Essay On The Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation of the Catholic Church was a movement of separation from the church lead by Martin Luther in the 16th century, however the roots ran all the way back to the of it the 14th century with the Devotio Moderna. The biggest characters in the Protestant Reformation are Gerard Groote, Erasmus, and Martin Luther.
The foundation for the Protestant Reformation was laid in the 14th century with the movement known as the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion) by Gerard Groote. “The son of a prominent merchant, he lived in a worldly manner until, in 1374, he had a conversion experience, which caused him to adopt an ascetic way of life. From 1379 he became a preacher of repentance, criticizing the clergy so severely that some of them caused him to be officially silenced.” (Gerbert) Groote believed that people

Erasmus became a great humanist who used his humanistic techniques on the Bible called Biblical Humanism, which sought to reform religion back to its original sources. Erasmus did that by writing New Greek editions of the New Testament which raised questions that were influential in the Protestant reformation. “Erasmus paid little attention to the study of dogma and concentrated his attention on the moral wisdom on the Gospel, what he called “philosophia Christi”” (Dawson). Erasmus directed his criticism towards the Catholic Church because the Church stopped the evangelical teaching for pious teachings including the cult of saint and relics which Erasmus saw as nonessential. By Erasmus’s appeal to scripture, his depreciation of devotions, pious practices, and monasticism he was rejected by the Catholic Church. Most of Erasmus’s works were forbidden reading to Catholics. (Gerbert) Although Erasmus’s appeal did not make a big splash, the ripples of his appeal to Scripture paved the way for Martin