Religious reform
In the sixteenth century Europe was shaken by a series of religious movements that openly challenged the dogmas of the Catholic Church and the pope's authority. These movements, known generically as Reformation , were undoubtedly of a religious nature . However, they were occurring at the same time the changes in the European economy along with the rise of the bourgeoisie.
So some currents of the reformist movement suited to the religious needs of the bourgeoisie, to value the man " entrepreneur " and to justify the pursuit of " profit " always condemned by the Catholic Church.
The factors that led to the Reformation
One of the important causes of the Reformation was the humanism evangelist, critical of the Church of the time. The church had drifted far from their origins and their teachings, such as poverty, simplicity, suffering. In the sixteenth century, Catholicism was a religion of pomp, luxury and idleness.Appeared critical in books such as In Praise of Folly (1509), Erasmus of Rotterdam, which became the basis for Martin Luther efetivasse the break with the Catholic Church.
Morally, the church was in decline: he was more preoccupied with the political and economic than religious issues. To further increase their wealth, the Church resorted to any subterfuge, for example, the sale of ecclesiastical offices, sale of relics and especially the sale of indulgences famous, which were the immediate cause of Luther's criticism. The Papacy guarantee that every Christian sinner could buy forgiveness of the Church.
The formation of national monarchies brought a sense of nationality to people who inhabited the same region, this feeling unknown in feudal Europe, This fact motivated the decline of papal authority, for the king and the nation became more important.
Another very important factor, linked to the previous, was the rise of the bourgeoisie, which, in addition to the decisive role played in the formation of national monarchies and humanist thought, was instrumental in the religious Reformation. Now, the Catholic ideology, the only form of wealth was land;money, trade and banking were sinful practices; work for obtaining the profit, which is the essence of the capital, was sin. The bourgeoisie needed, therefore, a new religion to justify their love of money and encouraged the activities related to trade.
The Protestant doctrine, created by the Reformation, fully satisfy the desires of this new class, because he preached the accumulation of capital in order to obtain the heavenly paradise. Thus, much of the bourgeoisie linked to lucrative activities, joined the reform movement.
Why the Reformation began in Germany?
In the sixteenth century, Germany was not a politically centralized state. Nobility was so independent that minted coins, made justice and collected taxes on their properties. In addition to its wealth, plundering trade routes, expropriating the merchants and peasants.
The German bourgeoisie, compared to European countries, was weak: the merchants and most powerful bankers were established in the south, on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, they passed the main trade routes; the economic activities of the region were the export of glass, metal and "industry" of the paper; but the strongest sector of the bourgeoisie was the usurer.
Who opposed the church in Germany
The German Catholic Church was very rich. His major fields were located on the Rhine, called "path of the clergy", and were these German territories yielded more taxes to the Church.
German feudal lords were interested in the immense property of the church and the German clergy.
The poor identified the Church with the system that oppressed them: feudalism. This is because it represented more a feudal lord, who were many taxes.
On the eve of the Reformation, the class struggle and politics has assumed a religious form. "
Luther and the Reformation
"Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, of petty bourgeois origin, the Saxony region. A person afflicted man and tendencies to mysticism. His break with the Catholic Church gave up due to the sale of indulgences. To complete the construction of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Leo X (1513-1521) determined the selling of indulgences to all Christendom and instructed the Dominican Tetzel to market them in Germany.
Luther protested violently against such trade and, in 1517, posted on the door of the Wittenberg church where he was teacher and preacher, 95 propositions which, among other things, condemned the shameful practice of selling indulgences. Pope Leo X demanded a retraction, always refused.
Luther was excommunicated and reacted immediately, burning public the papal bull (excommunication document)
Frederick, elected prince of Saxony and protector of Luther, picked it up in his castle, where the religious thinker developed his ideas. The main ones were:
- Justification by faith, by which appearances have secondary value. The only thing that saves man is faith. Without it, nothing worth the works of mercy, the precepts and rules.Man is alone before God without intermediaries: God extends to man his grace and salvation; man extends to God your faith.
- So the Church does not function, the pope is an imposter, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, an uselessness.
- Another idea of Luther was the free exam.The Church was considered incompetent to save man; so his interpretation of the Holy Scriptures was not valid: Luther wanted all men had access to the Bible (so the translated from Latin into German). Every man could interpret the Bible according to their own conscience, emancipating in the realm of religious ideology.
The rebellion of the nobles and the Poor
The German nobles saw in the proposals Luther an opportunity to seize the rich fields of the Catholic Church in Germany, so, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, a religious order, converted to Lutheranism and secularized (confiscated) goods order ; Apart from this, other nobles were converted, as the lords of Saxony, Brandenburg and Hesse.
In 1522 the knights of the empire, social layer that was in the process of decay, they decided to attack several ecclesiastical principalities to take possession of the land and strengthen its position in German society. The Catholic nobility reacted even supported by some Lutherans nobles, who felt threatened in their interests. In 1523 the rebellion was crushed.Taking advantage of the defeat of the knights, peasants in central and southern Germany began in 1524, a rebellion.
They fought for the end of peasant serfdom and equal conditions of the peasants to the clergy and nobility.
These struggles stood out Thomas Munzer, who, influenced by the doctrines of Luther, claimed the killing of atheists, priests and the landed nobility. Luther, however, rejected this stand, recommending to the nobles that defeat the peasants, exterminating them as "mad dogs".
The German nobility organized a large army, composed of Catholics, Protestants, bourgeois and priests and, in May 1525, eliminated more than 100,000 farmers, including Thomas Munzer. The ideas of this man generated a new sect, more radical than the Lutheran: Anabaptists.
The most conservative elements of German society emerged strengthened from this repression of peasants, which helped keep the delay in the region, preventing the formation of a strong, centralized monarchy. "
Calvin Reform
"While the Lutheran Reformation was spreading in Germany, the French tried to prepare a more peaceful reform, guided by humanists. But the conservative Catholic sectors that dominated the University of Sorbonne, prevented the work of humanists, setting the stage for a much more radical and uncompromising reform, led by John Calvin.
Calvin, like Luther, started from salvation by faith, but its conclusions were far more radical;man would be a miserable creature, corrupt and full of sins; faith alone could save him, although this depended salvation of God's will - this was the "idea of predestination."
Calvin went to Switzerland, settling in Geneva in 1536. Switzerland already knew the reformist movement by Ulrich Zwingli and was a suitable place to Calvin develop their ideas.But the main factor for the spread of Calvinism in Switzerland was the concentration in this region, a reasonable number of bourgeois merchants, desirous of a doctrine to justify their lucrative activities.
Calvin became a real political dictator, Geneva religious and moral. He formed a consistory (kind of assembly), composed of pastors and elders, who watched the customs and ran the city, entirely subject to the law of the gospel.They were forbidden the gambling, dancing, theater, luxury.
Calvin offered an appropriate doctrine to the capitalist bourgeoisie, as saying that the man proved his faith and showed his predestination through the material success of enrichment.He defended the lending of money at interest, considered poverty as a sign of divine disfavor and valued the work, which was to meet the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, which had at work the necessary element to accumulate capital.
The spread of Calvinism
Calvinism spread in France, the Netherlands and Scotland. In France and the Netherlands suffered resistance, but in Scotland was adopted as the official religion. It was John Knox (1505-1572) the introducer of Calvinism in Scotland, and his theories were quickly accepted by the nobility, interested in the properties of the Catholic Church. Knox could the Catholic religion was banned by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish church was organized on the model of the Church of Geneva and was named Presbyterian Church, because of the role played by older (presbysteroi in Greek).
In France, the Huguenots (Calvinists) were involved in the bloody wars of religion that marked the political struggles of the country. "
Anglicanism
"In England, the spread of the Reformation was facilitated by personal dispute between the sovereign, Henry VIII, and the Pope. Henry VIII was a Catholic, but broke with the pope when he refused to dissolve his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who had not given him a son. Ignoring the papal decision, Henry VIII married in 1533 with Anne Boleyn, being excommunicated by Pope Clement VII.
The sovereign thus found a justification to prevent the power of the Church overshadow the authority of an absolutist king. Moreover, the church property passed into the hands of the nobility, who supported the king. Thus, the properties of the nobility increased, facilitating new economic activity wool production, which was sought by textile manufacturers. The official of the split between Henry VIII and the papacy gave up when the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which in 1534 placed the church under royal authority: the Anglican Church was born.
"King is the supreme head of the Church of England (...) In this capacity, the King has all the power to suppress, correct errors, heresies, abuses (...) that are or may be informed legally by spiritual authority" (Act of Supremacy, 1534)
The Act of the Six Articles, signed in 1539, Henry VIII kept all Catholic dogmas, except the papal authority. This ambiguity was attacked by both Protestants and Catholics: the Protestants reproached fidelity to Catholic dogma, and Catholics reproached the schism.
Edward VI, son and successor of Henry VIII, the country imposed the obligation of Calvinist worship. Mary Tudor, his successor, tried unsuccessfully to restore Catholicism. With the death of Mary Tudor, Elizabeth ascended the throne 1 (1558-1603), which officially established the Anglican religion through two famous acts: the Bill of Uniformity, which created the Anglican liturgy, and Rui of the 39 Articles, which underlay the Anglican faith. "
The spread of the Reformation Religious Wars
"The rapid spread of the teachings of Luther in Germany incited an existing dispute: the dispute between the nobles and princes and the empire of the Habsburgs, which, supported by the Catholic Church, dominated much of the German lands, in addition to Spain, the Netherlands and several territories of eastern Europe based on the doctrine of Luther, the German knights fought to take the goods of the Church and to rid the area of the Habsburgs.Next to the emperor, the most powerful nobles lined up and the Catholic Church, threatened by the preachings of Luther.
Carlos V tried to put an end to this agitation. In 1529 it was formed a kind of assembly, known as the Diet, where he tried to force the submission of the German nobles to Catholicism. Noblemen protested, which led to the new name of the Lutheran religion, "Protestant."
In 1531, the cities and the Protestant princes of Germany formed a league to face the imperial army: the league Esmalcalda. Began then a long fight political and religious, which ended in 1555 with the signing of the Peace of Augsburg, which stated that each prince should impose their religion on the territory under its direct control (cujus regio ejus religio).
The reform in the Scandinavian States
From the fourteenth century, Sweden and Norway were subject to the kingdom of Denmark. In 1523, the Swedish nobleman Gustav Vasa proclaimed the independence of his country, becoming king of Sweden. For resources to manage the new country, Gustavo confiscated Church property, converting to Lutheranism.
The king of Denmark, which still dominated Norway followed the example of Gustavo, confiscating the goods of the church and converting to Lutheranism in 1535. The Catholic influence practically disappeared these countries. "
The development of the Reformation in France generated considerable conflict. Also noteworthy is the massacre of Protestants in the known night of St. Bartholomew in 1572
Bibliography
PEDRO, Antonio, 1942 - History: Compact, 2nd Degree / Pedro Antonio ,. - Ed Current, ampl...and renovated. São Paulo: FTD 1995.
Category: General history
