembering the fate of Jan Hus, Luther knew that if he lost the support of the princes, who feared social upheaval, his reforms would not survive. However, the revolts made clear a growing dissatisfaction with Rome. 

Luther's Message. Meanwhile, in Wartburg, Luther began to translate the New Testament from Greek into German. Translation of the Bible into the language of ordinary people meant that the scriptures could be heard and easily understood by even the simplest peasants, not just by those who knew Latin or Greek. Luther also soon began to develop a whole new doctrine based on the idea that no individual needed the help of a priest or anyone else to have a direct relationship with God. This doctrine became known as the “priesthood of all believers.”

            The implications of this idea were profound. Without the need for a priesthood, there was really no need for a church hierarchy supported by huge landed estates. This appealed to many German princes, who resented the taxes and property the church enjoyed. They were also delighted to have an issue on which they could assert their independence from the emperor. Soon Lutheranism had become the new state religion of most of northern Germany.

            In 1525,[ciii][ciii] Luther married a former nun, Katharina von Bora,[civ][civ] illustrating his belief that clergy should be free to marry. Through the rest of his life he continued to write essays, pamphlets, and hymns. As the results of his protest became clear, however, he lamented that it had resulted in the destruction of the unity of Christendom. In his old age he actually became more conservative than many younger followers. Nevertheless, when asked on his deathbed in 1546[cv][cv] whether he still believed in his ideas about Christianity, he answered simply, “Yes.”

The Spread of Protestantism

The Reformation spread rapidly throughout northern Europe, but not all reformers agreed with Luther's doctrine. Many humanists, for example, believed that people had some degree of free will to make choices in life, and rejected Luther's view that they could not change the pattern God had created for them. As this and other issues were debated, many Protestants founded their own small religious groups, or sects, across northern Europe. Each of these small groups had its own ideas about salvation. Some relied on the believer’s direct communication with God and set little store by the Bible. Others abolished private property, living with all goods owned in common.

Calvinism. This fragmentation threatened chaos, and in the next generation[cvi][cvi] a new Protestant movement in Switzerland[cvii][cvii] injected strict discipline into the Reformation. The pioneer in this movement was a reformer named Huldrych Zwingli.[cviii][cviii] Zwingli was killed in battle in 1531,[cix][cix] defending his faith, but his ideas were taken up and made systematic by John Calvin,[cx][cx] a French Protestant. Inspired by Saint Augustine, Calvin preached the doctrine of predestination—the idea that God knew who would be saved even before people were born, and therefore guided those destined for salvation. Human beings, Calvin believed, were not worthy of salvation but depended solely on God's grace. In effect, Calvin, like Luther, rejected the Renaissance idea that individuals were basically good and could improve themselves.

            In 1536,[cxi][cxi] Calvin settled in Geneva,[cxii][cxii] where he and his followers, called Calvinists, soon came to control the city government. Convinced that people were by nature sinful, Calvinists passed laws regulating many aspects of the daily lives of citizens. Laws prohibited dancing, card playing, showy dress, and profane language. Violators were often severely punished. Rather than being seen as a burden, however, this strictness was the heart of Calvinism’s appeal. It gave its followers a sense of mission and discipline. Calvinists felt they were setting an example, making the world fit for the “elect,” those who had been chosen for salvation.

The Church of England. Meanwhile, in England a protest was developing against the Roman Catholic Church for very different reasons. King Henry VIII had defended the church against Luther, calling his ideas “false and wicked.” For this the pope granted Henry the title "Defender of the Faith." But in 1529[cxiii][cxiii] Henry asked the church to grant him a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon.[cxiv][cxiv] Catherine had born Henry a daughter, Mary, but had been unable to bear a son to secure the royal succession. Pope Clement VII[cxv][cxv] refused the divorce. Infuriated, Henry rejected the pope’s authority, proclaimed himself head of the church in England, and forced the English bishops to accept his authority. The church in England quickly granted the divorce.

            Henry soon grew dissatisfied with his new wife, Anne Boleyn.[cxvi][cxvi] She, too, bore him a daughter—Elizabeth—rather than a son to secure the succession. Within a thousand days of the marriage, Henry had Boleyn executed for treason on trumped-up charges. Still hoping for a male heir who could prevent a recurrence of the previous century’s civil wars, Henry eventually married six times in all. Only his third wife, Jane Seymour,[cxvii][cxvii] bore a son, Edward.[cxviii][cxviii]

            Since Henry's break with Rome was more for personal than religious reasons, he made little attempt to rid the Church of England of Catholic rituals. He took other steps, however, that made a reconciliation with Rome unlikely. An extravagant king, he was usually in need of funds. To raise money, he closed the Catholic monasteries and convents across the land and sold most of the vast estates to the nobles. This action committed not only the king but most of his nobles to maintaining the break with Rome, since a reconciliation might force them to return their new lands.

The Catholic Reformation

By 1560[cxix][cxix] England, Scotland,[cxx][cxx] Sweden,[cxxi][cxxi] Denmark,[cxxii][cxxii] and parts of Germany, France, Poland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands all had large Protestant populations. Realizing the need for reform, Catholic leaders had launched a major reform movement known as the Catholic Reformation, or Counter-Reformation. Between 1545[cxxiii][cxxiii] and 1563 church leaders met in the Italian city of Trent[cxxiv][cxxiv] to redefine the doctrines of the Catholic faith. Among the reforms introduced by the Council of Trent were a ban on the sale of indulgences and church offices and new rules for the conduct of the clergy.

            Above all, the council rejected the Protestants’ emphasis on self-discipline and individual faith. In answer to Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith, the Council of Trent observed: “For faith, unless hope and charity [good works] be added to it, neither unites man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body.”[cxxv][cxxv] The church could help believers achieve salvation, the council argued, and rich display, mystery, and magnificent ceremonies were ways to inspire faith. For millions, indeed for the majority of Europeans, this in fact proved to be a more appealing form of Christian practice than the austerity of Protestantism.

            Catholics also founded several new religious orders to help win back support for the church. In Italy in 1535, for example, a group of pious women founded the Ursulines, a religious order focused on religious education for women. Perhaps the most successful and influential of the new orders, however, was the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The Jesuit order was founded in 1534 by Ignatius de Loyola, a Basque nobleman and ex-soldier, and approved by the pope in 1539.[cxxvi][cxxvi] Loyola, the Father General, ran the Jesuits like a military organization, emphasizing above all obedience to the church: 

“Putting aside all private judgement, we should keep our minds prepared and ready to obey promptly and in all things the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.”[cxxvii][cxxvii] 

            The Jesuits, like the Ursulines, concentrated on education as a means of combating the Reformation. They established missions, schools, and universities. With such effective organizations, the Catholic Church began to regain ground against Protestantism. Between 1570 and 1650, for example, Protestant control over Europe fell from about 40 percent to about 20 percent.[cxxviii][cxxviii]

            To help in the struggle against Protestant doctrines, the church also revived the Inquisition, and the Index Expurgatorius, a list of books that the church warned people not to read on peril of losing their souls. Protestants also enacted similar measures, as they too tried to enforce conformity to their new theology. As each side sought to reestablish certainty in the means necessary for salvation, intolerance grew and dissenters on both sides suffered torture and death.

The Wars of Religion

As people and nations divided along religious lines, Europe entered a period of more than 100 years of almost continuous warfare. The wars left much of northern Europe, especially Germany, in ruins.

Germany. In 1531[cxxix][cxxix] Protestant princes and free cities in Germany joined together for mutual protection against attack from the forces of the leading Catholic ruler, the emperor Charles V. In 1547,[cxxx][cxxx] Charles defeated the Protestant princes in battle, but was unable to break their power. With their treasuries emptied by the years of warfare, in 1555[cxxxi][cxxxi] Charles and the princes agreed to compromise in the Peace of Augsburg.[cxxxii][cxxxii] Under the terms of the treaty, each prince would choose the religion of his own territory. Subjects must either conform to the religion of the prince, or move to some other territory. The agreement settled the issue of religion for the moment, but created a patchwork of Protestant and Catholic states across Germany, where neighbors kept an uneasy peace.

Spain. Tensions between Protestants and Catholics also erupted into warfare elsewhere in Europe. For example, Calvinists in the northern provinces of the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule. After many years of bloody fighting, the Protestants finally gained a truce with Spain in 1609.[cxxxiii][cxxxiii] The seven northern provinces formed the independent nation of the Netherlands, while the southern provinces remained Spanish possessions.

            Perhaps more serious was the conflict between Spain and England. In 1588[cxxxiv][cxxxiv] King Philip II of Spain[cxxxv][cxxxv] attempted to invade England. He hoped to depose the Protestant Queen Elizabeth and reclaim England for the Roman Catholic Church. The Spanish sent a huge fleet of about 130 ships, known as the “Invincible Armada,” against England. As the Spanish fleet lay at anchor in Calais, however, the English set ships on fire and sent them drifting toward the Spanish warships. In the confusion that followed, the small, fast English ships had an advantage over the larger, slower Spanish vessels. The Spanish ships fled, only to be lost in heavy storms in the North Sea. Less than half the Armada returned to Spain. The defeat of the invasion fleet ensured England's future as a Protestant nation.

France. Meanwhile, France also descended into religious civil war. At one point, Calvinists controlled nearly a third of the country, but the French kings of the Valois dynasty disliked the idea of Protestants, or Huguenots as they were called, within their realm. A series of civil wars during the late 1500s split the country apart. The Huguenots continued to resist even after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572,[cxxxvi][cxxxvi] when fanatical rioters in Paris and other cities butchered about 20,000 Protestants around the country.[cxxxvii][cxxxvii]

             When Henry III,[cxxxviii][cxxxviii] the last Valois[cxxxix][cxxxix] king, died without a male heir, the religious civil war became a dynastic struggle as well. Eventually the civil war ended in 1598,[cxl][cxl] when Henry IV,[cxli][cxli] the first king of the new Bourbon[cxlii][cxlii] dynasty, signed the Edict of Nantes.[cxliii][cxliii] The edict called a truce between Catholics and Protestants. It allowed the Huguenots to retain control of the cities they occupied at the time. Henry himself had once been a Calvinist leader but had converted to Catholicism in order to assume the throne, reportedly observing, “Paris is well worth a mass!” He spent the rest of his reign trying to heal the wounds of civil war and to reestablish the unity of France.

The Thirty Years' War. Possibly the most brutal and destructive of the religious wars in Europe was the Thirty Years' War, which began in 1618[cxliv][cxliv] in the city of Prague[cxlv][cxlv] when Protestant rebels tossed two representatives of the Holy Roman emperor out of a castle window. News of the event quickly spread and the province erupted in general rebellion. The Holy Roman emperor called on Catholic allies in Germany and Spain to help put down the revolt. The war rapidly spread throughout Germany.

            The Thirty Years’ War turned much of Germany into a wasteland. Soldiers plundered towns and killed anyone suspected of supporting the enemy. An eyewitness reported the brutality of the sack of the city of Magdeburg[cxlvi][cxlvi] in 1631: 

“Then there was naught but beating and burning, plundering, torture, and murder. . . . In this frenzied rage, the great and splendid city that had stood like a fairy princess in the land was now, in its hour of direst need and unutterable distress and woe, given over to the flames and thousands of innocent men, women, and children, in the midst of a horrible din of heartrending shrieks and cries, were tortured and put to death in so cruel and shameful a manner that no words would suffice to describe, nor no tears to bewail it.”[cxlvii] 

            As the war progressed, other factors besides religion sparked hostilities. German princes who wanted to remain independent of the emperor's authority often became Protestants. National and dynastic rivalries also played a role. Catholic France, for example, which feared the power of the Habsburg emperors, usually sided with Protestants. Gustavus Adolphus,[cxlviii][cxlviii] the ambitious king of Sweden, saw a chance to carve out an empire, and tried to make himself leader of the Protestant cause.

            The war finally came to an end in 1648[cxlix][cxlix] when, out of sheer exhaustion, the warring parties signed the Treaty of Westphalia.[cl][cl] After three decades of bloodshed, the settlement of Westphalia did little more than reaffirm the right of rulers to choose the religion of their territories. Since the Reformation had begun in 1517, millions of people had lost their lives in religious warfare. In the Thirty Years’ War alone, scholars estimate that as much as one third of the German population died. In their struggle to achieve a sense of spiritual certainty by forcing everyone to conform to a single pattern, Europeans made life as physically insecure as ever.

Section 4 Review

IDENTIFY and explain the significance of the following:

indulgences

Martin Luther

Protestant Reformation

Charles V

Lutheranism

sects

predestination

Calvinists

Catholic Reformation

Council of Trent

Jesuits

Peace of Augsburg

Huguenots

Edict of Nantes

Treaty of Westphalia.

LOCATE and explain the importance of the following:

Wittenberg

Worms

Geneva

Prague

1. Main Idea.  What factors led to the Protestant Reformation?

2. Main Idea.  In what ways did Catholics respond to the Protestant Reformation?

3. Religion.  How did religion become a political issue in the 1500s and 1600s?

4. Writing to Explain.  Explain the consequences of Henry VIII's decision to break away from the Roman Church and form the Church of England.

5. Synthesizing.  In what ways did the division of Christianity lead to violence? Why do you think people were willing to kill in the name of religion? What other similar examples can you think of in history or from the present?

Chapter 14 Review

Reviewing Terms

From the following list, choose the term that correctly matches the definition.

Peace of Augsburg

standard of living

Peace of Westphalia

indulgences

Great Schism

humanism

1. intellectual movement focusing on the glorification of humankind and emphasizing classical learning

2. pardons from the pope to cut down on the time a person would have to spend in purgatory

3. agreement of 1555 between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Protestant princes stating that each ruler would have the power to determine the religion in his or her own territory

4. the level at which people exist in society based on their ability to obtain needed and desired goods and services

5. division in the Roman Church, caused by the French king's establishment of the papacy at Avignon

Reviewing Chronology

List the following events in their correct chronological order.

1. Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral.

2. The Hundred Years' War breaks out.

3.  Participants in the Thirty Years' War agree to the Peace of Westphalia.

4. The Spanish armada is defeated by the English.

5. Niccolò Machiavelli writes The Prince.

Understanding the Main Idea

1. What were the causes of the Protestant Reformation?

2. How did the Renaissance spread from Italy to other parts of Europe?

3. How did humanism change as it spread to northern Europe?

4. Why was Italy a logical place for the Renaissance to begin?

5. What were the consequences of the Thirty Years' War?

6. How did new technology affect the fighting during the Hundred Years' War?

Thinking Critically

1. Synthesizing.  How did the breakdown of church authority lead to a growing sense of insecurity in Italy during the 1300s and 1400s, and in other parts of Europe in the 1500s and 1600s?

2. Assessing Consequences. Why might a person argue that the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 only set the stage for the catastrophic Thirty Years' War?

3. Analyzing. How did religion become very much a political issue in Europe between 1350 and 1648?

Renaissance Painting: Realism and Perspective

The story goes that as an admirer stood gazing at an early Renaissance painting, he reached up to brush a fly away from the canvas. He was pleasantly shocked, however, to find that the fly was in fact part of the painting! The artist, Giotto, had succeeded in painting a scene so lifelike that it gave viewers the impression that they were looking at a panorama of reality. Painting during the Renaissance marked a dramatic change in the way artists perceived their subjects. In the medieval period, the dominant theme of art was the glory of God and His authority over man. As humanists reestablished human beings as the central figures in life on earth, artists placed humanity at the center of Renaissance painting.

            The technique artists used to achieve realism in Renaissance painting is known as perspective. Perspective involves the placement of objects and figures in a painting to appear as they would be seen if they were real—some close, some farther away, some bathed in light, others hidden in shadow. Artists often made detailed mathematical calculations of the exact proportions of different parts of the human body in order to make more realistic figures.             Although Renaissance painting in northern Europe shows many resemblances to Italian painting, the two also illustrate the differences between northern and southern artists and their societies. Many Italian paintings, such as Michelangelo's Last Judgment , depict human figures based on the models of Greek and Roman art. Athletic figures with rippling muscles demonstrate the artist's admiration of the human form. In Dürer's Four Apostles, however, the figures seem more like sixteenth-century Europeans than Greek gods. The Four Apostles  also reflects the ideas of Christian humanism, by depicting the early fathers of the Christian Church and by emphasizing the importance of the Bible as the Word of God as the basis for Christianity.

The religious warfare following the Reformation shocked the people of Europe, Christians and non-Christians alike. Many Jews hoped that the Reformation would bring about a new spirit of tolerance among religious groups, but the brutality shown by Protestants and Catholics left them greatly disappointed. A Jewish observer in Poland described the waves of violence and offered his own explanation: 

“We have both heard and seen accounts printed in Christian books of the great acts of vengeance perpetrated in England in these times. For even to this very day the priests of the Papist faith of Rome and all who believe in it and are drawn to it are subjected to a cruel death. The reverse is the case in Spain and France, where a brutal death is meted out to those who believe in and follow the instructions of Martin Luther. The reports received make one's hair stand on end. All this has come to pass on account of their sins. For in the three kingdoms mentioned, much Jewish blood was spilled through libellous accusations, oppressive measures and forced conversions, until they expelled the Jews from their lands and none of them remained.”[cli]