Thesis on "Persecution of the Early Church"

Thesis 10 pages (3006 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Persecution of the Early Church

Martin Luther

The Reformation

Humanism and Learning

Religion and Leadership

Social Changes: The Catholic Church

Changing History

The Persecution of the Early Church

The modern age began to develop around the start of the 16th century. This was largely because society began to develop its initial modern practices during this time. Many things throughout this time had a large impact on the world, and still affect us today. Three things, however, can be singled out as being most important. The American Revolution, the founding of America by Christopher Columbus, and the reformation of the Catholic Church were all instrumental in affecting our world.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church in Europe, modeled upon the bureaucratic structure of the Holy Roman Empire, became excessively powerful, but internally corrupt. From the twelfth century onward, there had been calls for a reform. The clergy was unable to live according to the church rules, and the abuse of church practices and principles continued. The western Christendom was immersed in excessive wealth and great privileges, and the corruptive practices of the clergy included, among others, selling indulgences and collecting tithes.

The papacy had become vulnerable to attack because of the greed, immorality, and ignorance of many of its officials in all ranks of the hierarchy. Vast tax-free church possessions, being estimated according to various sources as much as one-fifth to one-third of the lands of Europe, incited the envy and resentment of the land peasantry, ordinary people, and gentry as well. The so-called Babylonian Captivity of popes at Avignon in the 14th century and the Western Schism weakened the authority of the church and divided its supporters into partisans of one or another pope. Church officials recognized the need for reform. Ambitious programs for the reorganization of the entire hierarchy were debated at the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418, but no program gained the support of a majority, and no radical changes were incorporated at that time.

Martin Luther

Eventually, a man by the name of Martin Luther began to question some of the Roman Catholic ideals in his church. He was not intentionally trying to start his own brand of Christianity or necessarily get rid of the Catholic Church. He was, however, concerned about some of the things that the church was doing, and concerned that much of what the church believed in did not actually fit with the scriptures. He found the Catholic Church to be corrupt, and through speaking out and doing a great deal of things that brought him extreme amounts of persecution, he began a movement toward Protestant Christianity.

Such a situation provoked the most crucial consequences in the form of opposition. As in response to the abuses, in 1517, a German Augustinian friar named Martin Luther (1483-1546) posted a list of grievances, known as the "Ninety-Five Theses," against the Roman Catholic Church. At the heart of Martin Luther's argument was the belief that Christian salvation through personal piety requires a sense of contrition for sins and trust in God's mercy. Attending church, pilgrimages, fasting, and charity alone are not the conditions of salvation.

Those Christians today who call themselves Lutherans are followers of Martin Luther. Christianity, at least on the Protestant side, is divided still further. There are Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, non-denominational, and many others who call themselves Christians. In general, all of their basic beliefs are the same. They worship the same God, and they believe in salvation through Jesus Christ, his only son.

The theses challenged the practice of selling indulgences not only as a corrupt practice, but also as a theologically unsound practice. Luther attacked numerous aspects of established Roman Catholicism, for example, clerical power, celibacy, the use of Latin in church worship, and eventually papal power. Thus the Reformation movement started. As the spirit of reform was spreading, other leaders appeared: Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland, French-born John Calvin (1509-1564) settled in Geneva, and John Knox (1505-1572) who carried Calvin's teachings to Scotland.

The Reformation

Reformation, as a great religious revolution in the Christian church, ended the ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope in Western Christendom and resulted in the establishment of the Protestant churches. With the Renaissance that preceded and the French Revolution that followed, the Reformation completely changed the medieval way of life in Western Europe and initiated the era of modern history. Although the movement dates from the early 16th century, when Martin Luther first defied the authority of the church, the conditions that led to his revolution had existed for hundreds of years and had complex doctrinal, political, economic, and cultural elements.

From the revival of the Holy Roman Empire by Otto I in 962, popes and emperors had been engaged in a continuous contest for supremacy. This conflict had generally resulted in the victory of the papal side and "created antagonism between Rome and the German Empire." This antagonism increased in the 14th and 15th centuries by the further development of German nationalist sentiment. Resentment against papal taxation and against submission to ecclesiastical officials of the foreign papacy existed also in other countries of Europe.

In England, the beginning of the movement toward independence from papal jurisdiction was the enactment of the statutes of Mortmain in 1279, Provisors in 1351, and Praemunire in 1393. Those documents greatly reduced the power of the church to withdraw land from the control of the civil government, to make appointments to ecclesiastical offices, and to use judicial authority. The 14th-century English reformer John Wycliff (1320-1384) attacked the papacy itself, criticizing the sale of indulgences, pilgrimages, the excessive veneration of saints, and the moral and intellectual standards of priests. In order to reach the common people, he translated the Bible into English and delivered sermons in English instead of Latin. His teachings spread to Bohemia, where they found an advocate in the religious reformer Jan Hus (John Huss 1372-1415). The execution of Huss as a heretic in 1415 led directly to the Hussite Wars, a violent expression of Bohemian nationalism, suppressed with difficulty by the cooperating forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and the Pope Martin V. "The wars were a precursor of religious civil war in Germany in Luther's time."

Humanism and Learning

Humanism and the focus on classical learning and speculative studies, beginning in Italy during the early Renaissance, displaced scholasticism as the leading philosophy of Western Europe and brought to an end the church leaders' monopoly of learning. Lay persons studied ancient literature, and scholars such as the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457) critically estimated translations of the Bible and other documents that formed the basis for much of church dogma and tradition.

The invention of portable printing greatly increased the circulation of books and spread new ideas throughout Europe. Humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536) in the Netherlands, John Colet (1467-1519) in England, Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522) in Germany, and Jacques Lefevre d'etaples (1450-1537) in France, applied the new learning concerning church practices and the development of a more accurate knowledge of the Scriptures. Their scholarly studies laid the basis on which Luther, Calvin, and other reformers began to claim the Bible rather than the church as the source of religious authority. Such a situation could not be accepted by the Pope Leo X (1475-1521), Luther's contemporary. The papal authorities ordered Luther to retract and submit to church authority.

Nevertheless, he became more intransigent, appealing for reform, attacking the sacramental system, and underlining the importance of individual faith based on the guidance contained in the Bible. Threatened with excommunication by the pope, Luther publicly burned the bull. This act of defiance symbolized a definite break with the entire system of the Western church. In an attempt to stop the tide of revolt, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), and the German princes assembled in 1521 at the Diet of Worms, and ordered Luther to recant. He refused and was declared an outlaw. For almost a year he remained in hiding, writing pamphlets explaining his principles and translating the New Testament into German. Although his writings were prohibited by imperial edict, they were openly sold and were powerful instruments in turning the great German cities into "centers of Lutheranism."

The reform movement provoked tremendous reaction among the people, and Luther on the days of retirement returned to his home at Wittenberg as a revolutionary leader. Germany had become sharply divided along religious and economic lines. Those most interested in preserving the traditional order, including the emperor, most of the princes, and the higher clergy, supported the Roman Catholic church. Lutheranism was supported by the north German princes, the lower clergy, the commercial classes, and large sections of the peasantry, who welcomed the changes as an opportunity for greater independence in both the religious and economic spheres.

Religion and Leadership

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