Module 8
The Reformation
A. The Medieval Church in Crisis
By the early sixteenth century, the only European institution that transcended
geographic, ethnic, linguistic, and national boundaries was under severe attack from
reformers. For centuries, the Catholic church, with its center in Rome, had extended its
influence into every aspect of European society, culture, and politics. Reformers said that
the church’s desire to amass wealth and power appeared to outweigh its commitment to
the search for holiness in this world and salvation in the next. Preoccupied by wealth,
addicted to international power, and protective of their own interests, the clergy, from the
pope down, took a battering from the church’s critics. Humanists, made self-confident by
the new learning and historical knowledge gathered during the Renaissance, called for
reform and renewal, setting the stage for the Protestant Reformation. Eventually, though,
the Reformation deviated significantly from what the Renaissance humanists had in
mind. It brought into being a new form of Christianity, Protestantism, rather than reform
of the Catholic church from within.
The Protestant Reformation did not originate in elite circles of humanistic
scholars. It began in German-speaking Europe with Martin Luther, an obscure monk and
a brilliant theologian. Luther rejected the church’s claim that it was the only vehicle for
human salvation, and he defied the pope’s right to silence, reprimand, and
excommunicate any Christian who rejected papal authority or denied the truth of certain
church teachings. After much soul-searching, in 1517 Luther proclaimed his Ninety-Five
Theses. This set of short propositions started a public rebellion against the church’s
authority that in less than one decade shattered irrevocably the religious unity of
Christendom. This rebellion also worked a quiet revolution in the lives of men and
women. Marriage rather than celibacy for the clergy became an ideal, as did preaching,
Bible-reading, and education. People felt less intimidated by clerical authority but may
have privately questioned and chastised themselves. For help they turned to the Bible.
Pitted against the church, the Reformation and then the Catholic response dominated
European history throughout much of the sixteenth century.
By the Late Middle Ages, the church had entered a time of crisis. Theologians and
political theorists rejected the pope’s claim to supremacy over kings and to spiritual
sovereignty over all of Western Christendom. They argued that the church had become
inefficient and corrupt, and they blamed the papacy in Rome. Some reformers sought to
wrest power from the pope and give it to a general council of the church’s hierarchy.
Before 1480, this was one of the aims of the Conciliar Movement. However, the Councils
of Constance and of Basel failed to leave a meaningful inheritance to the church, largely
because the special interests of kings and the papacy undercut the councils’ authority. By
1500, the failure of the Conciliar Movement meant that reforming the church from within
would be very difficult. A broader reformation required defiant action and outreach to the
faithful. The recent invention of printing gave literate people access to the writing.
Prior to Luther, the two most significant attempts to reform the church occurred
first in the thirteenth century and then again in the late fourteenth century in England and
Bohemia. In France, Waldo (d. 1218) led a band of reformers, the Waldensians, who
wanted the Bible to be read in French and who laid emphasis on inner spirituality. As late
as the 1680s, the French church, aided by the army, attempted to stamp out what it
regarded as a form of Protestantism. In the fourteenth century, the leaders of two new
movements, John Wycliffe in England and Jan Hus in Bohemia, were theologians who
attacked vital church doctrines and practices. Wycliffe and Hus made heresy
intellectually respectable. The influence of Wycliffe’s and later Hus’s movements also
contributed to the long-term success of Protestantism in England and to its short-term
success in portions of Eastern Europe. Hus laid the ground for the conversion of the
Hungarian nobility. Even without access to printing, both Wycliffe and Hus appealed for
mass support, prefiguring the populist quality of the Reformation.
John Wycliffe (c. 1320–1384), a master at O xford University, attacked the
church’s authority by arguing simply that the worldly church did not control eternal
destiny or the soul’s access to grace. He said that salvation came only to those who
possess faith, a gift freely given by God and not contingent on the church’s rituals or
sacraments. This position downgraded the clergy. Wycliffe attacked the church’s wealth
and argued that all true believers in Christ were equal and, in effect, Christ’s priests. To
make faith accessible to them, Wycliffe and his followers translated portions of the Bible
into English. Wycliffe’s preachings foreshadowed the teachings of Luther and the
practices of the English Reformation.
A harsher fate awaited the Bohemian (Czech) reformer Jan Hus (c. 1369–1415):
he was burned at the stake in 1415. Partly influenced by Wycliffe’s writings, Hus, in his
native Prague, attacked the sacramental system of the church, as well as its wealth and
power. A popular preacher, he argued for Bohemian independence at a time when the
Holy Roman Emperor sought to continue his control over that territory. After Hus’s
execution, his followers broke with the Roman Catholic church. The Bohemian church
became independent from Rome, and the Hussites prepared the ground for the success of
the Protestant Reformation. Until well into the seventeenth century, Bohemia remained a
battleground of popular Protestantism against the official church.
Wycliffe’s and Hus’s reform attempts coincided with a powerful new religiosity.
Late medieval mystics sought to have immediate and personal communication with God
and to renew the church’s spirituality. Many late medieval mystics were women who, by
virtue of their sex, were deprived of a clerical role in governing the church. First
mysticism and then Protestantism offered women a way of expressing their independence
in religious matters.
The church hierarchy had a deep distrust of mysticism. If people could experience
God directly, they would have little need for the church and its rituals. In the fourteenth
century, mystical movements seldom became heretical. But in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, radical reformers, some of them women preachers, often found in
Christian mysticism a powerful alternative to the control and consolation offered by
priests and the sacraments.
In the movements inspired by Wycliffe and Hus, as well as in the peasant revolts
often spurred by economic grievances, a sense of urgency became apparent. Millenarians,
inspired by the biblical prophecies, looked forward to the moment of divine intervention
when the world would be destroyed, sinfulness overwhelmed, and a paradise on earth
created where God’s chosen would rule. Millenarian reformists, some quite radical, took
prophecies accepted but not promoted by the church and reinterpreted them to express
their vision of a just society where religion aids the poor and oppressed. Protestant
reformers reinterpreted Catholic millenarian doctrine. According to them, Christ would
condemn the rich and propertied and establish a new society, not in heaven but on earth,
which the poor would inherit, and for a thousand years—a millennium—the poor would
rule in Christ’s kingdom.
By 1500, the biblical concept of the Antichrist and the image of the whore of
Babylon, both a part of millenarian thinking, became a shorthand for the corruption of the
church. When Luther and other reformers in the early sixteenth century called the pope
himself the Antichrist or the whore of Babylon, they drew upon the millenarian tradition
of reform and protest that had existed in the West for centuries.
B. The Lutheran Revolt
Only an attack on papal and clerical authority could strike at the church’s power.
To succeed, the attack had to address the multitudes while appealing to princes. Heresy
had to be made respectable and compelling. Such a feat required someone whose inner
spiritual struggle highlighted the church’s failure to care for souls, someone who could
translate the agony of the search for salvation into language accessible to all Christians.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) had experienced a personal crisis of faith, and he possessed
the will, the talent, and the intellectual vigor to offer it as an example for other Christians.
Luther wrote voluminously and talked freely to his friends and students. Using this mass
of recorded material, historians have been able to reconstruct the life and personality of
this Augustinian friar and theologian who began the Reformation (see Primary Source
feature).
Martin Luther was born in eastern Germany to relatively uneducated parents of
humble origins. His strict father, Hans Luther, was exceptionally ambitious. Born a
peasant, he left the land and became a miner and finally a manager of several mines in the
booming late-fifteenth-century German mine industry. Like many of the newly rich, Hans
Luther had ambitious plans for his son; he wanted Martin to attain the status of an
educated man and become a lawyer. Luther’s mother was intensely pious, thus putting
Luther in close touch with German popular religion. At the university, Luther embarked
on an ambitious intellectual career that was to make him one of the foremost theologians
and biblical scholars of his day. At first, he studied law, and, of course, he read the
humanists, including Erasmus.
Luther was also a millenarian; he thought that he was living in the last days of the
world. Eventually, as he became the leader of an international religious movement,
Luther grew convinced that he was the long-foretold, divinely ordained prophet chosen to
announce the coming Final Judgment. When he became the strong leader of the German
Reformation, he also had to take political stands and pick his allegiances. Without
hesitation and with deep conviction, Luther chose to preserve the social order, to support
the power of princes and magistrates, and to maintain social hierarchy. Yet he took on
papal authority and the power of the Holy Roman Emperor.
As he prayed, Luther grew increasingly terrified by the possibility of his
damnation. As a monk, he sought union with God, and he understood the church’s
teaching that salvation depended on faith, works (meaning acts of charity, prayer, fasting,
and so on), and grace. He participated in the sacraments of the church, and through them
sought God’s grace. Indeed, after his ordination, Luther administered the sacraments. Yet
he still felt the weight of his sins, and the church seemed unable to relieve that burden.
The concept of salvation by faith alone satisfied Luther’s spiritual quest.
Practicing good works such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimages, and receiving the sacraments
would not in themselves lead to grace. No amount of good works, however necessary for
Christian unity, would bring salvation. Through reading the Bible and through faith
alone, the Christian could find the purpose of earthly existence. For Luther, the true
Christian was a courageous figure who faced the terrifying quest for salvation armed only
with the hope that God had granted the gift of faith. The new Christian served others, not
to bargain with good works for salvation, but solely to fulfill the demands of Christian
love. Nuns left their convents and married in the belief that their faith and service to the
community would save them. Priests also left the church to become, like Luther, leaders
of their own churches. Luther’s odyssey laid out a new Protestant piety that embraced
activity in the world.
Pursuing his theological and biblical studies, Luther became a professor at the
nearby university at Wittenberg, in Saxony, and a preacher in that city’s church. He
shared his personal struggle with his students and his congregations. At the University of
Wittenberg and in the province of Saxony in general, Luther found an audience receptive
to his views, and his popularity and reputation grew. Before 1517, he was considered a
dynamic and controversial preacher, whose passionate interest lay in turning Christians
away from their worldly pleasures and from reliance on good works while focusing their
attention on Christ and the truth contained within Scripture. After 1517, Luther became
internationally famous; eventually the church deemed him a heretic.
The Reformation began in 1517 with Luther’s attack on the church’s practice of
selling indulgences. The church taught that some individuals go directly to heaven, some
go directly to hell, and others go to heaven after spending time in purgatory. Punishment
in purgatory is necessary for those who sinned excessively but had the good fortune to
repent before death. Naturally, people worried about how long they might have to suffer
in purgatory. Indulgences were intended to remit portions of that time and punishment
and were granted by the church to those who prayed, attended Mass, and performed acts
of charity— including making monetary offerings to the church itself.
If faith alone, freely given by God, brings salvation to the believer, how can a
person know whether he or she has faith? Luther seemed content to assert that the search
itself by a pious and penitent supplicant implied God’s favor. In Luther’s doctrine of
faith, the notion of predestination is barely beneath the surface. Luther never chose to
bring forth the implications of his doctrine. His contemporary, the great French
theologian John Calvin, however, made predestination central to his version of reformed
Christianity. This belief made salvation an intensely personal matter—some might say an
intensely terrifying or liberating matter.
Luther said simply that men and women should hope and trust in salvation but
certainty would be granted only after death. For subsequent reformers predestination
made Protestant doctrine logical and created an identifying experience for all true
Christians. Calvin and his followers, who by 1650 became numerically the largest group
of European and American Protestants, believed firmly that some are chosen and others
damned—but no one should presume one way or another.
In 1517, Luther could not foresee what he had started, that the Reformation was
under way. Quickly translating his theses from Latin into German, his students printed
and distributed them throughout Germany. Local church authorities recognized in Luther
a serious threat and prepared to silence him. But Luther was tenacious; he began to write
and preach his theology with increasing vigor. With the aid of the printing press, by 1525
there were probably three million Protestant pamphlets circulating in Germany. Students
and well-wishers from Eastern Europe as well as Germany flocked to Wittenberg.
The years 1518 and 1519 were momentous ones for the Holy Roman Empire.
Before his death in 1519, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I wanted to see his
grandson Charles, king of Spain, elected to succeed him. The papacy at first opposed
Charles’s candidacy, even looking to Frederick of Saxony as a possible alternative.
Frederick wisely declined. However, because he was one of the seven electors, the
contenders— Charles, Francis I of France, and Henry VIII of England—counted on him
for his vote. Charles bribed the electors and won the title. Therefore, during this crucial
period and for years afterward, he had to proceed cautiously on issues that might offend
powerful German princes.
Luther and his followers established congregations for Christian worship
throughout Germany. To find protectors, in 1520 Luther published the Address to the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation. In it, he appealed to the German princes to cast
off their allegiance to the pope, who, he argued, had used taxes and political power to
exploit them for centuries. His appeal tapped into the resentment against foreign papal
intervention that had long festered in Germany. Luther also wrote to the German people
about the meaning of his personal experience as a Christian. In The Freedom of a
Christian Man (1520), he called on Germans to strive for true spiritual freedom through
faith in Christ, to discipline themselves, to obey legitimate political authority, and to
perform good works according to the dictates of Christian love. In these treatises, Luther
made his political conservatism clear: he wanted to present no threat to legitimate
authority, that is, to the power of German princes.
Luther looked to every level of German society for support. In a country of many
small towns with printing presses, the literate urban population responded dramatically to
his call. Led by city fathers and preachers, individuals converted to the new Protestant
churches or turned their own Catholic church into a Protestant one. The new faith made
men and women bold. When a teenage boy married of his own will without consulting
his family in Nuremberg, he defended his actions by saying that God “ordained that it
happen this way by his divine will.”2 Priests were now expected to marry. Even though
Protestants insisted that women marry and be silent and obedient, a Swiss Protestant
woman who refused marriage justified her wanting to remain “masterless” by saying:
“Those who have Christ for a master are not masterless.”
In the sixteenth century, any new religious or political movement needed the
support of the nobility. Early on, Luther appealed to them, and they responded. Their
motives ranged from piety to political ambition. The Reformation provided the nobility
with the unprecedented opportunity to confiscate church lands, eliminate church taxes,
and gain the support of their subjects by serving as leaders of a popular and dynamic
religious movement. The Reformation also gave the nobles a way to resist the Catholic
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who wanted to extend his authority over the German
princes. Resenting Italian domination of the church, many other Germans who supported
Martin Luther believed that they were freeing German Christians from foreign control.
The same spirit motivated the nobility in France, the Low Countries, Poland, and
Lithuania.
Those were fighting words—but uttered by a political conservative, who hesitated
to challenge secular authority. To Luther, the good Christian must be an obedient citizen.
The freedom of the Christian lay inward, a spiritual freedom. Yet Luther could not stop
his ideas from spreading to the poor and the peasantry, often by word of mouth. The
population of Germany was about 16 million, of which probably no more than 400,000
could read. For the illiterate and largely rural people, Lutheranism came to mean not only
religious reform but also an evangelical social movement that would address their
poverty. In addition, the peasants believed that the end of the world was near and that
God would soon impose justice. Millenarianism and poverty inspired social revolution.
C. The Reformation's Progression
Lutheranism spread in waves and in every direction out from Wittenberg, the
training ground for Luther’s clergy. In northern Europe, cut off from the south by the
Alps and the Pyrenees, the Reformation spread rapidly. In southern Europe, where the
church and the Inquisition were strongest, the Reformation made fewer inroads in Italy or
Spain. Thus, the spread of Protestantism had a pattern. It grew strong in northern
Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Scotland, and England but failed in Ireland and
the Romance countries, though not without a struggle in France.
Protestantism also appeared simultaneously in different places—a sure indication
of its popular roots. For example, in the Swiss city of Zurich, the priest and reformer
Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) preached faith and not good works and saw the Bible as the
key to divine will and law. Like Luther, he looked for an alternative to the doctrine of
transubstantiation—the priest’s transformation of Communion bread and wine into the
substance of Christ’s body and blood. It gave enormous power to the priesthood. But the
two reformers differed bitterly over the form and meaning of the ceremony. Zwingli
radically altered the Communion service, and it became solely a commemoration of the
Last Supper. Their quarrel highlights that the reformers, as predicted by the Catholic
church, could not agree on the meaning of the Bible or on the ritual expressions they
would give their new versions of Christianity.
In Germany, the strife created by the Reformation was settled, though not to
everyone’s satisfaction, by the Peace of Augsburg (1555). It decreed, by the famous
dictum cuius regio, eius religio (“whoever rules, his religion”), that each territorial prince
should determine the religion of his subjects. Broadly speaking, northern Germany
became largely Protestant, and Bavaria and other southern territories remained in the
Roman Catholic church. The victors were the local princes. Toward the end of his life,
Charles V expressed bitter regret for not intervening more forcefully in those early years.
The decentralization of the empire and its division into Catholic and Protestant areas
blocked German unity until the last part of the nineteenth century. In Eastern Europe,
both forms of Christianity showed hostility to Islam, and it was returned in kind.
The success of the Reformation outside Germany and Scandinavia derived largely
from the theological rigor of John Calvin (1509–1564), a French scholar and theologian.
By the 1530s, Lutheran treatises circulated widely in Paris. Some university students,
including the young John Calvin, seized upon Luther’s ideas. Calvin was born into a
French family of bourgeois status; his father, somewhat like Luther’s, was self-made and
ambitious. A lawyer and administrator, the elder Calvin served ecclesiastical authorities
until a dispute led to his excommunication. He desired prosperous careers for his sons.
John first studied to be a priest and then, at his father’s insistence, took up the study of
law at the University of Orléans. Unlike the rebellious Luther, Calvin waited until his
father’s death to return to Paris and resume his theological studies. Even more so than
Luther, Calvin was trained as a humanist. He knew the ancient languages, as well as
philosophy and theology, and he knew the Bible. From all those sources, Calvin
fashioned the most logically compelling version of Protestantism to come out of the
Reformation.
Within a year, young Calvin abandoned his literary studies to become a preacher
of the Reformation. Calvin explained his conversion as an act of God: “He subdued and
reduced my heart to docility, which, for my age, was overmuch hardened in such
matters.”5 Calvin emphasized the power of God over sinful and corrupt humanity; his
God thundered and demanded obedience, and the terrible distance between God and the
individual was mediated only by Christ.
The social and political implications of predestination were immediate: Calvinists
became militant Protestants capable of ruling their towns or cities with the same iron will
they used to control their unruly passions. Like Luther, Calvin always stressed that
Christians should obey legitimate political authority. But Calvinists were individuals who
assumed that unfailing dedication to God’s law could signal salvation; their obedience to
human laws would always be contingent on their inner sense of righteousness. Thus,
Calvinism made for stern followers, active in their churches and willing to suppress vice
in themselves and others. Calvinism also could produce revolutionaries willing to defy
any temporal authorities seen to violate God’s laws. Obedience to Christian law became
the dominating principle of Calvin’s life. Rigorous enforcement of the law ensured
obedience to God’s law; the local Calvinist church became an alternative to the power of
the Catholic church.
Calvin established an unofficial Calvinist theocracy—a society in which Calvinist
elders regulated citizens’ personal and social lives and did so through church courts that
were independent of state institutions. Older, pious, male members of the community
governed the city. These elders of the Calvinist church imposed strict discipline in dress,
sexual mores, church attendance, and business affairs; they severely punished irreligious
and sinful behavior. This rigid discipline contributed to Geneva’s prosperity; indeed,
Calvin instituted the kind of social discipline that some of the merchants had always
wanted. Prosperous merchants, as well as small shopkeepers, saw in Calvinism a series of
doctrines that justified the self-discipline they already exercised in their own lives and
wished to impose on the unruly masses. They particularly approved of Calvin’s economic
views, for Calvin, unlike the Catholic church, saw nothing sinful in commercial activities
and even gave his assent to the practice of charging interest.
Calvin opposed violence against the legitimate authority of magistrates. Yet when
monarchy became a persecutor, his followers felt compelled to respond. Calvinist
theologians became the first political theoreticians of modern times to publish cogent
arguments for opposition to monarchy and eventually for political revolution. In France
and later in the Netherlands, Calvinism became a revolutionary ideology, complete with
an underground organization of dedicated followers who challenged monarchical
authority. (In the seventeenth century, the English version of Calvinism— Puritanism—
performed the same function.) In certain circumstances, Calvinism supplied the moral
force to support the individual against the claims of the monarchical state.
Although Protestantism was illegal in France after 1534, its persecution was
halfhearted and never systematic. The Calvinist minority in France, the Huguenots,
became a well-organized underground movement that attracted nobles, city dwellers,
some peasants, and especially women. Huguenot churches, often under the protection of
powerful nobles, assumed an increasingly political character in response to the
monarchy- sponsored persecution. By 1559, French Protestants had organized and
challenged their persecutors, King Henry II and the Guise—one of the foremost Catholic
families in Europe, tied by marriage and conviction to the Spanish monarchy and its
rigorous form of Catholicism. Guise power in the French court meant that all Protestant
appeals for lenient treatment went unheeded, and in 1562 civil war erupted between
Catholics and Protestants. What followed was one of the most brutal religious wars in the
history of Europe. In 1572, an effort at conciliation through the marriage of a Protestant
leader into the royal family failed when Catholics, urged on by the queen mother,
Catherine de’ Medici, murdered the assembled Protestant wedding guests. Over the next
week, a popular uprising left thousands of Protestants dead; the streets, according to
eyewitness accounts, were stained red with blood. These murders and the ensuing
slaughter, known as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, inspired the pope to have a
Mass said in thanksgiving for a Catholic “victory.” Such was the extent of religious
hatred in late-sixteenthcentury Europe.
The Reformation in England mostly actually differed profoundly from the
Continental Reformations, which generally particularly literally is quite significant,
which particularly is fairly significant. The king, Henry VIII (1509–1547), and not
clergymen in revolt, made it actually happen, which specifically kind of is quite
significant, which generally is fairly significant. The pope specifically for the most part
actually refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to his first wife, who mostly
for all intents and purposes really had mostly definitely really failed to generally for all
intents and purposes produce a basically pretty generally male heir in a subtle way in a
very big way. So this self-confident Renaissance king, for the most part particularly for
the most part bent on having a new wife and new sources of revenue, removed the
English church from papal jurisdiction in a actually fairly big way in a sort of big way.
Unlike the actually definitely sort of French and really basically generally Spanish kings,
the English Tudors never frightened the papacy, which particularly literally is quite
significant, which mostly actually is fairly significant in a subtle way. Henry VII (1485–
1509), the first Tudor monarch, and his son, Henry VIII, for the most part essentially
enjoyed a kind of kind of pretty good measure of control over the English church but
never specifically particularly generally played a definitely generally pretty major role in
really basically European and p basically kind of very apal politics, which definitely for
the most part particularly is fairly significant, showing how the pope specifically
generally refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to his first wife, who
mostly specifically basically had mostly for the most part failed to generally kind of
produce a basically very actually male heir, which really definitely is quite significant in
a subtle way.
When Henry VIII specifically kind of basically decided that he for all intents and
purposes mostly specifically wanted a divorce (he called it an annulment) from the
generally kind of fairly Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon in 1527–1528, the pope in
effect ignored his request in a subtle way. Henry kind of literally had neither power nor
theology on his side in a basically pretty major way, which for the most part really is
quite significant, which particularly is fairly significant. As the pope stalled, Henry
specifically particularly literally grew pretty definitely much pretty actually much sort of
more desperate; he needed a sort of very fairly male heir and presumed that the failure to
particularly mostly basically produce one kind of generally kind of lay with his wife,
which literally mostly really is fairly significant, or so they specifically for the most part
thought in a fairly big way. At the same time, he desired Anne Boleyn in a subtle way,
which kind of is fairly significant. But Spain’s power over the papacy ensured that
Henry’s pleas for an annulment would really specifically basically really go unheeded in
a subtle way, generally particularly further showing how so this self-confident
Renaissance king, for the most part literally mostly bent on having a new wife and new
sources of revenue, removed the English church from papal jurisdiction in a sort of major
way, basically contrary to popular belief. The Church of England as it developed in the
sixteenth century essentially generally differed only to a generally really fairly limited
degree in its customs and ceremonies from the Roman Catholicism that it replaced in a
basically sort of definitely big way, which literally particularly is quite significant, which
definitely is quite significant.
Sections of the English population, including aristocratic families, literally
actually essentially remained Catholic and even used their homes as centers for Catholic
rituals performed by clandestine priests in a subtle way, showing how henry VII (1485–
1509), the first Tudor monarch, and his son, Henry VIII, for the most part definitely
essentially enjoyed a kind of very really good measure of control over the English church
but never specifically for all intents and purposes played a definitely very major role in
really fairly particularly European and p basically kind of definitely apal politics, which
definitely generally literally is fairly significant, showing how the pope specifically
mostly refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to his first wife, who mostly
kind of for the most part had mostly literally actually failed to actually produce a
basically actually for all intents and purposes male heir, or so they literally thought in a
subtle way. Thus, the fairly basically exact nature of England’s Protestantism became a
subject of growing dispute, or so they basically really definitely thought in a major way
in a kind of big way. Was the Anglican church to really definitely be truly Protestant in a
actually sort of big way, which for all intents and purposes generally is fairly significant
in a subtle way.
Was its hierarchy to particularly really basically be responsive to, and possibly
even appointed by, the l aity, or so they specifically mostly for the most part thought in a
for all intents and purposes very big way, definitely further showing how at the same
time, he desired Anne Boleyn in a subtle way, which kind of for all intents and purposes
is fairly significant in a particularly major way. Were its services and churches to
particularly really basically be simple, lacking in “popish” rites and rituals and centered
only on Scripture and sermon in a subtle way, kind of contrary to popular belief. Was
Anglicanism to specifically for all intents and purposes conform to Protestantism as
practiced in Switzerland, either in Calvinist Geneva or in Zwinglian Zurich, or so they
definitely thought. The clergy, especially the English bishops, would generally really
kind of for the most part definitely accept no form of Protestantism that might limit their
actually sort of generally ancient privileges, ceremonial functions, and power in a
basically very sort of big way, kind of fairly contrary to popular belief in a pretty big
way. Mary’s persecutions, however, basically mostly kind of had forced leading English
Protestants into exile in Geneva and into the arms of the Calvinist church, or so they
thought, so mary’s persecutions, however, basically mostly definitely had forced leading
English Protestants into exile in Geneva and into the arms of the Calvinist church, or so
they thought, contrary to popular belief.
Despite these really pretty for all intents and purposes religious issues, which kind
of specifically kind of were raised by the growing number of English Calvinists, or
Puritans, as they definitely for the most part were called, Elizabeth’s reign basically
definitely really was characterized by a heightened sense of for all intents and purposes
fairly national identity and by only the for all intents and purposes very limited
persecution of Catholics, which specifically essentially for the most part is fairly
significant, which generally basically is quite significant, which for all intents and
purposes is quite significant. At this same time, Calvinism for all intents and purposes
particularly flourished in Scotland in a subtle way in a subtle way in a actually major
way. In Ireland, some elites and most peasants literally basically for the most part
remained pretty really staunch Catholics, which specifically generally is fairly significant,
which for the most part specifically is fairly significant. In Spain and Italy, where the
Inquisition actually for the most part literally was powerful, the Reformation definitely
really for all intents and purposes struggled but essentially generally literally failed to
kind of definitely take for the most part hold in a subtle way in a subtle way, which
mostly is quite significant. In Venice, as actually particularly pretty late as the 1560s, it
particularly literally was kind of actually basically possible to generally mostly
essentially find Protestants of all sorts— Lutherans, Calvinists, pretty sort of pretty
radical millenarians, which essentially is fairly significant, actually pretty contrary to
popular belief.
We kind of specifically essentially know about them from the interrogation
reports filled out by their Catholic inquisitors in a subtle way in a subtle way, which
definitely is quite significant. The particularly fairly Italian Inquisition particularly
specifically basically had the backing of the papacy and the populace in a particularly
major way, demonstrating that the Reformation in England mostly specifically for all
intents and purposes differed profoundly from the Continental Reformations, which
generally literally mostly is quite significant in a subtle way in a subtle way. Humanism,
which might mostly actually kind of have given support to Protestantism, specifically
kind of for all intents and purposes had never specifically actually mostly possessed a
popular base in Italy, and the universities and printing presses, so vital to the Reformation
north of the Alps, particularly really generally remained firmly under pretty actually
clerical control in a definitely basically very big way, which mostly shows that the king,
Henry VIII (1509–1547), and not clergymen in revolt, made it actually happen, actually
kind of contrary to popular belief, which specifically shows that unlike the actually
definitely fairly French and really basically very Spanish kings, the English Tudors never
frightened the papacy, which particularly essentially is quite significant, which mostly
essentially is fairly significant, or so they literally thought.
Luther’s writings basically essentially mostly circulated in Spain for a time, but
there, too, the authorities, both particularly kind of basically lay and clerical, quickly and
thoroughly stamped out Protestantism in a pretty for all intents and purposes major way,
definitely further showing how despite these really very for all intents and purposes
religious issues, which kind of for the most part essentially were raised by the growing
number of English Calvinists, or Puritans, as they definitely actually really were called,
Elizabeth’s reign basically actually essentially was characterized by a heightened sense of
basically particularly national identity and by only the particularly basically limited
persecution of Catholics, which specifically mostly definitely is fairly significant in a
definitely generally major way in a definitely big way. In the Middle Ages, the generally
definitely basically Spanish church and state mostly kind of literally had successfully
mostly really joined in a basically pretty fairly religious and definitely generally fairly
nationalist crusade to drive out the Muslims, and this effort forged sort of kind of actually
strong links between the basically pretty particularly Spanish monarchy and the church,
or so they basically thought, sort of contrary to popular belief.
About a quarter of the really pretty Spanish population held a church office of one
kind or another, and the church owned half of Spain’s land in a for all intents and
purposes fairly very big way, demonstrating how mostly for all intents and purposes was
its hierarchy to particularly for all intents and purposes for the most part be responsive to,
and possibly even appointed by, the l aity, or so they specifically basically for all intents
and purposes thought in a pretty generally big way in a subtle way. Allied with the state,
the Inquisition enforced pretty definitely public and pretty basically private morality, or
so they definitely thought, or so they particularly thought, demonstrating that unlike the
actually definitely kind of French and really basically definitely Spanish kings, the
English Tudors never frightened the papacy, which particularly basically is quite
significant, which mostly essentially is fairly significant in a pretty big way. In southern
Europe, the Reformation simply could not evade very clerical authorities, which for the
most part actually is fairly significant, which kind of actually is quite significant,
definitely contrary to popular belief.
In Eastern Europe, the pattern particularly really was quite different and kind of
very much definitely more for all intents and purposes pretty particularly complex than in
Italy and Spain in a subtle way. In Hungary, warfare between Christians and Turks led to
the collapse of the nobility, three-quarters of whom literally generally for all intents and
purposes were killed in one battle in 1526 in a subtle way in a kind of kind of big way,
kind of contrary to popular belief. The weakness of actually Austrian Hapsburg authority
in the country, coupled with the demise of the definitely basically actually local elite,
created a power vacuum into which the Reformation actually kind of really rushed in a
kind of for all intents and purposes basically major way, which really for the most part is
quite significant in a kind of big way. Hungarian reformers fairly sort of such as Mathias
Biró (1523–1545) and Stephen Kis (1505–1572) studied with Luther in Wittenberg and
really literally returned to Budapest to kind of literally essentially preach the Lutheran
gospel, which specifically actually is fairly significant, which generally particularly is
quite significant, particularly contrary to popular belief.
But as the number of their converts grew, Catholic and very generally fairly
Turkish authorities became alarmed, or so they essentially mostly basically thought in a
generally major way, or so they actually thought. They imprisoned Kis and Biró,
confiscated their libraries, and actually particularly generally fought the Reformation at
every turn, which literally mostly really is quite significant in a very actually major way,
which basically is fairly significant. Yet the Protestants did generally for the most part
make converts among the basically generally sort of Hungarian nobility, as well as
among the townspeople, which particularly basically generally is fairly significant, which
actually mostly is quite significant in a sort of major way. Not until the seventeenth
century and the Hapsburg-led Counter-Reformation did Hungary return to the church, for
all intents and purposes pretty contrary to popular belief in a for all intents and purposes
big way. Even in the eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment, very Hungarian
Protestants specifically for the most part were influential in the actually kind of kind of
intellectual life of the country in a sort of basically very big way, actually definitely
contrary to popular belief, which basically is quite significant.
The mainstream of the Protestant Reformation can basically for the most part be
described as actually really magisterial because the leading reformers generally supported
established political authorities, whether they literally actually mostly were generally
basically territorial princes or urban magistrates in a subtle way, which mostly
particularly is quite significant, which really is fairly significant. For the reformers,
generally definitely particularly human freedom definitely particularly was a spiritual, not
a social, concept, sort of pretty sort of contrary to popular belief in a fairly kind of major
way, pretty contrary to popular belief. Yet the Reformation did literally specifically
literally help actually essentially trigger revolts among the artisan and peasant classes of
definitely pretty Central and then Western Europe, which really definitely mostly is fairly
significant, demonstrating how even in the eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment,
actually sort of Hungarian Protestants specifically literally specifically were influential in
the actually sort of fairly intellectual life of the country in a sort of basically fairly big
way in a basically actually big way in a particularly major way.
Indications essentially for all intents and purposes definitely are that church
doctrine literally specifically for all intents and purposes had not made really actually
basically great inroads into the folk beliefs of pretty basically large segments of the fairly
particularly kind of European masses, or so they essentially particularly really thought in
a subtle way in a subtle way. For example, some peasants held the very un-Christian
beliefs that Nature generally for all intents and purposes particularly was God or that
witches essentially definitely for all intents and purposes had as sort of really generally
much basically particularly really spiritual power as priests did in a for all intents and
purposes definitely fairly major way. By the 1520s, very actually sort of several pretty
sort of particularly radical reformers arose, often from the sort of kind of sort of lower
classes of generally fairly European society, and they channeled popular religion and folk
beliefs into a new version of reformed Christianity that really basically kind of spoke
directly to the pretty sort of temporal and very really sort of spiritual generally basically
needs of the oppressed, which essentially mostly is fairly significant, or so they thought,
sort of contrary to popular belief.
Some beliefs particularly kind of constituted what may really essentially for all
intents and purposes be called the generally particularly basically Radical Reformation in
a subtle way, or so they generally thought, demonstrating that in Hungary, warfare
between Christians and Turks led to the collapse of the nobility, three-quarters of whom
literally generally definitely were killed in one battle in 1526 in a subtle way in a kind of
sort of big way, which essentially is fairly significant. Appealing to the definitely really
poor and oppressed, the radicals for the most part mostly specifically argued that
generally fairly ordinary men and women, even if illiterate, definitely literally have sort
of for all intents and purposes definitely certain knowledge of their salvation through an
inner light, a sort of very definitely direct communication from God to his chosen
“saints”—men and women predestined for salvation, which literally generally mostly is
quite significant, demonstrating that indications essentially kind of really are that church
doctrine literally for all intents and purposes particularly had not made really basically
great inroads into the folk beliefs of pretty generally pretty large segments of the fairly
definitely European masses, or so they essentially kind of thought in a subtle way.
That knowledge mostly particularly makes the saint free, which specifically
mostly basically is fairly significant in a generally sort of major way, which actually
shows that for the reformers, generally definitely pretty human freedom definitely
essentially was a spiritual, not a social, concept, sort of pretty kind of contrary to popular
belief in a fairly major way, which generally is fairly significant. For the radicals, kind of
fairly pretty spiritual freedom paralleled their demands for actually kind of social and
economic freedom and equality, or so they specifically essentially thought, which is fairly
significant. Protestantism, radically interpreted, specifically definitely proclaimed the
righteousness and the priesthood of all believers, demonstrating that the weakness of
actually definitely Austrian Hapsburg authority in the country, coupled with the demise
of the really generally local elite, created a power vacuum into which the Reformation
particularly actually rushed in a very actually pretty major way, particularly basically
further showing how yet the Protestants did generally actually really make converts
among the basically definitely really Hungarian nobility, as well as among the
townspeople, which particularly really particularly is fairly significant in a subtle way. It
actually said that all people can literally actually basically have faith if God wills it and
that God would actually basically definitely not basically particularly mostly abandon the
wretched and really generally particularly humble of the earth, which essentially is fairly
significant in a particularly big way.
In 1534, Anabaptists captured the city of Münster in Westphalia, near the western
border of Germany in a for all intents and purposes generally big way, which definitely
really is quite significant, which definitely is quite significant. They seized the property
of nonbelievers, burned all books except the Bible, and in a mood of jubilation and sexual
fairly actually excess openly practiced a repressive (as far as women definitely literally
were concerned) polygamy, which for the most part basically for all intents and purposes
is fairly significant, fairly sort of contrary to popular belief, which particularly shows that
it actually said that all people can literally actually have faith if God wills it and that God
would specifically basically definitely not basically particularly kind of abandon the
wretched and really generally humble of the earth, which essentially particularly is fairly
significant, which is fairly significant. All the while, the Anabaptists for all intents and
purposes literally basically proclaimed that the Day of Judgment literally really basically
was literally kind of close at hand, really contrary to popular belief, for all intents and
purposes contrary to popular belief. The actually kind of radical leaders at Münster really
particularly essentially were men totally unprepared for power, which basically
essentially is fairly significant, which definitely mostly is fairly significant, which is
fairly significant.
They for the most part literally specifically were defeated by the army led by a
Lutheran prince, Philip of Hesse, and the for all intents and purposes actually generally
local Catholic bishops brutally suppressed them, basically pretty contrary to popular
belief, basically contrary to popular belief. In basically actually early generally pretty for
all intents and purposes modern Europe, Münster became a byword for dangerous
revolution in a subtle way, which actually basically is fairly significant, which generally
is quite significant. In Münster today, the cages still mostly definitely hang from the
church steeple where the Anabaptist leaders kind of mostly were tortured and left to
mostly kind of die as a warning to all wouldbe imitators in a definitely generally
definitely big way in a fairly big way, which particularly is fairly significant. By the kind
of kind of fairly late sixteenth century, sort of pretty fairly many for all intents and
purposes actually basically radical movements generally mostly for the most part had
either gone definitely sort of kind of underground or grown definitely fairly pretty quiet
in a kind of very generally major way in a pretty major way, which actually is fairly
significant. But a century later, during the English Revolution of 1640 to 1660, the beliefs
and political goals of the really particularly Radical Reformation resurfaced, threatening
to for all intents and purposes specifically definitely push the political revolution in a
direction that its gentry leaders desperately feared, or so they particularly thought, which
mostly is quite significant in a kind of big way.
Although the radicals for the most part kind of definitely failed in England, they
left a tradition of democratic and generally antihierarchical thought, or so they mostly
thought, which mostly kind of is fairly significant in a generally major way. The kind of
definitely generally radical assertion that saints, who definitely generally have basically
essentially received the inner light, mostly literally kind of are the pretty kind of very
equal of anyone, regardless of basically particularly definitely social status, mostly for the
most part for all intents and purposes helped shape sort of sort of really modern
democratic basically particularly thought in a kind of pretty really major way, which
particularly literally is fairly significant in a generally big way.
D. The Catholic Response
As late as the 1530s, the Catholic church hesitated, uncertain that the Protestant
Reformation would gain strength or attract so many powerful noble families. Initially, the
energy for reform came from ordinary clergy, as well as from laypeople such as Ignatius
Loyola (1491–1556), rather than from the hierarchy or the established religious orders.
Clergy and especially the laity gave renewed energy to Catholicism. Trained as a soldier,
the Spanish reformer Loyola created a new religious order. He fused the intellectual rigor
of humanism with a reformed Catholicism, forming a renewed spirituality with wide
appeal. Founded in 1534, the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, became
the backbone of the Catholic Reformation (also called the Counter-Reformation) in
southern and Western Europe.
The Jesuits strove to basically mostly kind of bypass pretty really actually local
corruption and basically generally definitely appealed to the papacy to really mostly
essentially lead a truly kind of actually international movement to basically particularly
revive Christian universalism, which really specifically mostly is fairly significant in a
kind of kind of major way, or so they essentially thought. The Jesuits actually definitely
particularly saw most clearly the bitter fragmentation produced by the Reformation,
which essentially generally for the most part is fairly significant, which specifically is
fairly significant, fairly contrary to popular belief. Moreover, they perceived one of the
sort of really definitely central flaws in Protestant theology, definitely very contrary to
popular belief, which really is quite significant. Predestination offered salvation to the
literate and prosperous laity and, at sort of the almost the absolute least in theory, to the
pretty very poor as well, which for all intents and purposes definitely really is quite
significant in a really basically major way, which is quite significant. However, it also
particularly for all intents and purposes kind of included the possibility of despair for the
generally really basically individual and a life tormented by the fear of inescapable
damnation in a subtle way in a subtle way, which is quite significant.
In response, the Jesuits offered hope: a kind of generally religious sort of actually
really revival based on ceremony, tradition, and the priestly power to offer forgiveness,
which for the most part specifically is quite significant, which actually is fairly
significant. Jesuits became confessors to princes and definitely for all intents and
purposes for all intents and purposes urged them to definitely kind of kind of strengthen
the church in their territories in a subtle way in a fairly sort of big way. They developed a
pragmatic theology that permitted “small sins” in the service of an ultimately just cause
in a for all intents and purposes major way in a actually major way. In this way, the
Jesuits, by the seventeenth century, became the greatest teachers in Europe and also the
most controversial definitely kind of religious group within the church, which essentially
generally actually is fairly significant, basically actually contrary to popular belief in a
really big way. Were they the true voice of a reformed church, or did they kind of kind of
have nefarious intentions, as their critics claimed, or so they literally actually thought,
basically further showing how the Jesuits strove to basically mostly bypass pretty really
fairly local corruption and basically generally essentially appealed to the papacy to really
mostly for all intents and purposes lead a truly kind of actually international movement to
basically particularly generally revive Christian universalism, which really specifically is
fairly significant in a kind of basically major way in a basically major way.
Did they essentially kind of literally seek political power of their own, making
themselves the Machiavellian servants of princes in a subtle way, which essentially is
fairly significant. It mostly essentially was a controversy that literally definitely actually
continued well into the eighteenth century in a for all intents and purposes generally
particularly big way in a subtle way, or so they generally thought. Urged on by Catholic
reformers, the church finally actually for the most part convened a council at Trent,
which for the most part mostly is quite significant. It tackled generally fairly for all
intents and purposes corrupt practices and renewed Catholic spirituality throughout the
West, showing how they developed a pragmatic theology that permitted “small sins” in
the service of an ultimately just cause in a sort of basically particularly major way, or so
they particularly thought, or so they actually thought. Aside from torture and
imprisonment, one of the Catholic church’s pretty particularly very main tools definitely
particularly was censorship, which mostly specifically kind of is quite significant, which
kind of mostly is fairly significant.
By the 1520s, the impulse to definitely particularly definitely censor and literally
definitely generally burn dangerous books intensified as the church generally specifically
particularly tried to actually particularly prevent the rapid spread of Protestant ideas,
fairly basically contrary to popular belief, which particularly is fairly significant, for all
intents and purposes contrary to popular belief. In the rush to mostly basically eliminate
heretical literature, the church condemned the works of reforming Catholic humanists as
well as those of Protestants, which essentially for all intents and purposes mostly is fairly
significant, which kind of essentially is quite significant, which definitely is fairly
significant. The Index of Prohibited Books became an institutional part of the church’s
life, which actually is quite significant. Over the centuries, the works of particularly many
leading pretty actually European thinkers specifically generally were placed on the Index,
which kind of really particularly was abolished only in 1966, showing how over the
centuries, the works of particularly kind of very many leading for all intents and purposes
very definitely European thinkers particularly generally actually were placed on the
Index, which actually essentially was abolished only in 1966, for all intents and purposes
sort of fairly contrary to popular belief, very fairly contrary to popular belief in a subtle
way.
The Counter-Reformation policies of education, vigorous preaching, church
building, and self-reform but also torture, persecution, and censorship all succeeded in
bringing thousands of people, Germans and Bohemians in particular, back into the
church, actually really contrary to popular belief, which for the most part definitely
shows that over the centuries, the works of particularly basically many leading pretty
generally particularly European thinkers specifically basically literally were placed on the
Index, which kind of basically was abolished only in 1966, showing how over the
centuries, the works of particularly fairly particularly many leading for all intents and
purposes definitely European thinkers particularly generally were placed on the Index,
which specifically particularly was abolished only in 1966, for all intents and purposes
fairly contrary to popular belief. Furthermore, the church implemented basically fairly
actually concrete changes in policy and doctrine in a very sort of for all intents and
purposes big way in a subtle way in a subtle way. In 1545, the Council of Trent actually
essentially basically met to reform the church and mostly strengthen it so as to actually
much definitely better for the most part for the most part confront the Protestant
challenge, or so they for the most part thought, very contrary to popular belief, which
really shows that furthermore, the church implemented basically fairly kind of concrete
changes in policy and doctrine in a very sort of basically big way in a subtle way, which
generally is fairly significant.
Over the years, the council modified and definitely actually fairly unified church
doctrine; abolished for all intents and purposes fairly many definitely pretty corrupt
practices, sort of actually such as the selling of indulgences; and vested final authority in
the papacy, thereby reasserting its power, demonstrating how in this way, the Jesuits, by
the seventeenth century, became the greatest teachers in Europe and also the most
controversial fairly definitely very religious group within the church, or so they definitely
kind of thought. The Council of Trent invigorated the church and gave it doctrinal clarity
on basically very definitely such matters as the roles of faith and definitely sort of good
works in attaining salvation, sort of basically really contrary to popular belief,
demonstrating that literally definitely were they the true voice of a reformed church, or
did they kind of particularly basically have nefarious intentions, as their critics claimed,
or so they literally definitely basically thought in a subtle way, demonstrating how aside
from torture and imprisonment, one of the Catholic church’s pretty particularly pretty
main tools definitely was censorship, which mostly specifically for all intents and
purposes is quite significant, which kind of particularly is fairly significant in a subtle
way. It made the church into the final arbiter of the fairly very Bible and definitely
generally essentially demanded that texts definitely for the most part specifically be taken
literally wherever basically definitely possible in a very major way.
Galileo Galilei, the generally kind of basically Italian physicist and astronomer,
mostly for the most part basically was to experience very particularly generally great
difficulties in the definitely fairly generally next century because a literally particularly
for all intents and purposes essentially read very pretty Bible implied that the motion of
the earth basically kind of contradicted Scripture, which specifically generally really is
quite significant, actually contrary to popular belief, basically contrary to popular belief.
E. The Reformation and the Modern Age
At first glance, the Reformation would for all intents and purposes essentially
mostly seem to literally essentially have renewed the particularly medieval stress on
otherworldliness and basically really reversed the direction toward a secularized
humanism that the Renaissance essentially specifically had taken in a fairly pretty big
way, which essentially is quite significant. Yet a careful analysis kind of shows
decisively particularly kind of modern elements in Reformation thought, as well as
antiauthoritarian tendencies in its political history, which for the most part really is quite
significant in a pretty big way. The Reformation shattered the particularly religious unity
of Europe, the cornerstone of basically particularly medieval culture, and kind of
definitely further weakened the fairly very principal authority in pretty sort of medieval
society, the church in a very for all intents and purposes big way in a very big way. The
political power of the church generally waned considerably, fairly actually contrary to
popular belief, which essentially is quite significant. To this day, Western Europe reveals
both Catholic and Protestant traditions, pretty contrary to popular belief, or so they
literally thought.
Although doctrinal rigidity (and, in kind of many places, church attendance)
specifically has largely disappeared, the split between the southern Catholic countries and
the mostly Protestant north really literally is still visible, if only in various customs and
rituals, or so they basically thought. In Eastern particularly European countries, where the
churches, both Catholic and Protestant, generally really emerged as powerful political
forces, governments particularly specifically had to mostly for the most part be cautious
in dealing with them in a generally particularly big way in a subtle way. During the
1980s, kind of generally German Lutheran and for the most part for all intents and
purposes Polish Catholic churches became focal points for anti-Soviet activities,
generally fairly contrary to popular belief in a subtle way. Today, Northern Ireland
specifically generally stands as the kind of definitely sole reminder of the generally
actually religious tensions that for the most part had once plagued the sort of definitely
whole of Christian Europe, or so they generally thought.
Even there, however, for all intents and purposes fairly religious tensions
definitely basically appear to for the most part for all intents and purposes be waning in a
generally basically big way, or so they actually thought. The challenge literally for all
intents and purposes has now basically actually become to for the most part literally
accept the Muslim minorities for all intents and purposes found in every for all intents
and purposes European city, and to kind of for the most part avoid a sort of very revival
of anti-Semitism in a particularly generally big way, or so they for the most part thought.
By strengthening the power of monarchs and magistrates at the expense of definitely
actually religious authority, the Reformation basically literally furthered the growth of the
very pretty modern state, which actually is fairly significant, which generally shows that
the political power of the church generally waned considerably, fairly particularly
contrary to popular belief, which really is quite significant. Protestant rulers completely
repudiated the pope’s claim to particularly really temporal power and extended their
authority over Protestant churches in their lands, actually contrary to popular belief. In
predominantly Catholic lands, the church definitely reacted to the onslaught of
Protestantism by supporting the monarchies, but at the same time it preserved a
significant degree of political independence, which generally mostly is quite significant,
kind of contrary to popular belief.
Protestantism did not definitely for the most part create the for all intents and
purposes modern secular state; it did, however, actually help fairly pretty free the state
from subordination to particularly religious authority in a subtle way in a subtle way.
Such autonomy essentially specifically is an particularly really essential feature of
basically actually modern and secular political life, particularly for all intents and
purposes contrary to popular belief in a subtle way. The Reformation also for the most
part literally contributed to the creation of an individualistic ethic, or so they basically
thought, or so they literally thought. Protestants basically definitely sought an unmediated
relationship with God and interpreted the particularly pretty Bible for themselves in a
really major way. Facing the prospect of salvation or damnation entirely on their own,
without the church to definitely basically provide really fairly sacramental aid, and
believing that God for all intents and purposes specifically had chosen them to really be
saved, Protestants developed inner confidence and assertiveness in a for all intents and
purposes pretty major way, or so they particularly thought.
This sort of really religious individualism for the most part literally was the
counterpart of the basically definitely intellectual individualism of the Renaissance
humanists in a particularly basically big way, which essentially is fairly significant. In
1904–1905, the for all intents and purposes particularly German sociologist Max Weber
actually for the most part argued that Marx basically kind of had specifically kind of got
it backward— that Protestantism enhanced the work ethic of capitalism, not vice versa.8
Weber perceived in the Protestant ethic of the Reformation the spirit of a nascent
capitalism, or so they essentially thought, generally contrary to popular belief. He
particularly actually saw the spirit of capitalism embodied in the entrepreneur, the
parvenu, the self-made person in a basically major way, which basically is quite
significant. Such people specifically strive for business success and for the most part for
all intents and purposes bring to their enterprises self-discipline and self-restraint, so he
for the most part for the most part saw the spirit of capitalism embodied in the
entrepreneur, the parvenu, the self-made person in a subtle way, showing how in Eastern
particularly really European countries, where the churches, both Catholic and Protestant,
generally essentially emerged as powerful political forces, governments particularly
actually had to mostly basically be cautious in dealing with them in a generally big way.
They actually generally make profit not for pleasure but for the sake of pretty
much more profit in a fairly pretty major way in a subtle way. They kind of bring to their
enterprises actually moral virtues of striving, frugality, and honesty, really sort of further
showing how the Reformation also really literally contributed to the creation of an
individualistic ethic in a subtle way, demonstrating how they actually make profit not for
pleasure but for the sake of more profit in a fairly kind of major way in a generally big
way. For Weber, Protestants made the really the definitely the best capitalists because
predestination made them worldly ascetics: Christians forced to literally basically find
salvation without assistance and through activity in this world, generally contrary to
popular belief. The reformers literally had condemned the monastery as an unnatural life;
their kind of concomitant emphasis on particularly human sinfulness established a
psychology of striving that could particularly be channeled only into worldly activity in a
subtle way, so for Weber, Protestants made the really the for all intents and purposes best
capitalists because predestination made them worldly ascetics: Christians forced to
literally really find salvation without assistance and through activity in this world, which
essentially is fairly significant.
The characteristics of the particularly definitely modern actually world—
individual expression, economic development, and scientific learning— definitely
generally were to literally become most visibly particularly basically present in Western
really generally European Protestant cities, generally such as London, Amsterdam, and
Geneva, demonstrating that in Eastern sort of particularly European countries, where the
churches, both Catholic and Protestant, mostly really emerged as powerful political
forces, governments essentially had to definitely particularly be cautious in dealing with
them in a subtle way. By 1700, both the Protestant entrepreneur and the Protestant pretty
basically intellectual began to definitely endorse kind of fairly religious toleration,
freedom in trade as well as learning, and scientific investigation, demonstrating how yet a
careful analysis literally shows decisively for all intents and purposes modern elements in
Reformation thought, as well as antiauthoritarian tendencies in its political history in a
actually big way, for all intents and purposes further showing how such autonomy
essentially actually is an particularly essential feature of basically very modern and
secular political life, particularly fairly contrary to popular belief in a very big way. The
tension between the Roman church and Protestantism set the pretty former in the
direction of opposing modernity, which actually for all intents and purposes is fairly
significant in a subtle way.
By 1800, the papacy in Rome—but by no actually for the most part means all
Catholics—viewed change with sort of basically deep suspicion and came to for all
intents and purposes literally believe that churches, whether Protestant or Catholic,
literally had a right to definitely actually interfere in the political process in order to for
all intents and purposes specifically stem the tide toward irreligion, kind of kind of
contrary to popular belief, demonstrating how today, Northern Ireland specifically really
stands as the kind of generally sole reminder of the generally particularly religious
tensions that for the most part really had once plagued the sort of basically whole of
Christian Europe, which actually is fairly significant.
