322-d

The Reformations and Religious Wars

In early-sixteenth-century Europe a wide range of people had grievances with the church and called for reform, including educated urban residents, Christian humanists, and even some church officials. This widespread dissatisfaction helps explain why the ideas of Martin Luther, a German university professor and Augustinian friar, found a ready audience. Luther criticized many practices and doctrines of the church and emphasized the importance of faith alone in salvation. Within a decade of his first publishing his ideas (using the new technology of the printing press), much of central Europe and Scandinavia had broken with the Catholic Church in a movement that became known as the Protestant Reformation. Even more radical concepts of the Christian message, such as those espoused by Anabaptists, became linked to calls for social change. Luther’s ideas appealed to many local rulers in the Holy Roman Empire, and though Emperor Charles V, a vigorous defender of Catholicism, sent troops against Protestants, he could not defeat them, and the empire became religiously divided. England broke with the Catholic Church largely because King Henry VIII wanted a son to succeed him. Henry’s daughter Elizabeth established new religious institutions that combined elements of Protestant and Catholic teachings, although these were challenged by Puritans who wanted a more thoroughgoing reform. A second generation of reformers, such as John Calvin, built on Lutheran ideas to develop their own theology and plans for institutional change. After 1540 the Roman Catholic Church made a significant comeback, carrying out internal reforms and opposing Protestants in a Catholic Reformation, in which the papacy, new religious orders such as the Jesuits, and the Council of Trent were important agents. Religious warfare engulfed France and the Netherlands, and finally in some places rulers allowed limited religious toleration and pluralism to end the bloodshed. (Pages 390–422)