Reformation And Counter Reformation Notes

Reformation and Counter-Reformation

Notes on the Reformation/Counter-Reformation:

• The Reformation was initiated in 1517 by the publishing of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.

• Reformers objected to the Catholic Church and the papacy that run it.

• Preceded by earlier events such as the Black Death and the Western Schism which caused many people to lose faith in the established Catholic Church.

• Reformation was ended by the Thirty Years War conclusion with the Treaty of Westphalia

• Treaty of Westphalia:

  • All parties would now recognise the Treaty of Augsburg

  • Right to practice faith in public during allotted times

  • Ended the Pope’s pan-European power; his nullification of the treaty was ignored by sovereigns throughout Europe

• Low literacy rates hindered the expansion of Protestantism

• Impact of war on religious clergy

• If a Protestant area was captured by Catholics, the clergy would be killed or exported and replaced with Catholic clerics

• Language barrier when preaching

• Vernacular prints and songs helped spread the reformers message

Counter-Reformation

• Comprised of four major elements:

  • Ecclesiastical reconfiguration

    • Foundation of seminaries for the proper training of priests in the spiritual life and theological traditions of the Church

  • Religious orders

    • Jesuits

  • Spiritual movements

    • New movement focused on devotional life and a personal relationship with Christ; Spanish mystics & French school of spirituality

  • Political dimensions

    • Roman inquisition

      • Copernicus and Galileo

• Jesuits:

  • Became preachers, humanist educators and monarchical helpers; credited with stopping Protestantism in Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Germany, France and the Spanish Netherlands

  • Participated in the expansion of Catholicism into the new world.

  • Took the Pope as an absolute ruler, contributing to the Counter-Reformation in harmony with the Vatican

Lecture:

Questions raised by Protestantism?

• Sources of religious authority

• Relationship with civil authority

• Nature of Christian community

• A reform of culture?

Early spread of Protestantism:

• Martin Luther (1517)

• German Peasants War (1525)

  • Failed and maybe 100,000 peasants were slaughtered by the Aristocracy. Incorporated some principles from Protestant Reformation, through which the peasants sought freedom

• Anabaptists

  • Preaching a radical alternative to Lutheranism, the Anabaptists helped stir up the peasants revolt

• Treaty of Augsburg (1555)

  • Made the legal division of Christendom permanent within the Holy Roman Empire. Allowed the Holy Roman Empire’s states’ princes to select either Lutheranism or Catholicism. Allowed emigration to other states if subjects did not approve of the choice. Lutheranism was officially recognised within...

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