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The Humanist Movement
This epoch began with the humanist movement which started in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, and the various reformation movements that followed in its wake. The humanist movement in the first instance was dedicated to the revival of the most important parts of the culture of the ancient Greek and Roman world. Poets like Petrarch consciously modeled themselves after the poets of the ancient world and scholars learned Greek to be able to read the texts of Greek learning in the original. The humanist movement was also highly optimistic about the nature of the individual and the potential for human reason. According to such humanist philosophers as Pico della Mirandola, there was virtually no limit to what reason could accomplish and no limit on what reason could inquire into. The great German physician Paracelsus put it best when he said, “I respect only that authority that has demonstrated itself by works.”
In other words, the humanists would not respect authority simply because of tradition but only when it proved efficacious. What impact did this have on the Church? Obviously, the Church was authoritarian, and if authority was now to be questioned then the Church itself would be subject to unprecedented scrutiny. A troubling example was the exposure of the Donation of Constantine, the document that gave the Pope temporal authority over the states of the Church in Italy, as a counterfeit.
But the main thrust of the humanist movement was religious. Here individualism really counted against the institutional Church. Theologians like Erasmus were not only exposing Church abuses, attacking the legitimacy of indulgences and the ignorance and greed of priests but they were also advising believers to pursue a much more individual path to salvation. Groups like the Brethren of the Common Life in Holland or the Illuminists in Spain put these ideas into practice by embracing the notion of mental prayer fostered by Erasmus and others. Obviously, if the Christian could find a path to God through his or her own efforts, then the institutional Church became far less necessary.
The Reformation
The Reformation began when an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the collegiate church in the town of Wittenberg. This was not particularly unusual in and of itself. Scholars like Luther had been doing this for centuries as a way of challenging other scholars to public debate. What was new and radical about this was the content of the Ninety-five Theses.
In this document, Luther denied that the Pope had the power to remove divine punishment for sins through granting indulgences. Luther went further, denying that the Pope ruled by divine authority but that he had only human authority conferred by the Church. This humble act triggered off a violent response. The Church condemned Luther and prepared to excommunicate him. Meanwhile all over Germany Luther’s supporters gathered, Catholic sympathizers were removed from city governments and many cities aligned themselves with Luther. Luther also had many supporters among German princes tired of paying taxes to Rome and seeing German benefices being given to Italian prelates. Soon the Lutheran movement spread in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, France, Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia. So, the first challenge that the Reformation posed for Roman Catholicism was territorial. The loss of souls meant a loss of revenue. When the second wave of the Reformation arrived with John Calvin, that loss of territory was only compounded as Calvinism became firmly entrenched in France and Holland as well as parts of Germany and Hungary.
But the Reformation posed an even greater threat because of the way Protestants used new media of communication and entertainment to spread their ideas. Printing which had been invented in Germany around 1445, was used to great effect by both main Protestant groups. Over 300,000 copies of Luther’s major works were distributed between 1517 and 1530.
The Protestants also made very effective use of theater with the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the reformation in 1617 being a year of a significant number of plays produced to celebrate Luther’s life and accomplishments. One of the most celebrated of these was The Christian Knight of Eisleben by Martin Rinckart. Education was also an area in which Protestants excelled. Recent research has demonstrated that Protestant areas of Germany had a significantly higher level of literacy than Catholic Germany. Primary education in Augsburg serves as an example. In 1623, there were twenty Protestant and only four Catholic school masters. In total they taught 1,550 Protestant children and twenty-four Catholic pupils.
Finally, Protestants also excelled in using the visual arts, particularly woodcuts and lithographs that could be easily and cheaply reproduced. So the challenge for Catholicism was clear: win back the lost territory, prevent further losses, and use education and new media of communications to spread its message. Fortunately for the Church, the Reformation crisis itself brought forth the new ideas, institutions and people that would bring about a dramatic revival.
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