Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Causes Of The Reformation
321
Causes
of the Protestant Reformation
Conciliarism
General council has more power than the Pope and can dispose of him
Development of Personal Devotions As A Result of Suspicion of Clergy
CHurch Corruption
Avignon Papacy
Greed of Secular Leaders
1/3 of Europe
Church Land
Papal Need For Money
Indulgences
In 1520, Martin Luther attacked the whole system of Church government and sent the pope the following criticism of the Church leaders who served under him in Rome.
The Roman Church has become the most licentious [sinful] den of thieves…They err who ascribe to thee the right of interpreting Scripture, for under cover of they name they seek to set up their own wickedness in the Church, and, alas, through them Satan has already made much headway under thy predecessors. In short, believe none who exalt thee, believe those who humble thee.
In 1992, historian Ozment published Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution. Here, he comments on some of the political aspects of the reformation.
Beginning as a protest against arbitrary, self-aggrandizing, hierarchical authority in the person of the pope, the Reformation came to be closely identified in the minds of contemporaries with what we today might call states’ rights or local control. To many townspeople and villagers, Luther seemed a godsend for their struggle to remain politically free and independent; they embraced his Reformation as a conserving political force, even though they knew it threatened to undo traditional religious beliefs and practices.
In Reformation Europe, published in 1963, historian G.R. Elton notes the role of geography and trade in the spread of Reformation ideas.
Could the Reformation have spread so far and so fast if it had started anywhere but in Germany? The fact that it had its beginnings in the middle of Europe made possible a very rapid radiation in all directions…Germany’s position at the center of European trade also helped greatly. German merchants carried not only goods but Lutheran ideas and books to Venice and France; the north German Hanse [a trade league] transported the Reformation to the Scandinavian countries.