Where and Why?
The Roman Catholic Church dominated religious life in northern and western Europe. However, many people still criticized its practices, saying the Church leaders were too interested in gaining wealth and power than talking and teaching about the Bible. Church leaders would sell indulgences to the churchgoers, mainly the middle and low classes, so their sins would be forgiven. Critics of the church claimed that its leaders were corrupt, the popes who ruled during the Renaissance were too involved in worldly pursuits to have been able to have time for their spiritual duties. For example, Pope Alexander VI admitted that he had fathered several children but popes are not allowed to marry. The Renaissance was involved on the secular and the individual which challenged the church’s authority. With the invention of the printing press came the spread of secular ideas, the printing press allowed writers to translate works into local vernacular languages and were no longer being printed in Latin, this helped increase literacy, spiritual thinking, individual thought, and perspective among individuals and some rulers began to challenge the church’s political power. In Germany, it was difficult for the pope or the emperor to impose authority and eventually, northern merchants began to resent paying church taxes and a new movement of religious reform began in Germany and later swept much of Europe.
Who, What, When? |
Martin Luther was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, and monk. He was a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. From 1512 up until his death, he taught scripture at the University of Wittenberg in the German state of Saxony. He wanted to teach and be a good christian but ended up being the leader of a religious revolution.
Martin Luther did not believe in indulgences, an indulgence was a pardon from a person’s sins, it pardoned a person from the punishment a priest imposed for sins. He did not believe that you could buy your way into heaven. Martin Luther wanted to take a public stand against friar Johann Tetzel, he was selling indulgences to rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome but Martin Luther didn’t like that he was giving people this idea that by buying indulgences you could get into Heaven and your sins would be pardoned. In response to friar Johann Tetzel, he wrote the 95 theses which were formal statements attacking what he would call “pardon merchants” and on October 31, 1517, he posted them on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.
Martin Luther did not believe in indulgences, an indulgence was a pardon from a person’s sins, it pardoned a person from the punishment a priest imposed for sins. He did not believe that you could buy your way into heaven. Martin Luther wanted to take a public stand against friar Johann Tetzel, he was selling indulgences to rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome but Martin Luther didn’t like that he was giving people this idea that by buying indulgences you could get into Heaven and your sins would be pardoned. In response to friar Johann Tetzel, he wrote the 95 theses which were formal statements attacking what he would call “pardon merchants” and on October 31, 1517, he posted them on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.
How did this idea make it? Why was it important?
This idea made it because his 95 theses was one of the few, if any, documents questioning the church and it got people to really think about what the church was doing. All he really wanted to do was to stop the church from doing things that were considered unchristian. Many people tried to change his mind and silence him but he refused to stay silent. In 1521 Pope Leo X formally excommunicated Luther from the Catholic Churchand in that same year, Luther again refused to recant his writings before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Germany, who issued the Edict of Worms declaring Luther an outlaw and a heretic and giving permission for anyone to kill him without any consequences. During the time that Luther was outlawed, he took shelter in a castle and translated the New Testament of the Bible from Latin, which was the commonly used language in the Roman Catholic Church, to German. This translation took about two years and allowed people to understand the Bible and find salvation through their own Faith.
This was a significant turning point because up until this point the Roman Catholic Church dominated all of Europe. The 95 theses was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation which was the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe. It helped create the different branches of Christianity, one of which being Protestantism.
This was a significant turning point because up until this point the Roman Catholic Church dominated all of Europe. The 95 theses was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation which was the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe. It helped create the different branches of Christianity, one of which being Protestantism.