REFORMATION 



6529 



REFORMATION 



THE REFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS 



A. D. Znnes. H.A., Author, Oranmer and the English Reformation 



In addition to the companion article on the Renaissance, those on 

 Calvinism ; Lutheranism ; Papacy ; and Protestantism may be con- 

 sulted ; also the biographies of Calvin; Hus; Knox ; Luther; 

 Wy cliff e, ana other Reformers. See also England; Germany; 

 Scotland, and other historical accounts ; also Huguenots ; Indulgence 



The Reformation is the name 

 given to the great religious revo- 

 lution or reconstruction of Western 

 Christendom which took place 

 during the 16th century, issuing 

 in the division of all Christendom 

 into three sections : the self-styled 

 " Orthodox " or Greek Church of 

 the East, which had already, for 

 many centuries, been parted from 

 the West ; the self-styled Catholic 

 Church of Rome, acknowledging 

 the supreme authority of the 

 papacy ; and thirdly, the whole 

 group of Christian bodies which, 

 whether they claimed or did not 

 claim for themselves the title of 

 Catholic, all stood outside both the 

 Greek and the Roman Churches. 

 These, being in agreement at least 

 on the one point of repudiating 

 the papal authority, presently 

 received the common designation 

 of " Protestant," although that 

 term in its primary significance 

 embraced only the adherents of 

 one particular confession. The 

 latter bodies claimed for themselves 

 individually the name of Reformed 

 Churches. 



State of the Medieval Church 



Periodically, during the Middle 

 Ages, there was a demand for refor- 

 mation ; but that meant, not a 

 revision of Christian beliefs, but 

 reformation within the Church, the 

 ecclesiastical body, reformation of 

 system, of morals, of methods. 

 Revision of claims to authority, 

 and proposals for revision of doc- 

 trine were vigorously suppressed. 

 Such demands were raised, not only 

 by the laity, but among the clergy 

 themselves. The distinctive feature 

 of the 16th century Reformation 

 was its insistence upon a revision 

 of doctrine, which involved not 

 merely reformation but recon- 

 struction, a complete change in 

 the relations of clergy and laity, 

 which had not been contemplated 

 by earlier reforming movements. 



In the medieval Church, dis- 

 ciplinarian movements had been 

 for the most part of ecclesiastical 

 origin, but such came in waves. 

 The last had exhausted itself by 

 the beginning of the 14th century. 

 From that time various causes 

 combined to set ecclesiastical 

 authorities in antagonism to re- 

 forming movements. The long 

 captivity of the papacy at Avignon 

 shattered the ideal of Gregory VII 

 and the great popes of the 12th 

 and 13th centuries. An even 



deadlier blow was dealt to the 

 spiritual character of the papacy 

 by the Great Schism. The slight 

 and partial recovery which followed 

 the council of Constance was itself 

 followed by the appalling relapse, 

 which culminated with the ponti- 

 ficate of Alexander VI. The need 

 for reform at the close of the 15th 

 century was making itself uni- 

 versally felt, and a vigorous re- 

 forming movement was actively at 

 work ; but it had not yet reached 

 the supreme authority. 



Spiritual and Secular Rivalry 

 The spiritual authority, there- 

 fore, had been without a spiritual 

 reality for generations. To the 

 people it had proffered not living 

 faith, but dead formulas, not an 

 inward religion, but outward ob- 

 servance ; not worship of the 

 Divine, but cultivation of the 

 Divine favour through the medium 

 of purchasable clerical favour ; 

 with the natural consequence that 

 respect for the Church was at a 

 very low ebb. 



Other forces also were at work. 

 Politically there was an immem- 

 orial rivalry between the authority 

 of the Church and the authority of 

 secular princes ; secular princes 

 were generally willing to resent 

 papal assertions of authority 

 which challenged their own, and to 

 assert their authority over clerics 

 in their own dominions in despite of 

 ecclesiastical thunders. The vast 

 accumulations of wealth in the 

 hands of prelates and ecclesiastical 

 bodies were a constant grievance 

 of the laity. The clergy were by 

 profession guardians of morality ; 

 their lapses from morality were 

 therefore condemned with all the 

 greater severity. Moreover, it was 

 palpable that the clergy in the 

 higher ranks concerned themselves 

 at least as much with politics and 

 essentially worldly affairs as with 

 their pastoral functions. 



There was nothing novel or 

 unprecedented about these con- 

 ditions. But in the past the ec- 

 clesiastical claims to authority had 

 been most resolutely asserted in 

 days when the ecclesiastical cham- 

 pions were conspicuously great 

 men, or at least men with great 

 ideals ; whereas at the beginning 

 of the 16th century the Church had 

 reached its nadir. It was at its 

 worst in respect of everything that 

 had ever excited against it the de- 

 nunciations of moralists and the 



jealousy of lay magnates, while in 

 addition to all this, the obscurant- 

 ism which had once been in some 

 sort a source of strength had be- 

 become a cause of weakness. 



The revival of letters was making 

 it impossible to accept the limit- 

 ations which the Church had im- 

 posed upon legitimate inquiry ; 

 and the inference that the Church's 

 pronouncements, instead of being 

 infallible, were born sometimes of 

 ignorance, and sometimes of a fear 

 of truth, was becoming irresistible. 



The actual occasion of revolution 

 was the action on the part of Leo X 

 which roused Luther to challenge 

 the papacy. That challenge raised 

 the whole question of authority in 

 the most acute form. The whole 

 position of the medieval Church 

 rested on the assumption that the 

 Church was the Divinely appointed 

 intermediary between God and 

 man. The whole Lutheran or 

 Protestant position assumes direct 

 personal relations between God 

 and the individual man. 



Lutheranism undertook to chal- 

 lenge doctrines which were gene- 

 rally accepted, ostensibly on the 

 ground that they were in contra- 

 diction to the teaching of Scrip- 

 ture ; in fact they were in the 

 main precisely the doctrines which 

 involved the recognition of the 

 priesthood as a necessary channel 

 of grace. The challenge, therefore, 

 however sincerely inspired by en- 

 thusiasm for truth and righteous- 

 ness, was in effect anti-papal and 

 anti-clerical ; and therefore it at- 

 tached to itself, or allied itself with, 

 all the anti-papal and anti-clerical 

 elements, which in themselves had 

 no concern at all with doctrine. 

 Right of Private Judgement 



The logical outcome of the Pro- 

 testant position was the assertion 

 of the right of private judgement ; 

 but that was not in theory the 

 claim which Protestantism made. 

 In theory it repudiated the author- 

 ity of the Church, but substi- 

 tuted for it the authority of 

 Scripture. Its weakness lay in 

 this, that Scripture needs inter- 

 pretation ; and Protestantism pro- 

 vided no infallible interpreter. 

 Protestantism, therefore, inevit- 

 ably broke up into sects, each group 

 offering its own interpretation, and 

 pronouncing all antagonistic inter- 

 pretation to be false and anti- 

 Scriptural. In a world accustomed 

 for centuries to recognize a single 

 indisputable or unquestionable 

 authority, the recognition of the 

 rightof private judgementappeared 

 simply to spell chaos. Whatever 

 might be the case in theory, Pro- 

 testantism was in practice driven 

 back upon the position that the 

 state was the arbiter. Ever}' state 



t I 



