Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe.
The Reformation is usually dated from Martin Luther's publication of the Ninety-five Theses in 1517, which gave birth to Lutheranism. Prior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars.
In general, the Reformers argued that justification was based on faith in Jesus alone and not both faith and arising charitable acts, as in the Catholic view. In the Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed view, good works were seen as fruits of living faith and part of the process of sanctification which was distinct from justification. Protestantism also introduced new ecclesiology. The general points of theological agreement by the different Protestant groups have been more recently summarized as the three solae, though various Protestant denominations disagree on doctrines such as the nature of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with Lutherans accepting a corporeal presence and the Reformed accepting a spiritual presence.
The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The initial movement in Saxony, Germany, diversified, and nearby other reformers such as the Swiss Huldrych Zwingli and the French John Calvin developed the Continental Reformed tradition. Within a Reformed framework, Thomas Cranmer and John Knox led the Reformation in England and the Reformation in Scotland, respectively, giving rise to Anglicanism and Presbyterianism. The period also saw the rise of non-Catholic denominations with quite different theologies and politics to the Magisterial Reformers : so-called Radical Reformers such as the various Anabaptists, who sought to return to the practices of early Christianity. The Counter-Reformation comprised the Catholic response to the Reformation, with the Council of Trent clarifying ambiguous or disputed Catholic positions and abuses that had been subject to critique by reformers. The consequent European wars of religion saw the deaths of between seven and seventeen million people.
Terminology
In the 16th-century context, the term mainly covers four major movements: Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Radical Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Since the late, historians often use the plural of the term to emphasize that the Reformation was not a uniform and coherent historical phenomenon but the result of parallel movements.Anglican theologian Alister McGrath explains the term "Reformation" as "an interpretative category—a way of mapping out a slice of history in which certain ideas, attitudes, and values were developed, explored, and applied". Historian John Bossy criticized the term Reformation for "wrongly implying that bad religion was giving way to good," but also because it has "little application to actual social behaviour and little or no sensitivity to thought, feeling or culture." A French scholar has noted "no Reformation term is indisputable" and that "Reformation studies has revealed that 'Protestants' and 'Catholics' were not as homogenous as once thought."
Specific terminology includes:
- "Protestant Reformation" excludes the Renaissance and early modern Catholic reform movements.
- "Magisterial Reformation" has a narrower sense, as it refers only to mainstream Protestantism, primarily Lutheranism, Anglicanism and Calvinism, contrasting it with more radical ideas such as the Anabaptists'.
- "Catholic Reformation" is distinguished by the historian Massimo Firpo from Counter-Reformation. In his view, Catholic Reformation was "centered on the care of souls..., episcopal residence, the renewal of the clergy, together with the charitable and educational roles of the new religious orders", whereas Counter-Reformation was "founded upon the defence of orthodoxy, the repression of dissent, the reassertion of ecclesiastical authority".
- Some historians have also suggested a persisting "Erasmian Reformation."
The historian Peter Marshall emphasizes that the "call for 'reform' within Christianity is about as old as the religion itself, and in every age there have been urgent attempts to bring it about". Charlemagne employed a "rhetoric of reform". Medieval examples include the Cluniac Reform in the, and the 11th-century Gregorian Reform, both striving against lay influence over church affairs. When demanding a church reform, medieval authors mainly adopted a conservative and utopian approach, expressing their admiration for a previous "golden age" or "apostolic age" when the Church had allegedly been perfect and free of abuses.
When considered as a historical time period, both the starting and ending date of the Reformation have always been debated. The most commonly used starting date is 31 October 1517—the day when the German theologian Martin Luther allegedly nailed up a copy of his disputation paper on indulgences and papal power known as the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony. Calvinist historians often propose that the Reformation started when the Swiss priest Huldrych Zwingli first preached against abuses in the Church in 1516. The end date of the Reformation is even more disputed: considered as political/martial strife, 25 September 1555, 23 May 1618 and 24 October 1648 are the most commonly mentioned terminuses. The Reformation has always been presented as one of the most crucial episodes of the early modern period, or even regarded as the event separating the modern era from the Middle Ages.
The term Protestant, though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church that subscribed to the main Reformation principles. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest against the edict of the Diet of Speyer, were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier.
Background
Calamities
experienced a period of dreadful calamities from the early. These culminated in a devastating pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed about one-third of Europe's population. Around 1500, the population of Europe was about people—no more than of the mid-14th-century demographic maximum. Due to a shortage of workforce, the landlords began to restrict the rights of their tenants which led to rural revolts that often ended with a compromise.File:Hrastovlje Dreifaltigkeitskirche Innen Totentanzzyklus 2.JPG|thumb|right|upright=1.35 |alt=A mural depicting a cardinal, a bishop, a monk and a peasant dancing with skeletons|Detail of the danse macabre by John of Kastav in the Holy Trinity Church, Hrastovlje, Slovenia
The constant fear of unexpected death was mirrored by popular artistic motifs, such as the allegory of danse macabre. The fear also contributed to the growing popularity of Masses for the dead. Already detectable among early Christians, these ceremonies indicated a widespread belief in purgatory—a transitory state for souls that needed purification before entering heaven. Fear of malevolent magical practice was also growing, and witch hunts intensified.
At the end of the, the sexually transmitted infection known as syphilis spread throughout Europe for the first time. Syphilis destroyed its victims' looks with ulcers and scabs before killing them. Along with the French invasion of Italy, syphilis contributed to the success of the charismatic preacher Girolamo Savonarola who called for a moral renewal in Florence. He was arrested and executed for heresy, but his meditations remained a popular reading.
Late Medieval Christianity
Lay community
Historian John Bossy emphasized that "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. 'Christianity' in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love."The Catholic Church taught that entry into heaven required dying in a. Based on Christ's parable on the Last Judgement, the Church emphasized the performance of charitable acts by the baptized faithful, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, as an important co-condition of salvation.
Villagers and urban laypeople were frequently members of confraternities, mutual-support religious guilds associated with a saint, or religious fraternities. The faithful made pilgrimages to saints' shrines, but the proliferation in the saints' number undermined their reputation. There was a strong non-theological Biblical awareness, especially of the Gospels and Psalms.
New religious movements promoted the deeper involvement of laity in religious practices. The communal fraternities of the Brethren of the Common Life did not encourage lay brothers to become priests and often placed their houses under the protection of urban authorities. They were closely associated with the devotio moderna, a new method of Catholic spirituality with a special emphasis on the education of laypeople. A leader of the movement the Dutch Wessel Gansfort attacked abuses of indulgences.
Church buildings were richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows. While Romanesque and Gothic art made a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human, Renaissance artists depicted God and the saints in a more human way. Historian Caroline Walker Bynum has written of 'a sort of religious materialism' in the period: 'a frenzied conviction that the divine tended to erupt into matter'.