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The effect of the Protestant Reformation on Europe
The effect of the Protestant Reformation on Europe
Effects on the people of europe during protestant reformation
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Protestantism and the Protestant form of Christianity were established, and continued to gain momentum in the 1500’s mainly due to the overall discontent many Europeans had with the socio-economic and religious dealings of the Roman Catholic Church. This discontent eventually lead to the reform of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, and religious beliefs and attitudes became divided between northern and southern Europe.
This is a summary of the events that lead to this historic change in religious culture that would impact Christianity for the next 500 years and beyond.
By the late medieval period, many Europeans perceived the large amount of riches and land acquired by the Roman Catholic Church as unjust when compared to their own relatively poor standards of living. Europeans who followed the inner workings of the Roman Catholic Church were also troubled by the amount of importance the church placed on superstitious practices, such as the worship of false idols. According to Malloy (2010), significant relics venerated by the Catholic Church included the “bones of saints, and any object supposedly touched by Jesus or Mary or the saints. …Many of these items were not genuine” (384). Although earlier efforts to reform the Catholic Church were attempted, none were successful prior to the reform efforts of a priest named Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a German priest and college professor who understood the personal benefits of studying the bible, and was an avid believer in the idea that mans sins were washed away by Jesus sacrifice on the cross.
During the time that Luther was teaching, the Catholic Church was soliciting donations to construct a new St. Peters Basilica in Rome. The church promised favor to those wh...
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...em inside symbolic walls, established to strengthen the catholic religion against Protestantism, and other forms of non-traditional religious faiths.
The Catholic Churches reform efforts that occurred in response to the establishment of the Protestant Church resulted in the Catholic Church as the most influential Church in the world today. Hundreds of Thousands of people subscribe to the Catholic Religion and follow the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI. Although the Catholic Church survived the turbulent era in the 1500-1700’s, the Protestant faith is also firmly established and consists of many branches of churches throughout the world. These historic events that took place starting primarily with Martin Luther’s ideals, split Western Christianity into two separate religious faiths that are, and will continue to be, extremely influential throughout the world.
All of Europe used to be united under one religion, Catholicism. Europe started inching away from Catholicism during the 13th - 15th centuries. The church leaders started to only think about money and the power they held, instead of the real reason they were supposed to be there, God. This caused an uprising of people who no longer wanted to be a part of the Catholic church, nicknamed Protestants because they protested the ways of the catholic church. The Protestant Reformation was caused by corruption in the church, Martin Luther and John Calvin’s ideas, and the clergy and their preachings.
Martin Luther, was “temperamental, peevish, egomaniacal, and argumentative” (Hooker, www.wsu.edu), but played a pivotal role in history. During Luther's time as a monk, the Catholic Church was selling indulgences. Luther took notice to the corruption and began to reason that men can only get their salvation through Jesus Christ, not the Pope or indulgences, let alone the Church itself. Luther began ...
Luther, a pastor and professor at the University of Wittenberg, deplored the entanglement of God’s free gift of grace in a complex system of indulgences and good works. In his Ninety-five Theses, he attacked the indulgence system, insisting that the pope had no authority over purgatory and that the doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. Here lay the key to Luther’s concerns for the ethical and theological reform of the church: Scripture alone is authoritative (sola sciptura) and justification is by faith (sola fide), not by works. While he did not intend to break with the Catholic church, a confrontation with the papacy was not long in coming. In 1521 Luther was excommunicated; what began as an internal reform movement had become a fracture in western
The period immediately following the Protestant reformation and the Catholic counter reformation, was full of conflict and war. The entire continent of Europe and all of it's classes of society were affected by the destruction and flaring tempers of the period. In the Netherlands, the Protestants and the Catholics were at eachother’s throats. In France it was the Guise family versus the Bourbons. In Bohemia, the religious and political structures caused total havoc for over thirty years; and in England, the Presbyterians thought that the English Anglican Church too closely resembled the Roman Catholic Church. Religion was the major cause of the widespread turmoil that took place throughout Europe between 1560 and 1660.
The 16th century was a time of social, political, and religious change in Europe. The Protestant
What happens when people start to break away from the entity that bound an entire civilization together for over a thousand years? How does one go from unparalleled devotion to God to the exploration of what man could do? From absolute acceptance to intense scrutiny? Sheeple to independent thinkers? Like all revolutions preceding it, the Protestant Reformation did not happen overnight. Catholics had begun to lose faith in the once infallible Church ever since the Great Schism, when there were two popes, each declaring that the other was the antichrist. Two things in particular can be identified as the final catalyst: a new philosophy and simple disgust. The expanding influence of humanism and the corruption of the Catholic Church led to the Protestant Reformation, which in turn launched the Catholic Reformation and religious warfare.
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
Luther believed that the Christian Faith was being exploited. The leaders of the Roman church were abusing their monopoly over their Christian followers for their benefit. Luther wrote The Ninety-Five Theses in response to the sale of indulgences by the Pope. He wanted to make the people aware of how a true Christian should act and how the Pope was violating them: "The treasures of indulgences are nets, whereby they now fish for the riches of men." (Luther, The Nine-Five Thesis, p.5) He felt that giving to the poor and needy would make them far better off than if they bought pardons. The Romanists had set up barriers so that no one could condemn their actions and power. They thought that the temporal power had no jurisdiction over the spiritual power. Secondly, the only person who could interpret the Scriptures was the Pope. Therefore, he decided what was right and what was wron...
At the beginning of the sixteenth century church theologian, Martin Luther, wrote the 95 Theses questioning the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. In this essay I will discuss: the practices of the Roman Catholic Church Martin Luther wanted to reform, what Martin’s specific criticism of the pope was, and the current practices Pope Francis I is interested in refining in the Roman Catholic Church today.
The protestant reformation of 16th century had both: immediate and long term effects. Thus, we can see that it was a revolution of understanding the essence of religion, and of what God is. The protestant reformation is said to a religious movement. However, it also influenced the economical, political and social life of people. The most global, short term effect of the reformation was the reevaluation of beliefs, and, as a result, the loss of authority of the Holy Roman Empire. The long term effects were: the emergence of new heretical movements, the declining of papacy, thus the reevaluation of people’s view on the church and life values.
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century is one of the most complex movements in European history since the fall of the Roman Empire. The Reformation truly ends the Middle Ages and begins a new era in the history of Western Civilization. The Reformation ended the religious unity of Europe and ushered in 150 years of religious warfare. By the time the conflicts had ended, the political and social geography in the west had fundamentally changed. The Reformation would have been revolutionary enough of itself, but it coincided in time with the opening of the Western Hemisphere to the Europeans and the development of firearms as effective field weapons. It coincided, too, with the spread of Renaissance ideals from Italy and the first stirrings of the Scientific Revolution. Taken together, these developments transformed Europe.
Thesis statement: Martin Luther was responsible for the break-up of the Catholic Church Martin Luther was a representative during the 16th century of a desire widespread of the renewal and reform of the Catholic Church. He launched the Protestant reform a continuation of the medieval religious search. From the Middle ages, the church faced many problems such as the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism that hurt the prestige of the church. Most of the clergy lived in great luxury while most people were poor and they set an immoral example. The clergy had low education and many of them didn’t attend their offices.
Before the 16th century Protestant Reformation, Christianity it Europe was in a questionable and somewhat corrupt state. During the mid 15th century central and western Europe was set up in the form of a hierarchy, which was headed by the pope. At this period in time the pope claimed all spiritual authority over Christians, as well as political authority over all inhabitants of the Papal States. In addition to the claims the pope made, the church also owned close to one-fourth of the land in Europe that lead to a strong centralization of papal authority. Close to all of the Europeans at this time were Christian and would pay taxes directly to the church as a result of this ownership. European Christians were taught in their upbringing that without the guidance and rituals of the priests and the church, there would be no path for them to salvation. Despite the church attempting to teach morality among members, the clergy started to become greedy and full of corruption that fueled their desire for ...
In 1517, when reformist Martin Luther wrote an indictment of the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church called the 95 Theses, he appealed to many people across Europe. In his indictment he greatly criticized and addressed the selling of indulgences above all. At first, a person would have to do “work of satisfaction” like fasting, prayer, almsgiving, retreats and pilgrimages in return for an indulgence. But when the empire was in need of money to fight off the Ottoman Empire and rebuild St. Peter’s in Rome, the pope allowed indulgences to be sold for money where he would receive half the proceeds and the other half would go to funding. This is when Luther was even more angered by the selling of indulgences since he already believed that salvation could not be obtained by man’s own effort, but more the fact that man would be saved only if God willed it. It was that event that prompted the German monk to post his ideas and beliefs as the 95 Theses and address the abuse of selling indulgences in it.
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity. 2nd ed. New York City, NY: HarperOne, 2010.