The Reformation
Name: _____________________________
Period: ____
Give a brief summary of the Great Schism: ____________________________________
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In 1500 the Roman Catholic Church was all powerful in Western Europe. There was no legal
alternative. The Catholic Church jealously guarded its position and anybody who was deemed to have
gone against the Catholic Church was labeled a heretic and burnt at the stake. The Catholic Church did
not tolerate any deviance from its teachings as any appearance of ‘going soft’ might have been
interpreted as a sign of weakness which would be exploited.
Why was the Roman Catholic Church so powerful?
Its power had been built up over the centuries and relied on ignorance and superstition on the part of
the populace. Additionally, at this time, the Church own one-third of the land in Europe and people
completely believed that they could only get to heaven via the church.
This gave a priest enormous power at a local level on behalf of the Catholic Church. The local
population viewed the local priest as their ‘passport’ to heaven as they knew no different and had been
taught this from birth by the local priest. Such a message was constantly being repeated to ignorant
people in church service after church service. Hence keeping your priest happy was seen as a
prerequisite to going to heaven.
This relationship between people and church was essentially based on money - hence the huge wealth
of the Catholic Church. Rich families could buy high positions for their sons in the Catholic Church
and this satisfied their belief that they would go to heaven and attain salvation. However, a peasant had
to pay for a child to be christened (this had to be done as a first step to getting to heaven as the people
were told that a non-baptized child could not go to heaven); you had to pay to get married and you had
to pay to bury someone from your family in holy ground.
To go with this, you would be expected to give to the church via the collection at the end of each
service (as God was omnipresent he would see if anyone cheated on him), you had to pay tithes (a
tenth of your annual income had to be paid to the church which could be either in money or in kind
such as seed, animals etc.) and you were expected to work on church land for free for a specified
number of days per week. The days required varied from region to region but if you were working on
church land you could not be working on your own land growing food etc. and this could be more than
just an irritant to a peasant as he would not be producing for his family or preparing for the next year.
The Catholic Church also had a three other ways of raising revenue.
Relics: These were officially sanctioned by the Vatican. They were pieces of straw, hay, white feathers
from a dove, pieces of the cross etc. that could be sold to people as the things that had been the nearest
to Jesus on Earth. The money raised went straight to the church and to the Vatican. These holy relics
were keenly sought after as the people saw their purchase as a way of pleasing God. It also showed that
you had honored Him by spending your money on relics associated with his son.
The Reformation
Indulgences: These were ‘certificates’ produced in bulk that had been pre-signed by the pope which
pardoned a person’s sins and gave you access to heaven. Basically if you knew that you had sinned
you would wait until a pardoner was in your region selling an indulgence and purchase one as the
pope, being God’s representative on Earth, would forgive your sins and you would be pardoned. This
industry was later expanded to allow people to buy an indulgence for a dead relative who might be in
purgatory or Hell and relieve that relative of his sins. By doing this you would be seen by the Catholic
Church of committing a Christian act and this would elevate your status in the eyes of God.
Pilgrimages: These were very much supported by the Catholic Church as a pilgrim would end up at a
place of worship that was owned by the Catholic Church and money could be made by the sale of
badges, holy water, certificates to prove you had been etc. and completed your journey.
If you spoke against the Catholic Church at any time from its initiation to about the 18th century, you
were courting trouble. Every person, from humble village folk to noblemen to kings, knew that to
criticize the practice of Catholic rituals would mean one of two things: Life in prison under horrifying
circumstances, or, more commonly, death. The snuffing out of a "heretic" life was of little consequence
to the rulers of the 16th century, a strange era on the cusp between medieval and modern. Give an
example of how (according to medieval study) a person was determined to be a heretic.
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There were people who dared to be different, risking burning at the stake, life in prison, death by
hanging, and many other fates involving various instruments of torture. Among these were John
Wycliffe, Peter Walden, John Hus and the ever-popular Martin Luther, a German monk who
challenged the Church's high authority over the Germanic people and created a major faith Lutheranism - that many still follow today. From the Protestant Reformation came a surprising number
of splinter religions and Protestant off-shoots, spawned by the new concept of freedom of religion.
Even with the large number of different faiths, the base of most of them is the Protestant ideal of sola
scriptura, Bible alone.
List some offshoot religions that follow the Protestant ideal of Bible alone: ______________
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Martin Luther's Contribution
As a young man, Martin Luther was a devoted disciple of the all-powerful Church and did everything
in his power to be a good and faithful follower. Even becoming a monk and later a priest did nothing to
assuage his guilt at living what he thought was a sinful life, and he began to wonder if he would ever
feel forgiven. Confession, one of the basic sacraments of the Catholic Church, did not relieve his worry
over his sins, and so he began to study the Bible and other theology until he came to a conclusion.
Why might confession have been unsatisfying for Luther? ________________________________
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Perhaps the Catholic Church's medieval traditions were outdated, and the pope did not have the
authority to take the people's sins (and their money) into his own hands. The Reformation began as an
attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, by priests who opposed what they perceived as false
doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice—especially the teaching and the sale of indulgences or the
abuses thereof, and simony, the selling and buying of clerical offices—that the reformers saw as
evidence of the systemic corruption of the Church's Roman hierarchy, which included the Pope.
The Reformation
Explain/detail what that last passage means in language you understand:
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On October 31, 1517, Martin committed the ultimate act of bravery and started his journey to what his
contemporaries called heresy. He posted the 95 Theses, a paper written in Latin stating what he
believed was wrong with the Catholic traditions, on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany.
The theses debated and criticized the Church and the Pope, but concentrated upon the selling of
indulgences and doctrinal policies about purgatory, particular judgment, Catholic devotion to Mary
(Jesus’ Mother), the intercession of and devotion to the saints, most of the sacraments, the mandatory
clerical celibacy, including monasticism, and the authority of the Pope. What were Luther’s
misgivings, conflicts with Catholicism? _________________________________________________
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Find/choose three “problems” identified by Luther that you can understand and explain the logic
of his argument. Ie. Those who work on behalf of God need not be required to be celibate,
because… ________________________________________________________________________
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The news of his different theories spread immediately and the Theses were printed and reprinted in
German, given to the common people to read and ponder. This was the start of the Protestant
Reformation when the German populace - and soon the European populace at large - decided that
perhaps the Bible was the only true authority.
Although there had been heretics and reformers in the Catholic Church before Martin Luther,
none had threatened the unity of the church. What were the social, economic, and political
conditions in Germany that contributed to the enormous success of Lutheranism?
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The Reformation
The Catholic Church fought back with the Edict of Worms (name of a town in Germany), the decree
issued on 25 May 1521 by Emperor Charles V, declaring:
For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to
receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be
apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally
before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, where upon
we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will
help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.
Luther escaped arrest and remained in seclusion at Wartburg castle for several years where he
continued to write and translate the New Testament into German.
The Reformation in Europe
Although some countries were receptive to Protestant ideology, like Sweden, Denmark, Germany and
Holland, countries with a long Catholic tradition like France and Spain were not so easily convinced.
In Europe in these days, every little religious difference was argued upon, and although the Calvinist
and Lutheran faiths were very similar, the two groups could not be reconciled in the early days of the
Reformation. The reformers divided their movement according to doctrinal differences—first between
Luther and Zwingli, later between Luther and John Calvin—consequently resulting in the
establishment of different and rival Protestant Churches (denominations), such as the Lutheran, the
Reformed, the Puritans, and the Presbyterian. Elsewhere, the religious reformation causes, processes,
and effects were different; Anglicanism arose in England with the English Reformation—(basically the
king deciding divorcing his wife was important enough to change the religion of his entire kingdom
since the Pope wouldn’t grant it), and most Protestant denominations derive from the Germanic
denominations. The reformers also accelerated the development of the Counter-Reformation by the
Catholic Church.
Enter the Huguenots—the name Huguenot (followers of Calvin) is synonymous with martyr, because
countless numbers of men, women and children were killed for their simplistic Christian faith and
refusal to acknowledge the Church's authority. From peasant to nobleman, the Huguenot belief system
appealed to many people, and all believers were persecuted, no matter what walk of life they held. In
Spain, a country once known as a religious haven for Muslims, Christians and Jews had by the 16th
century become known as a dark land of zero tolerance. The Inquisition instigated during the days of
Ferdinand and Isabella had systematically killed, forcibly converted, or expelled non-Christian
countrymen until Catholicism was again the dominant religion. Even with the ever-watchful eyes of
the Inquisition, some brave Spaniards dared to translate the Latin Bible into the Spanish tongue, but
very few Spaniards considered themselves Protestants and many were caught and killed before the
movement could take a wide hold in Spain. Here, dissenters were violently persecuted, and Spain
became a Catholic country once more.
Why did the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, in collaboration with the Pope, issue the Edict of
Worms in 1521? What were the implications of this move? ________________________________
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The Reformation
Why was German nobility’s support Luther's cause so essential to his success?
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What influence did the Reformation have on Renaissance art and innovation?
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