Lesson 7 -- Reformation

The contemporary woodcut depicts the Church as the Ark of God on a troubled sea.

 

 

Day One: Early Reformers

We have already seen many attempts to reform the Church throughout its history. First the desert monks attempted to reform it after Constantine blurred the line separating Church from world. Then about the time of the Crusades the monks of Cluny sought to rid the Church of its most destructive evils. There have always been reformers in the Church. At no time were reforms more sorely needed than in the last half of the fourteenth century.

  Just after the time of " Castles, Crusades, and Cathedrals," the need for reform accelerated. The Pope and the Kings of France and Italy got into such heated disagreements about money, that the Pope moved from Rome to the little town of Avignon (ah-vee-NYON) in 1305, and remained there until 1378. From 1378 until 1459 there were two Popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome, two colleges of cardinals - literally two different Papacies ruling at the same time. Throughout Europe in every location there were two sets of bishops and two sets of priests in every town - one allied to Rome, the other to Avignon. You can just imagine all the confusion. More and more people were dissatisfied with the church with good reason. Some persons just kept their dissatisfactions to themselves, since to speak against the church brought persecution and even death at the order of the Inquisition. Besides, the Christian Church was the only religious institution around. It was not as though one could just join another Church if one became unhappy with the Church. The one, holy, Roman, apostolic Church was the only game in town, and she had enormous power to threaten, to command obedience, and even to kill, and she was very, very rich and getting richer and more corrupt.

To get out of this confused situation some noted theologians suggested that the Church return to Conciliarism, the practice of calling ecumenical church councils to decide the very difficult problems that arose. Of course you remember that ecumenical councils had been called in the very early days of the Church, but no ecumenical council had been called in centuries. Even though Conciliarism was not really a new idea, it seemed new because no one alive in 1400 had ever tried it. Church Councils decided who was the real Pope, but they were not able to correct the financial abuses of the Papacy. Some of the Church Councils disagreed with previous councils, and in spite of some limited success, Conciliarism did not end the confusion. At times there were multiple church councils meeting simultaneously and issuing contradictory decrees.

In spite of the dangers, some reformers even went to the grave in order to purify a corrupt church. John Wycliffe (pronounced WICK-liff) was troubled by the fact that the only version of the Bible that the Church allowed was the Latin Vulgate. He argued that because Popes disagreed with one another (at that time there were actually three Popes ruling simultaneously) the only sure authority for the Christian faith was the Bible. He taught that any simple plowboy, with nothing but a copy of the Bible, had more of the truth of God than all the Popes and councils. He went even further in translating the Bible from the Latin Vulgate, the official Roman version, into English so that the common people might read it. A group of priests called Lollards, took up Wycliffe's cause of spreading a simple gospel in English to the common people to whom they ministered. The Church saw Wycliffe's views as dangerous. The Lollard priests were defrocked, and many of Wycliffe's followers were burned alive at the stake. Wycliffe himself, because he enjoyed the patronage of the King of England, was allowed to live.

Read this link for more information on John Wycliffe:  http://www.wycliffe.org/history/JWycliff.htm

John Huss of Bohemia was another reformer who believed that the gospel should be preached in the language of the people. This Czech Christian contrasted the simple Jesus, riding on a donkey with the Pope, who rode on an armored stallion. Huss objected to the Church's practice of elevating priests so that they were no longer considered to be ordinary persons, but extra-ordinary representatives of God. In Huss' native Bohemia, the cup of Holy Communion was kept from the common people; only the priests were allowed to drink from the chalice lest the common people spill the blood of Christ. Huss finally agreed that he would object no more if only the cup, as well as the communion bread, were offered to the laity. The Church called the Council of Constance to examine Huss. The council convicted him on a trumped-up charge and burned him at the stake as a heretic. Huss' followers were outraged at this injustice and went on a rampage, carrying their crusade into Saxony.

Read more about John Huss at this link:  http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/7.html

The Pope called The Council of Basel to deal with these new outbreaks. While the council was meeting, the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople was having great trouble repelling Muslim invaders, and he asked the Pope for help. Other councils were called simultaneously in Ferrara and Florence. In this case, instead of having three Popes, the Church had three competing councils. The church agreed to provide token help to Constantinople, but the city fell to Muslim invaders in 1453, thus ending the last vestige of the old Roman Empire.

Some Study Questions:

1.      The attempt to resolve the problem of competing Popes by submitting questions to a church council is known as __________________.

2.      The Church became angry with John Wycliffe for translating the Bible into what language?

3.      The preachers who took the English Bible to the common people of England were known as _________________.

4.      The Bohemian Christian who objected to priests adopting the ways of royalty was _________ _________.

5.      This Bohemian reformer was condemned at the Council of ___________________.

6.      What great Christian capital fell to the Turks in 1453?

Day Two :Humanism and Reformation

Throughout this period the renewed learning begun in the time of the Crusades was taking effect. A revival in art, law, music and architecture came into Europe starting in those cities that felt the most immediate influence of the revival of learning from the East. Venice, Florence, Paris, and Seville all sprouted the artistic and cultural seeds that grew into the Renaissance. This French word literally means "rebirth," and it accurately describes the renewal of arts and letters in fifteenth-century Europe.

Associated with the Renaissance was the rise of humanism. In the Middle Ages it was believed that only God was worthy of study. In the Renaissance artists, writers, and musicians all came to see human beings as worthy of study. Painting became much more realistic. Stories were written for the first time, not about saints and heaven, but about real human beings in ordinary human situations. Surprisingly, some of the greatest patrons of humanistic arts and letters were the fifteenth-century popes themselves! The Papacy indulged its love of extravagance in the building of a new church over the tomb of St. Peter in Rome. Europe was almost drained dry for nearly a hundred years as this building was carved, decorated, and filled with the finest art and statuary Europe could produce. The dome was designed by Michaelangelo, the altar was made of the finest marble by Bernini. In short, the Popes sought to create an earthly palace for the heavenly God. For decades money flowed in from over the Alps, from Germany, France, Spain, and England. No wonder the local kings were upset that a large part of their tax money was going to Rome! In order to raise the huge sums of money needed for the construction of St. Peter's, and also for the many other projects of the Popes, many devices were invented to collect funds.

One method to collect money involved the sale of indulgences.  The Church had taught for several centuries that after death, an individual must go to a place just this side of hell called purgatory to pay for his sins. Nowhere does the Bible teach this doctrine, and Protestants now, therefore, reject it. Nevertheless, Christians in the sixteenth century believed it very firmly. The Church offered horrible depictions of hell and purgatory similar to the one pictured here in this contemporary German woodcut. Many Christians lived in fear that they, or someone they loved, would have to spend centuries in purgatory before being allowed into heaven. In the aftermath of the Black Death, such threats seemed very real and frightening.

To finance the building of St. Peter's Church, the Pope authorized the sale of little certificates guaranteeing that for a fee one could buy an earlier release from purgatory for oneself or for a loved one. Soon the Pope guaranteed that for a large enough sum, all of one's sins could be forgiven, and the soul trapped in purgatory would immediately go to heaven. The Papal agent for the sale of indulgences in Saxony was Johann Tetzel, who devised a little jingle to help his sale of indulgences

As soon as the coin in the coin box rings,

A soul from purgatory springs.

This commercialization of salvation was just too much for a young Saxon monk named Martin Luther. In 1517 he posted on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg a list of ninety-five issues where the Church of Rome had departed from the Scriptures, and he offered to debate them with anyone who would accept. For a young priest and professor like Luther to offer to debate issues was a common way of airing all sides of important subjects, as we might hear them discussed on a television talk show. These topics for debate became known as Luther's Ninety-five Theses. Luther was convinced that salvation came through faith alone, not through works, and certainly not through giving money to the papacy. Luther also questioned the authority of Popes and councils, since they sometimes disagreed with one another. Some of the same points had been brought out by the Roman Catholic humanist scholars Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Although they objected to the excesses of the Church, their attack was oblique. Luther's assault on the Church and on the Papacy was head-on. Martin Luther was convinced that since the authorities in the church disagreed with one another, the only sure rule for faith and practice was to be found in the Bible.

Luther's challenge to Rome won huge approval from many followers in Germany both for religious and financial reasons, and when Luther was expelled from the Roman Catholic Church, his followers banded together to form a new church called The Lutheran Church. It is not entirely correct to say that Luther broke from the Church in Rome. Luther did not leave Catholicism, rather the Roman Catholic church expelled him. Because of the protection of several powerful and sympathetic local nobles, Luther was able to avoid capture and execution by the church. Here is a picture of Martin Luther painted by the artist Lucas Cranach in 1533. Luther did not change the worship of the church and retained many of the practices of Roman Catholicism. His major objection related to the supremacy of the Pope and the failure of the Roman Church to follow the Bible in its teachings. One major contribution of Luther was his translation of the Bible from Greek into German. Another change he made was to allow Lutheran priests to marry. He married a former nun, Katherine von Bora, pointing out that the Bible says that St. Peter himself was married. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand did not, and still does not, allow priests to marry. Luther was convinced that allowing priests to marry would help them to avoid serious sexual sins. Some of Luther's followers went on a rampage and a small war over religion between Lutherans and Catholics in Germany followed.

For more information about Martin Luther check out this web site:

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/LUTHER.HTM

Even though he lived about a century after Martin Luther, one Lutheran deserves special mention for the church music he composed for the Church. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a man of intense piety and devotion. He spent much of his career as a church organist, though he also wrote a great deal of secular music as well. In his own day he was noted more as an organist than a composer, but he changed Western music forever. Today both Protestants and Catholics, as well as people with no interest in God or religion, regard his music as some of the most sublime ever written.

Learn more about Johann Sebastian Bach at this link:

http://www.baroquemusic.org/bachillustrated.html

Take a break for today. You earned it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day Three: The Reformation Continues

Once the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church was divided, it seemed that the dividing would never end. What Luther had done in Germany, the Frenchman John Calvin did in Geneva, Switzerland. He actually won control of the government and advocated a sort of theocracy, that is, a government headed by God Himself. Calvin prohibited what he considered to be sinful pleasures, such as dancing and gambling, and was very severe on persons who did not agree with his views of religion. One characteristic teaching of John Calvin is the notion of predestination. This word refers to the belief that God foreordains persons to be eternally saved or lost, regardless of one's belief or behavior. Calvin also shared with the other Reformers the belief that Christianity was more a matter of an inward change than the performance of rituals. Two churches can trace their beginnings back to Calvin - the Reformed Church in Switzerland, and the Presbyterian Church in Scotland.

A reformer with views similar to Calvin's was able to gain control of the Church in Scotland. John Knox. Like Calvin, he opposed worldly amusements and offered stern resistance to those Scots who favored the restoration of Roman Catholicism.

Huldreich Zwingli was a theologian who went even farther than Calvin and Knox had gone. He maintained that the rituals, ceremony, and pomp of the Roman Catholic Church were all unnecessary and even offensive to God, who desired only pure, simple, piety. Zwingli rejected all sacraments and other sign-acts of the church, removed all statues and paintings, and did away with relics. The Roman Catholic Church had taught that at Holy Communion, the bread and wine are literally transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This doctrine is called transubstantiation. Zwingli, and most other Protestants, rejected this notion. No doubt the Catholic church had become surrounded with a large number of ceremonies and rituals that often obscured the Gospel from common people, rather than revealing it. The Mass was still said in Latin, a language few people could understand. Even the priests who recited the Mass often did not understand what they were saying. Priests were often clothed in very elaborate and expensive vestments. In contrast to all this priestly pomp and ceremony, the followers of Zwingli provided the foundation for a very simple, primitive type of worship that was later adopted by groups advocating plainness in worship, such as Baptists and Quakers.

There were many other even more radical reformed groups who favored a whole range of even sharper breaks from Rome. For example, the Anabaptists went so far as to deny that their Catholic baptism was even valid, and required their members to be baptized a second time as adults. (in Greek "ana" means "again." Ana-baptists believed that they must be baptized again.) A few reformed groups rejected not only the authority of Rome, but all authority, and these anarchists formed themselves into various types of armies that attempted to gain control of civil as well as churchly government.

http://demo.lutherproductions.com/historytutor/basic/reformation/reform.htm

King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) brought the Reformation to the British Isles. In King Henry's case, he had no great disagreement with the doctrines of the Roman Church. In fact, he was a scholar who had written a defense of Roman Catholicism in his younger days. However, now the situation was changed. Henry had married a number of women in succession, none of whom bore a male heir to the throne. The War of the Roses a few years before had left Henry's family, the Tudors, a need for a stable dynasty, which a male heir would insure. The Pope had allowed Henry to divorce one of the six women he eventually married, but refused to allow a second request for a divorce. Therefore, in 1537 Henry dissolved his allegiance to the Pope and declared himself to be the head of the Church of England, or the Anglican Church as it is also called. The doctrine and the worship of the Roman Catholic Church was not changed much, except that English rather than Latin was used for the Mass. The big change was that now the King of England was the head of the church, and that all that tax money that had flowed out of England to Rome now stayed in the British Isles. King Henry simply took over all the church buildings and monasteries and made them Anglican rather than Roman Catholic. http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries.htm

The Church of England is important for us United Methodists because our founder, John Wesley, was a priest in the Church of England throughout his life. Wesley's grandfather was a Puritan minister in the seventeenth century.

http://tudorhistory.org/henry8/

http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Henry_VIII.htm

Here are some questions to help you remember what you read. Print them out and answer them with the help of your parents. Bring them to class on Sunday.

1.                          The idea that human beings are valuable and worthy of attention is known as __________________.

2.                          Certificates sold by the Catholic Church guaranteeing time out of purgatory were called ________________.

3.                          The rebirth of learning, art, and culture in Western Europe is known as the R________________.

4.                          The church that was born when Luther was expelled from the Roman Catholic Church is called the L___________ Church.

5.                          Luther translated the Bible into the popular language of his country. This language was G____________.

6.                          The Swiss Reformer noted for his views on predestination is _________________.

7.                          The Reformer who rejected sacraments, ritual, statues, paintings and other symbols was H__________   Z ____________.

8.                          Radical Reformers who rejected even Catholic baptism were called ________________.

9.                          The founder of the Church of England was King __________________.

10.                      Collectively, all of the churches that divided from Rome were called P_____________.

11.                      Some of the Reformers wanted to change the church very little, others wanted to change in a great deal. If you had lived in the time of the Protestant Reformation which group do you think you would be in?

"cuius regio, eius religio." This Latin phrase means, "Whose region, his religion."In other words if the ruler of a region were Roman Catholic, then so was his territory. The same went for Protestant rulers as well. Fighting continued, on and off, in other parts of Europe for a hundred years. In a real sense, the Reformation fighting between Catholics and Protestants has not ended yet in Northern Ireland.

The Roman Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation began at the Council of Trent, which met intermittently from 1545 to 1563. The reason the council was called depends on whom you ask. Protestants will tell you that the Roman Catholic Church was bleeding to death after the Reformation and had to start a program of serious damage control. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, will answer that some of Trent's reforms had already begun under Catholic humanists such as Erasmus and Thomas More. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Even without Martin Luther's wake up call, the Roman Catholic Church knew that it needed thorough administrative correction and a restatement of Catholic doctrine. The Council of Trent gave both. In this council the Roman Catholic Church accepted Erasmus'observation that there was no way to reunite the Protestants to the Holy Mother Catholic Church. In some ways the Council of Trent sharpened the differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Here is a summary of the council's decisions:

1.      The authority of the Pope was strengthened;

2.      Trent rejected the Protestant idea that salvation was by faith alone and insisted that good works results in an accumulation of merits;

3.      The belief in Purgatory was maintained, and the apocrypha was given "deutero-canonical" status to give "scriptural" basis for Purgatory;

4.      The Latin Vulgate was declared to be the only authentic translation of the Bible;

5.      The celibacy of the priesthood was to be enforced.

6.      A priest may hold only one parish, not multiple parishes;

7.      The doctrine of indulgences was upheld

8.      Humanistic writings, including the writings of Erasmus, were banned;

9.      The Council reaffirmed that there are seven sacraments, not two, as the Protestants maintain

10.  The doctrine of transubstantiation was upheld.

In the aftermath of the Reformation, both Protestants and Roman Catholics became more intolerant of any opposition. Europe became a rather suspicious, dangerous, and bloody place. The Catholic Inquisition was strengthened in Italy, the Netherlands, and in Spain. Ignatius Loyola, a former soldier, founded the Society of Jesus in Spain, and began an order of priests who served the Pope unquestioningly. With the discipline of an army, these Jesuits carried Catholicism to the New World and to Asia. The scientist Galileo was examined by the Inquisition and placed under house arrest because his newly invented telescope showed him that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the solar system. Because there are Biblical passages that talk about the rising of the sun, the Roman Catholic Church concluded that it was the sun, not the earth that moved. The Polish mathematician Nicholas Copernicus deduced mathematically that the planets must orbit the sun in elliptical orbits. Galileo had predicted this. However, because of his fear of the church, Copernicus did not publish his findings until after he died.

Protestants were equally suspicious and intolerant of those who did not agree with them, even other Protestants. They did not generally burn Catholics, but they drowned Anabaptists and beheaded and burned anti-Trinitarians. One notable example of this occurred at the burning of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, who taught a form of Arian Christianity. Many executions occurred in England and Scotland in the complicated interrelationships between Queen Elizabeth (Protestant) and Mary Queen of Scots (Roman Catholic). Finally Elizabeth ordered Mary to be executed. "Good Queen Bess" saw Mary beheaded with a dull axe. It took seven chops to sever her head. (Probably the fourth blow killed her.) Clearly religion and politics had become closely connected. One of the reasons that the English celebrated so fervently after their defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was that a Spanish victory would have turned England back into a Roman Catholic nation. Elizabeth commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh to attempt to colonize the New World not merely to expand British sovereignty, but also to oppose Spanish Catholicism taking root in Florida. His first attempt to colonize the new land of Virginia, named for England's virgin queen, landed a group of soldiers on Roanoke Island, North Carolina in 1585.

http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Tudor_Church.htm

The New World became important for other reasons. English dissenters, harassed in their homeland, sought the relative religious freedom in the Netherlands. However, when their children began speaking Dutch rather than English, they decided to plant a colony in the New World. We call these dissenters the Pilgrims, who landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. (They thought they were coming to Virginia!) Religion played a part in the founding of many of the North American colonies, as English, French, and Spanish settlers spread their faith as well as their flag. Puritans, Swedes, French Huguenots (Protestants), Swiss dissenters, and Moravians make up only a small fraction of those persecuted believers who sought to start life over again in a New World. Often pastors would lead their entire congregations to make the trip across the Atlantic to start a new life, free from the religious wars of Europe.

We preachers make it sound sometimes as though everyone coming to the New World did so for religious freedom. That is not entirely true. For one thing many, perhaps most, of those coming to America did so to get rich or to get land. Back then they were just about the same thing, since land was wealth. Another thing that bursts the truism "everybody came for religious freedom" is that even those who came for religious freedom came to get it for themselves. They did not usually grant religious freedom to the folks with whom they disagreed.

Day Five:

  Throughout the 1600 s England was intensely defensive against falling back into Catholicism. "Papist plots" were seen everywhere, and even though England missed much of the warfare and turmoil that afflicted most of Europe, a large number of Catholics, or suspected Catholics, lost their lives in seventeenth-century England. King James I was concerned that there were so many different translations of the Bible in use, so he called a team of scholars together in 1611 to offer one single "authorized version," which we know as the King James Version. http://demo.lutherproductions.com/historytutor/basic/reformation/story/authorized_version.htm

At one point, a Protestant regime in England was able to dethrone the King. The Puritans beheaded King Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell ruled England as the so-called "Lord Protector."  Though Cromwell was very religious, he was equally concerned about ending the tyranny of the king and utilizing Parliament as a democratic check on royal powers. The Puritans were a Protestant group that took their name from their goal of purifying the Church of England, a church they believed had become too corrupt and worldly. Uniting Presbyterians, Puritans, Anabaptists, Brownists and other English Protestant groups, Cromwell was able to form a coalition that sought to respond to the voice of the people. One can argue, though, that his government was no more effective than the king's had been.

To get more information on the life of Oliver Cromwell, click on this link and follow the hyperlinks on the page to which it takes you:

http://www.olivercromwell.org/biography.htm

The restoration of the monarchy under King Charles II brought the Anglicans to power again. Many of the Protestant groups that had been led by Cromwell thought that the Anglicans were too worldly and unconcerned about God and religion. These Anglicans were known as "Cavaliers,"because of their fancy dress, elaborate hairstyles for both men and women, and worldly ways. The Puritans, on the other hand believed in simplicity of life and worship. They kept their hair cut short and were therefore called " Roundheads." Throughout the seventeenth century, and even into the next, there was a good deal of tension not just between Catholics and Protestants, but also between the Protestant Anglicans and other more strict Protestant groups, such as the Puritans. King Charles II's brother, James II, was an openly avowed Roman Catholic who persuaded Parliament to pass an Act of Toleration. By doing this King James II hoped to make life tolerable for all of his subjects regardless of their religious opinions. Nevertheless, the opinions of the common people were set in stone, and few on either side yielded. The so-called Glorious Revolution brought William and Mary from the Netherlands to the throne of England and tipped the balance permanently in favor of the Protestants. The ruler of England has been a Protestant ever since. Read more about the Glorious Revolution by clicking on this link http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0821027.html

As you might imagine, the intense interest in religion in England during this period affected literature and the arts deeply. Some notable writers whose works were inspired by their religion were John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress; John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost; and John Donne, who wrote many intensely pious poems. This also was the age of William Shakespeare, whose many plays helped shape the modern English language.

Here are some questions to help you remember what you read. Print them out and answer them with the help of your parents. Bring them to class on Sunday.

1.                          What does the phrase "cuius regio, eius religio" mean?

2.                          What council framed the Roman Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation?

3.                          Name three things that this council did.

4.                          Who was the founder of the Society of Jesus?

5.                          What Italian scientist was arrested by the Inquisition because of discoveries made with his telescope?

6.                          To escape the religious wars of Europe some Protestants sailed to establish new colonies where?

7.                          The Authorized Version of the Bible translated in 1611 is known by what name?

8.                          What is the more formal name for the Roundheads?

9.                          Name the Puritan who ruled England as its "Lord Protector."

10.                      The bloodless invasion of England by the Protestants William and Mary is known by what name?