Critics of the Church and Divided by Religion

 

Critics of the Church and Divided by Religion

 

As Europe marched towards Renaissance, more and more people started to question the teachings of the Catholic Church and the luxuries the Pope and the bishops enjoyed.

Heresy

Criticizing the teachings of the Church was referred to as heresy and a person found guilty for it was called a heretic.

The punishment for heresy was burning at the stake!

This gruesome punishment was administered by the church in order to scare and trample people so that they would not open up their mouth against the Church.

Some people who were accused of heresy and their fate

Critic/heretic	Charge for heresy	plight
John Wyclif	·         Said that No pope is more important than God ·         Had the Bible translated to English ·         Attacked the luxuries of Pope and bishops	·         Natural death by stroke. ·         Since accused for heresy his body was dug up, burned at the stake and thrown in a river.
John Huss (lollard)	·         Had similar views like above	·         Burned at the stake
Joan of Arc	·         Claimed to hear the God and saints ·         Accused to have offended powerful men by wearing soldiers amour in a battle	·         Burned at the stake
Savanorola	·         Attacked luxury and wickedness	·         Burned at the stake

 

 Two famous critics of the Church

1.       Martin Luther

2.       John Calvin

 

 

Martin Luther and the Reformation

·         Luther was a German priest

·         Some of the core ideas of Luther’s Reformation:

o   Simple and pure religion

o   All teachings of the church to be based on the Bible

o   Wanted the Bible translated in to a state’s own language so that everyone could read and understand it Faith in God not good work

o   Priests to be as simple as possible.

 

·         Two main reasons that upset Luther about the Pope and the Archbishop were

                                 i.            Selling indulgences – This was a widely practiced method of exploiting people by the Catholic Church.  It was a penalty (amount of money) paid to the Church to rid a person from his past sins. People were taught that they would spend less time in the purgatory (a place where the sinners go to get punished for their sins before going to heaven).

 

                               ii.            Simony - the selling of positions (offices) of the church. Eg. The person who became the Archbishop of Canterbury had paid money to buy that position.

 

 

·         Wrote a list of complaints against the Church known as the Ninety Five Theses.

·         Large crowds started to follow Luther’s ideas. The new printing presses were very important in spreading his new ideas faster to many.

·         Soon he was sent a papal bull (an official order from the Pope) and was summoned before the Diet of Worms (the German Parliamentary assembly summoned in Worms to question Luther against heresy) to answer for his ideas.

·         Luther was outlawed and excommunicated. But he got protection by Frederick, Elector of Saxony.

·         This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Europe.

 

Europe divided by Religion…

Due to the new ideas of Protestantism Europe was divided by religion. Some states were Catholic and some were Protestants.

Later there were some extreme groups and offshoots of Protestantism. Anabaptists who believed baptism at an adult age was an example of offshoot. Luther was sandwiched between the extreme Protestants and Catholics.

There were battles between Protestant states and Catholic states and a peace agreement called “the Peace of Augsburg” was signed in 1555 between the two religious camps that allowed people to follow the faith of their ruler.

However there were later attempts by Catholic heads to convert but it only dragged Europe to decades long religious war called “the Thirty years War” in which many Europeans died.

 

 

John Calvin

 

·         A French scholar who criticized the Church

·         He was expelled from France and started preaching his ideas based in Geneva in Switzerland

·         Calvin’s ideas were partly based on Luther’s

·         He preached an idea called “predestination”

o   Predestination is the belief that a person’s destiny was predefined by the God before he was sent to this world.

o   In other words whether he was going to heaven or hell was predefined before the birth.

o   Those who were destined for heaven were called the elect (the chosen ones)

·         Geneva soon became a model community of Calvinism and to keep order the consistory (ruling body of church officials and townspeople) was appointed.

·         Discipline was very strict.

·         An offshoot of the Calvinist faith is the “Presbyterian Church” established by his strong supporter John Knox of Scotland.

·         Calvinism soon spread to many other European countries including Germany, France and the Netherlands

·         The French who followed Calvinism in France were known as “Huguenots”. They were crushed down and massacred by the French Catholics.

o   Later, in 1598, an official order, “the Edict of Nantes” granted freedom for peoples to follow their own faith.

·         The Dutch (people of the Netherland) embraced this faith readily as they wanted to get rid of the Catholic Spanish grip.