Reformation

A woodcarving showing Johann Tetzel selling indulgences in Wittenberg (1517).

German Christian church reformer Martin Luther in about 1522. Luther's criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church initiated the Protestant Reformation. He was excommunicated in 1520, but publicly burned the papal bull of excommunication, and continued his work.

A woodcarving by Lucas Cranach, showing the contrast between the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. The Protestants, on the left, are described as following the true religion, by believing in salvation through Jesus Christ.

The cathedral at Truro, Cornwall, is a neo-Gothic structure designed by John Loughborough Pearson and widely regarded as his masterpiece. Part of the building was consecrated in 1887, making it the first new cathedral to be built in Britain since the Reformation. The work was continued after Pearson's death by his son, Frank Loughborough Pearson, and it was completed in 1903.

Leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Martin Luther. His translation of the Bible from Latin, the accepted language of the clergy and scholars, into the German vernacular was a revolutionary act in defiance of Rome. Known as the Lutheran Bible, it was first printed in 1534 and contributed significantly to the spread and development of the German language.

The German theologian Martin Luther, c.1520, the year he burned the papal bull that condemned his teachings. Impatient with traditional Catholic doctrine, he attacked the practise of papal indulgences by nailing his famous ‘Ninety-five Theses’ to the door of the Wittenberg Church. The ensuing bitter controversy led to his excommunication.

German Protestant theologian, Martin Luther. Born in 1483, Luther translated the Bible into the vernacular, and in 1517 is reputed to have nailed his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. This statement contained his attack on the Catholic tradition of selling indulgences.

Religious and political movement in 16th-century Europe to reform the Roman Catholic Church, which led to the establishment of the Protestant churches. Anticipated by medieval movements such as the Waldenses, Lollards, and Hussites, it was started by the German priest Martin Luther in 1517, and became effective when local princes gave it support by challenging the political power of the papacy and confiscating church wealth.

Causes In the early 16th century the Roman Catholic Church was in need of reform. The papacy had become an Italian political power, many of the higher clergy were concerned with worldly authority, and moral standards were low. With such an example, the parochial clergy showed little spirituality, and outside the universities clerical learning was meagre and misdirected. The Reformation owed much to the Renaissance – humanist scholars were able to show that documents establishing papal supremacy were false, and, even more importantly, by studying Greek and Hebrew, they were able to read the Bible in the original languages. Erasmus was a Dutch scholar who attacked the abuses in the Roman Catholic Church. His translation of the New Testament from the original Greek in 1516 showed that the medieval theory of doing penance had no foundation in Jesus' teaching. The advent of the printing press was an important factor in the spread of Protestant belief.

Lutheranism The Reformation began with the career of Martin Luther. As a priest, he found no forgiveness in acts of penitence or in confession, and his study of the Bible convinced him that salvation could not be achieved by good works or any human effort, but was the gift of God. On 31 October 1517, Luther publicly aired his views by nailing to the door of Wittenberg Castle church his ‘Ninety-five Theses’, in which he attacked the practice of indulgences (paying money to the Church in order to get a promise of forgiveness from God). In the next few years he questioned other aspects of the Roman Catholic faith – transubstantiation (the transformation of bread and water to the body and blood of Jesus during the Eucharist), payments to Rome, and the authority of the pope.

In 1521 Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms to defend his views before Charles V, and was excommunicated, but a number of princes, including his own Duke Frederick of Saxony, supported him, and neither Charles nor the pope was strong enough to crush the movement.

In spite of the wars and persecution of the next 30 years, Lutheranism, led by Luther and Philip Melanchthon, continued to spread. Finally, at the Diet of Augsburg (1555), it was decided that it was for the prince to choose the religion of his principality, without coercion.

See also Germany: history 1519–1815, the beginning of the German Reformation.

Switzerland The Reformation in Switzerland began in Zürich in 1520, independently of Luther. Here too the immediate cause was the sale of indulgences. The leader was the humanist priest Ulrich Zwingli. In 1525 the Mass was abolished, along with clerical celibacy and monasticism. The Reformation began in Bern also in about 1520, and in Basel when Luther's friend Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) arrived in 1522. At the Bern Disputation of 1528, the Ten Theses were accepted as representative of Swiss Reformed views.

In the following years Basel, Bern, and Geneva became the dominant cities of reform. Geneva expelled its bishop and established its political freedom in 1530. The preaching of Guillaume Farel led to the city espousing the Reformation in 1536. Also in that year came the French theologian and reformer John Calvin. The church government and discipline that he drew up became the model for French, Scottish, Dutch, and Puritan systems.

France In France, Lutheran ideas were being discussed at the University of Paris by 1520. The reformers found an ally in Marguerite of Navarre, sister to King Francis, and for a time enjoyed toleration. Francis's successor, Henry II, however, set himself to extirpate the movement. That the Huguenots survived is in large measure due to Calvin's exertions in providing literature and ministers. By 1559 there were 50 organized churches. As persecution increased, submission waned, and gave place to conspiracy against the influential Guise family, leaders of the Catholic party, and then to war in 1562. Peace was not finally restored until the Edict of Nantes (1598) gave liberty of conscience and worship to Huguenots.

See also France: history 1515–1815.

England The changes in the English church in the 16th century took place within the context of the Reformation, which had been started by Martin Luther in 1517. In about 1520 a group of Cambridge theologians began to meet to study Luther's writings. Tyndale's translation of the New Testament (first edition 1526), with Luther's own notes, spread these views to a wider audience. There was hostility in England to abuses in the Roman Catholic Church, and to payments such as Annates that had to be made to Rome. In addition, reform was attractive to the crown because Reformation theologians ascribed to the king the spiritual power held in the Roman Catholic religion by the pope. During the Middle Ages king and pope had frequently clashed over the power of the medieval church, as illustrated by the struggle between Henry II and the archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket in the late 12th century. During the breach with the pope in the 1530s, Henry VIII was able to use the 14th-century statutes of praemunire, which forbade illegal use of papal power, to force the clergy to obey him.

In 1534, in order to divorce Catherine of Aragón and marry Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII passed the Act of Supremacy, which made England independent of the pope. In 1536 and 1539, making use of the new royal supremacy, Henry's chancellor Thomas Cromwell organized the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the transfer of their assets to the crown. Opposition was ruthlessly crushed, particularly after the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536–37), a rebellion against crown policies in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

Although he had broken with Rome, Henry, however, remained a strict Catholic – the Six Articles, passed in 1539, set strict punishments against Protestants, and a number of people were burned to death for heresy as a result. Nevertheless, to force through his political agenda against the pope, Henry was forced to ally himself to the Protestants. The reformer Thomas Cranmer was made archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, Henry chose a Protestant education for his son Edward, and his last wife, Catherine Parr, was a Protestant.

At Edward VI's succession in 1547 Cranmer was able to go further in reform, with the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer (1549, revised 1552), and a projected reform of canon law. The Latin Mass was abolished and outward forms of Protestantism were introduced in English churches – stained glass windows and statues of the saints were smashed, pictures on walls were whitewashed, and stone altars were replaced by wooden tables. These changes prompted the so-called Prayer Book Rebellion in the West Country in 1549, and a number of rebels and priests were hanged.

When Edward died in 1553, his Roman Catholic half-sister Mary I succeeded, and many reformers fled abroad. Some leaders, including Cranmer, stayed at their posts, and were arrested. In 1554 Queen and Parliament knelt before the papal legate and begged to be reunited with Rome. The Latin Mass, prayer book, and bible were re-established. Retribution followed, and over 300 Protestants from all walks of life were burned, including Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer – earning Mary the title ‘Bloody Mary’. However, Protestantism had taken firm root, and Mary's attempt to return papal supremacy failed. Mary's marriage to Philip (the future Philip II), Catholic heir to the throne of Spain, in 1554, provoked Wyatt's Rebellion in Kent. When Mary's half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her in 1558, the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 re-established a Protestant Church in England. However, those returning exiles who wanted to imitate Calvinist discipline and practice found themselves in opposition. This spurred the growth of Puritanism.

Scotland Lutheran writings reached Scotland through the east coast ports, where they began to arrive in the early 1520s. This stage is summed up in the life and death of Patrick Hamilton. He studied at Wittenberg under Luther, and his theses Patrick's Places contain the essence of Luther's views. In 1527 he returned home, and in 1528 was burned at St Andrews. His death showed that Protestant opinions were worth dying for, and gave an impetus to the new movement. Attempts at reform from within the Church were made in the 1540s and 1550s, notably by Archbishop Hamilton (1512–1571), culminating in the councils of 1549 and 1550, but these failed to improve the state of the Kirk.

Reform had to come from a more dynamic quarter. George Wishart was the first Scot to come into contact with the Swiss reformers, who increasingly became the dominant influence, supplanting the earlier Lutheranism. The government's fixed policy of repression was dependent on the ‘auld alliance’ with France, and when this collapsed in 1559 the reformers, led by John Knox, were able to have their beliefs legalized. This was done in three documents of 1560 – The Scots Confession, The Book of Common Order, and The First Book of Discipline – but in spite of acts of Parliament, the Mass did not disappear. The total reform of the Kirk was perhaps not fully effected until 1690; only the foundation was laid in 1560.

See also Scotland: history 1513 to 1603, the Scottish Reformation.

Elsewhere In Sweden, Lutheran doctrines were officially accepted at the Diet of Westeras in 1527. In Denmark, though introduced in 1520, they were not finally adopted until 1546. Norway, Finland, and Iceland also became Lutheran. In all these countries Reformation was carried out with government aid, not in spite of it. In the Netherlands, Protestantism flourished from early days, surviving persecution by Charles V and Philip II. The northern states adopted Calvinism when they achieved independence. In Poland Protestantism was at one time influential, but the country was recovered for the papacy. A strong Bohemian Protestantism was largely wiped out in the Thirty Years' War. In Hungary a Protestant minority has survived. Protestant movements in Spain and Italy were totally eradicated by the Inquisition.

Theology The reformers did not question the patristic formulations of the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. The main issues they raised were authority, and justification by faith. The Reformation represents a return to the Bible not in the sense that it was not being read, but in the sense that the whole is interpreted as being understandable only from a standpoint of Pauline theology. Thus Luther calls Romans ‘a bright light, almost enough to illumine all Scripture’. Luther's exposition of the faith, On Christian Liberty, is founded on the teaching on Law and Gospel in Romans, and Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, corresponding in outline to the four parts of the Creed, is at the same time a systematization of Scriptural doctrines. In accepting the principle ‘Scripture only’, they were objecting to the official teaching that tradition also is authoritative. But they were not doing this just because Renaissance investigation showed the conflicts and errors of accepted authorities. To the reformers Scripture, the written Word of God, had its authority in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who was revealed in it. Since he was revealed there, tradition took a secondary place. Moreover, every Christian had the right to read and interpret the Bible. Understanding of Scripture depended on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The reformers reached this dependence on Pauline theology through their rejection of contemporary systems, in which the sinner assisted God in his or her own justification. What they discovered in Paul was a message that God's grace is given in spite of the sinner, not because of his or her good works. From this came the distinctive Reformation slogan ‘by faith alone’. The person whom God chose was justified by faith, faith in God and in the death and resurrection of Christ. This faith was neither an assent to the truth of propositions, nor a sentiment of the mind, but was given and maintained by the Holy Spirit.

The question then arose: what of good works and ethical conduct? The answer was based on the Pauline dichotomy between the old and new person, the Law and the Gospel. The person whom God chose was simultaneously justified and a sinner, but his or her good deeds were not a balance to sin. He or she was justified by faith in the act of Christ; it was faith that made an act good, not the reverse.

This theology of grace is an interpretation of Paul from a similar standpoint to that of Augustine of Hippo. It thus presupposes first, that humans are sinners, that is, they have no faith in God, and that this is inherited from the Fall; second, that they have lost the free will to choose to secure God's righteousness; third, that everyone is predestined by God to calling or rejection. From this springs the reformed doctrine of the Church. A true Church is one where the Word is truly preached and the Sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) are rightly administered. The visible Church has an admixture of hypocrites and non-believers; the true and invisible Church is known to God only.

It was from these beliefs that other Protestant beliefs came, and the rejection of Purgatory, veneration of the saints, indulgences, and the Mass.

Points of disagreement The most notable point of disagreement was over what theory should replace the doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass was considered by Roman Catholics to be a representation of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, in which the bread and wine essentially become the body and blood of Jesus, while keeping their original outward appearance. This ‘transubstantiation’ theory was based on an Aristotelian distinction between ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’, and the reformers had no trouble in showing (1) that according to the New Testament Jesus' sacrifice cannot be repeated and (2) that transubstantiation was irrelevant and misleading. Luther maintained that both bread and wine and the body and blood of Jesus were present together, ‘just as fire and iron are mingled in red-hot iron’. While Jesus' physical body was in Heaven, he was also ubiquitous, and could be present wherever he chose.

Zwingli totally rejected this, and quoted Jesus' instruction ‘This do in remembrance of me.’ To Zwingli the Eucharist was a reminder of what Jesus did in the past, and Jesus' body was in no sense present in the elements. Calvin took the discussion a step further, by asking the question ‘Why?’ rather than ‘How?’. In the sacrament, believers were united with Jesus, and took the food and drink which would give them everlasting life. It was a present communion with Jesus as well as a recollection of the past. As to how Jesus is present, Calvin was content to say that ‘it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend or my words to express.’ Ridley, the leading English thinker on the subject, emphasized the means by which Jesus was made present, that it is by grace, and that it was by the Holy Spirit's activity. He too emphasized the communion with Jesus.

Visibly, the greatest disagreement was on Church polity. There were two views. First, that of Lutherans and Anglicans, that customs not contrary to Scripture were acceptable. Thus the episcopacy, wearing of vestments, keeping of saints' days, and other ceremonies, even if not mentioned in the Bible, were in no way against the Gospel. They were ‘things indifferent’, to be observed according to present requirement. The view of Calvin, Knox, and English Puritans, was that only things laid down in the New Testament were to be performed. Silence did not indicate consent, and ritual was to be rejected as part of the old covenant. Thus the Calvinist form of Church government was based on what Calvin thought to be the New Testament form. Many things acceptable to Lutherans or Anglicans were explicitly forbidden, and use of the medieval vestments and many of the medieval ceremonies in divine worship were also abandoned as being opposed to reformed belief.

Other points of disagreement between reformers were less important. Within Christological orthodoxy there was room for variation between different schools. Thus Luther is more ‘Alexandrian’, Calvin more ‘Antiochene’. On the nature of the Atonement, Luther revived the ‘classic’ New Testament theory that in dying Jesus tricked the devil into defeat, setting humanity free, while Calvin followed the theory of Anselm that Jesus died to satisfy God's judgement and repay the debt humanity incurred in dishonouring God.