REFORMATION 



REFORMATION 



REFORMATION, re j or ma' shun, THE, a re- 

 ligious and political revolution of the sixteenth 

 century which resulted in the founding of the 

 Protestant churches of the world. The leader 

 of this great movement was Martin Luther, a 

 German monk and scholar, impetuous, deeply 

 religious, and utterly without personal ambi- 

 tion. It is no longer possible to regard the 

 Reformation solely as a religious movement, a 

 sudden break with the Catholic Church, due to 

 the leadership of one man. Without in the 

 least underestimating the immense importance 

 and influence of such a leader, scientific study 

 and researches of both Catholic and Protestant 

 scholars have clearly revealed the economic 

 and political forces at work at the time. 

 Luther's part was to fan into flame the smolder- 

 ing thought of generations. 



The direct result of the Reformation was 

 the founding of Protestant churches in Ger- 

 many and parts of Switzerland, in England and 

 Scotland and the Scandinavian countries, and 

 forsaking the established faith of centuries. In 

 every case reformers attempted to justify the 

 changes they instituted by appealing to the 

 Bible as their authority. The founding of the 

 new Church, the division of the believers in 

 Christianity into two great factions, Protestants 

 and Catholics, later resulted in religious wars, 

 both foreign and civil, which kept Western 

 Europe turbulent for nearly one hundred and 

 fifty years, from the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, 

 at which the Protestant German princes sub- 

 mitted the "Augsburg Confession" (their con- 

 fession of faith which resulted in the Schmal- 

 kaldic Wars), until the English Revolution and 

 the League of Augsburg in 1688. 



The power of the Church of Rome at the 

 time of the Reformation was very great. For 

 a thousand years it had been uniting politically 

 with the governments of Europe, had been 

 building itself into the life of the people, with 

 the Pope, called the Bishop of Rome, in su- 

 preme authority over every temporal ruler. 

 Its wealth was enormous, its intellectual and 

 social influence a powerful force. No one ques- 

 tioned its divine authority. It was, in short, a 

 strongly-organized international institution, in- 

 finitely more stable than any of the existing 

 governments. The kingdoms of Western Eu- 

 rope were at that time very unstable, with their 

 shifting boundaries, their incessant wars and 

 their deep-rooted class antagonisms. Spain, 

 France, England and Germany were all trying 

 to build up strong, centralized governments, 

 and were succeeding gradually. 



Feudalism was dying out. The relations be- 

 tween the rulers and their princes, and between 

 the princes and their vassals, had weakened. 

 No real control was exerted by the king of any 

 country over the heads of the separate prov- 

 inces under him. Each prince or overlord was 

 the real ruler of his state; but for purposes of 

 defense against foreign invasion and a^tnvssion, 

 and in self-defense against the peasant classes, 

 who were in all countries bitterly hostile to the 

 aristocracy, king and nobles tended constantly 

 to unite. 



The condition of the poor was very pitiable. 

 Foreign w T ars had reduced them to bitter want. 

 They were the victims of every abuse; plun- 

 dered by the higher classes of society. Then 

 came the revival of learning, which brought 

 into being another distinct class, the scholars. 

 Up to the period called the Renaissance, knowl- 

 edge and books had been the exclusive privi- 

 leges of the aristocracy. But after that time 

 they became the heritage of increasingly large 

 numbers of men. Universities and schools 

 sprang up everywhere, and the towns were 

 thronged with students. It was from the 

 ranks of these students that the leaders of the 

 common people were drawn Wycliffe in Eng- 

 land, Huss in Bohemia, Erasmus (who preceded 

 Luther) in Holland, and Zwingli and Calvin 

 in Switzerland men who stirred and inspired 

 the people with their religious teachings. In 

 them the people found champions who had no 

 personal ambition and no material gain in view. 

 In addition, the scholars of all countries tended 

 to gather in the different university towns, and 

 there to interchange ideas and to carry the 

 culture and beliefs of others back to their own 

 countries. The Reformation owed much of its 

 success to the rapidity with which Luther's 

 ideas and teachings were thus spread abroad. 



Erasmus had noted the abuses of power and 

 privilege which had arisen in the Church, and 

 had by his writings attempted some reform. 

 Luther, when he nailed his protest on the 

 church door in Wittenberg, in 1517, was at- 

 tempting to do the same thing. He was pro- 

 testing against specific evils, for which he cer- 

 tainly did not hold the Catholic creed re- 

 sponsible. His act was, in addition, a challenge 

 to a debate; it was one of the established cus- 

 toms among the students and scholars of uni- 

 versity towns. Probably no one was more sur- 

 prised than he when his articles, which had 

 been written in Latin, were translated into 

 German and were printed and circulated 

 throughout Germany. Later, when the atten- 



