9.1

Relapse, Renaissance and Reformation

9.2

Relapse: The End of Warmth and Prosperity

At the very start of the 14th Century began, the

Medieval Warming ended just as abruptly as it

began. Europe experience Little Ice Age. From

1315-1317, Europe experienced a long famine. In

1337,the Hundred Years War between France

and England over the throne of France began.

Two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ere

let loose on Europe but the third and most

deadly of all, the Black Death, the Plague spread

across the land killing over thirty percent of the

population. The peace and prosperity of the

High Middle Ages had come to an end.

Things grew so bad in Western Europe that even the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, no

longer resided in the city of which he was the Bishop. A conflict between the King of

France (Philip IV) and Pope Boniface VIII, led to the death of Boniface. His successor,

Benedict XI, died less than a year after being elected Pope. Poisoning by an agent of

France was suspected. King Philip forced a divided conclave to elect a French Pope

who took the name Clement V. Clement refused to go to Rome. Instead he moved the

Papal court to Avignon in France where it remained for 67 years. In 1376, Gregory XI

moved the Papal Court back to Rome. Gregory died two years later and a schism began

in the West where multiple men, some in Avignon, some in Rome claimed to be the

legitimate Pope. Things weren’t resolved until a consistory met in Constance in 1417.

9.3

Nominalism and Yet Another British Monk

Just as al-Ghazali challenged Avicenna’s use of reason in trying to understand God in

Islam, Christianity had a philosopher who challenged Aquinas’ use of reason to better

understand God. His name was William of Ockham. He was a British monk who set in

motion a process called Nominalism that did to Christianity what al-Ghazali did to

Islam.

We noted in an earlier section that Islam had a Golden Age where men of faith were

allowed to use their reason to explore the nature of God by examining God’s creation.

Men like Avicenna found evidence of the work of God in action both in human beings

and the universe in which they lived. Thomas Aquinas was the Christian Avicenna

during the High Middle Ages. In Islam, another great thinker, al-Ghazali disputed

Avicenna’s approach. He believed that, rather than exploring the nature of God,

humanity would be better served by submitting to God and obeying God’s Law..

Ockham was born in Surrey, England in 1285. He became a Franciscan monk at a young

age and studied at Oxford University from 1309 to 1321. He completed all the

requirements for a Master’s Degree but, for some reason, was never granted the title of

Regent Master (which would have allowed him to teach). Nonetheless, the University

accepted him to their faculty.

Ockham wrote a commentary on a theological treatise of Peter of Lombard that got him

in trouble with the Pope in Avignon. He was excommunicated but that was more likely

political due to the reigning Pope’s dislike for Franciscans. Ockham then fled to the Holy

Roman Empire and was restored under the Protection of the Emperor.

9.4

Ockham’s Philosophy

Ockham philosophy of knowledge was described as parsimonious, that is, posit as few

things as possible to arrive at a conclusion. This principle today is known as Ockham’s

Razor.

Ockham had little trust in any abstract reasoning. For example, when Aquinas could

look at a German Shepherd, a Boxer and a Poodle, he could agree with Aristotle that he

saw three animals that could be categorized as dogs. Ockham, on the other hand,

would simply see three animals and challenge what characteristics they shared in

common that allowed them to be called dogs. He said that such ideas as “dogness”

existed only in the human mind.

Following this line of reasoning, concepts such as the Law written on the hearts of

men and humans coming to understand things about God as revealed in nature were

totally suspect and not to be trusted. Words like these could easily have been spoken

by the Islamic thinker al-Ghazali. Several Christian scholars believe that Ockham was

aware of al-Ghazali’s work, “The Incoherence of Philosophers”.

Ockham had little trust in any universal concepts. Though he did accept the universal

concept of God which comprised three persons, he thought that any use of human

reason to try to understand God was pointless. Ockham wrote these words, “Only faith

gives us access to theological truths. The ways of God are not open to reason, for God

has freely chosen to create a world and establish a way of salvation within it apart from

any necessary laws that human logic or rationality can uncover.“ Ockham followed

tradition when he said that Revelation (faith) is primary in understanding God but his

disdain for seeing God at work in nature was a change from tradition.

9.5

Ockham’s Philosophy and MoralityOckham made it clear that Christianity was all about faith and little about reason. The

Islamic notion of God was not one whose nature was love and to whom one could pray

as Father. Allah was a God whose nature was Will so it was natural that, if al-Ghazali’s

skepticism of reason was correct, all Muslims would submit their will to that of Allah.

Given that the Christian notion of God was the God who loves, you might have assumed

that Ockham would have focused on that aspect of God’s nature rather than one based

on the supremacy of God’s will. If you so assumed, you would have been wrong.

Ockham arrived at the same destination as al-Ghazali but took a different route.

- Human beings were made in the image and likeness of God. God has a radically

free will so the human will is also radically free.

- A radically free human will is always superior to any influences that might affect it.

Habits, then, be they virtues or vices do not have any influence on individual human

moral decisions. Each decision is independent of what came before.

- Adam’s sin was sin simply because a will more radically free than his own, God’s

will, declared it to be sin.

- God’s will is so free that God could declare any human action to be either sinful or

not. For example, if God so chose, he could declare murder to be good.

- Jesus’ death was redemptive simply because it was God’s will that Jesus’ death was

the means by which humankind would be redeemed.

- Ongoing Christian morality was then based on the submission of the radically free

human will to the even more radically free divine will (sound familiar?).

- How could one come to know the essence of divine will? Only through revelation!

The Law of Moses was the most explicit statement of God’s will for human morality.

Selfless love is nice. Obedience to the Law is better.

9.6

Ockham’s Impact on TheologyAquinas lived at a time when most of Western Europe was Roman Catholic. (Note:After

the schism between Eastern and Western Catholicism in 1054, Catholicism in the West

was called Roman and, in the East, Orthodox). In Aquinas’ context of Christianity, faith

and reason were perfectly united in the pursuit of truth. Theology was not only taught

along with the Trivium and Quadrivium, it was considered the most excellent of subjects.

Ockham and Nominalism had an immediate impact on the study of Theology. Since

knowledge of God could only be reached by faith in revealed truth, all that could possibly

be known about God is what God specifically revealed through His Church and through

Scripture. Theology ceased to be the Queen of studies in the Universities. The famous

words attributed to Augustine, “Credo ut intelligam” (I believe so that I might understand)

were replaced by words such as “Debeo melius intelligere quod credo” (I must better

understand what I believe). Theology was separated from the other areas of study at

universities. It gradually became less a study of God and more a study of God’s word.

The Apostle Paul did not hate the Jewish Law. He simply did not believe that the external,

ritual observances of the Law had anything to do with salvation. As Jesus so well

proclaimed during the Sermon on the Mount, it is the interior change of heart that has the

greatest value. That change of heart involves turning away from self-love and learning to

love selflessly as God loves. That understanding was once at the heart of the Jewish Law

as indicated in the Shema. Paul believed that observance of the Law that stemmed from

interior conversion had real worth. It is interesting that many Christians who hold Paul in

high regard were so willing to follow Ockham away from Paul’s understanding of the

natural Law which Paul said was written on the hearts of all men.

9.7

Scholasticism and NominalismAquinas’ approach to learning was called Scholasticism. As mentioned, it believed that

the nature of God displayed itself in the creation of the natural world as well as in

Revelation. Therefore, examining and exploring the physical aspects of nature and

combining that search with a search for a deeper insight about the God who created

nature, seemed most appropriate.

Ockham believed that only the physical particulars of space and time are real. Any

universal characteristic that might be applied to a group of things (i.e. saying that a

basset hound, a schnauzer, and a wolfhound all belong to the category ‘dog’) is always

done for human usefulness. There exists no ‘dogness’ that the three animals share.

The category ‘dog’ applying to all three animals is just a name. Nomen is the Latin

word for name so Ockham’s approach to learning was called Nominalism.

Nominalism seemed to many scholars to put theology in its place. The university

should be a place for the study of concrete things, not speculative pursuits. Theology

could still be studied but separately from the physical sciences. When Theology was

studied, it should limit itself to studying what God revealed about himself in Scripture.

All the moral truth humanity needed to know could be found in God’s revealed Law.

Theology should stress the need to submit to the will of God as revealed in God’s law.

Since the union of Church and State had long since been established in both the East

and the West, God’s Law and the Law of the State were tightly wound together. This is

especially true in the concept of the Divine Right of Kings. If someone were against the

reigning King, didn’t that mean that they were against God. This conflation of the Law

of God and the Law of the state laid the foundation for the burning of heretics at the

stake.

9.8

Nominalism and Christian Morality“What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem”?

This famous question has been asked several times in the history of Christianity.

Ockham and his Nominalism was essentially asking the same question. What does that

which was revealed in Jerusalem have to do with those things studied in Athens? Full

disclosure. That was the theme of my Master’s Thesis. My answer? Everything!

I think that it is fair to say that the three major branches of Christianity, Roman Catholic,

Eastern Orthodox and Protestant accept all the basics tenets defined in the Nicene

Creed. That being said, I think all three groups would agree that the Christians of the New

Testament look upon the events of the Old Testament as preparing the Jewish world for

the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Jesus is always described as explaining the

Scriptures and Peter in his speech on Pentecost was essentially doing the same.

Judaism chose to keep Moses and the Judges as the basis of their image of the Messiah

to come while Jesus focused on the Paschal Lamb of the Exodus and the Suffering

Servant of Isaiah. But both Judaism and Christianity agreed that the Messiah would

impact Judaism first and next, through Judaism, would impact the world. It was, and is,

my personal thesis that, just as events that happened in the Hebrew Scriptures prepared

Jerusalem (the city acting as a symbol for the people and the land) for the Messiah,

events that happened in Athens (acting as a symbol for the Gentile world) was preparing

the gentes, the goyim for the Messiah. Athens and Jerusalem were meant to be joined.

Faith and reason were meant to be joined. Love and the Law were meant to be joined.

Humans were created in the image of God with an intellect (reason) and a will (faith).

Scripture taught that the faithful owed some allegiance to God (the Church) and some to

Caesar (the State). In Ockham’s time and beyond those allegiances became conflated.

9.9

Ockham and the ReformationI suspect that many in this class recognize in Nominalism some of the philosophical

foundations which would form the foundation of some of the beliefs of the Reformation.

Since three of the solas of Martin Luther (grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone) derive

from Ockham’s philosophy. It should come as no surprise that Ockham’s work was well

received by Luther. Here are a couple of quotes from Luther to make that point.

scholasticorum doctorum sine dubio princeps et ingeniosissimus.

(He, that is, Ockham) is without a doubt the leader and most insightful of scholars.

sum Occamicae factionis. I am of (I belong to) Occam’s party.

We can also find the roots of Zwingli’s view of the symbolic nature of Baptism and

the Eucharist in Ockham’s disdain for anything real beyond the concrete. If you see

bread and wine, you have bread and wine. Ockham had no time for distinctions such

as accidents and substances. Zwingli could easily say that these concrete things

may be symbols, after all, a symbol was nothing more than a useful nomen (name)

which Ockham well understood.

It should be noted that Ockham’s philosophy did not cause the Reformation. We have

already seen the events that occurred in the Avignon papacy and the Popes and anti-

Popes that followed. It is also my thesis that whenever Church and State are joined,

politicians will always use religion to justify their actions. In the Middle Ages, the

Pope was both a political ruler (over the Papal states) as well as a religious leader so

the Pope was the personification of the union of Church and state. It was only a

matter of time before the inevitable corruption would be too hard to bear.

9.10

The Renaissance

Despite the Black Death, the Hundred Years War and the other issues that the

fourteenth century had to deal with, it did manage to produce a number of creative

people. Ockham certainly has to be considered in that number. Also included were

names we might associate with the next century. Writers such as Dante and Petrarch

and artists such as Giotto all lived in the fourteenth century.

That being said, the fourteenth century was a clear interruption of a recovery process

that began in the High Middle Ages. It was in the next century, however, that what

started in the High Middle Ages not only resumed but flourished in the period that was

called the Renaissance.

During the High Middle Ages, scholars who spoke and wrote in Latin discovered works

of science, mathematics, medicine and philosophy from Greece and India preserved by

Arab scholars and then translated into Latin. It is an oddity of history that the recovery

of great works of Roman science, medicine and art including Cicero, Livy, Horace,

Seneca and others all written in Latin were left to the Renaissance.

It is said that the Renaissance had its beginnings in the city-state of Florence and then

spread to other city-states such as Venice and Milan. I will leave that discussion to

other classes taught by other teachers. What is important is that the Renaissance

completed the recovery of a culture that had been interrupted for centuries by Gothic,

Muslim and Viking invaders. Western culture had regained a sense of optimism about

itself. The High Middle Ages and especially Aquinas allowed humanity to understand an

integrated spiritual view of itself. The Renaissance allowed humanity to have an

integrated humanist view of itself.

9.11

Important People of the Fifteenth Century

Despite the Black Death, the Hundred Years War and the other issues that the

fourteenth century had to deal with, it did manage to produce a number of creative

people. Ockham certainly has to be considered in that number. Also included were

names we might associate with the next century. Writers such as Dante and Petrarch

and artists such as Giotto all lived in the fourteenth century.

A number of important people were born in the 15th century. These include;

• Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile who united the Kingdom of Spain

• Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press

• Mehmed II Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and conqueror of Constantinople

• Sandro Botticelli, Renaissance artist

• Jan van Eyck, artist from the Netherlands

• Nicholas Copernicus who proposed the theory of heliocentrism

• Christopher Columbus who sailed to the New World

• Leonardo Da Vinci who was best known for everything he touched

9.12

Important Events of the Fifteenth Century

The two most important political events of the fifteenth century were the Fall of the

Roman Empire and the unification of the Kingdom of Spain.

During the fourteenth century, new tribe of people named Ottomans (named after their

leader Osman which was pronounced Othman in Turkish) revitalized an Islamic

presence in Asia Minor and the Levant that had been crumbling for decades. The

Ottomans conquered most of the lands once held by the Abbasid Caliphate and then

went beyond and successfully invaded the Balkans in Europe. By the middle of the

fifteenth century, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II had the city of Constantinople

effectively surrounded. In May of 1453, the city fell and, for the first time in 1700 years,

the city first known as Byzantium, then Constantinople was lost to Roman rule. The last

of the Roman Emperors in the West was Romulus Augustulus who lost his throne in

476 CE. The last Roman Emperor in the East was appropriately named Constantine XI.

Interestingly, Stephen III of Moldavia and Vlad III (Dracula) of Wallachia kept their

Balkan territories (in the NE Balkans) out of the hands of the Ottomans.

In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista by driving the last of the

Muslim Moors out of their land of Granada making Spain and Portugal the only two

lands ruled by Muslims for centuries to have successfully expelled their conquerors.

There was a black cloud that darkened the success of these Spanish rulers. Jews had

successfully lived under both Muslim and Christian rule for centuries in Spain. Just as

Jews living in Germany developed their own dialect of German (Yiddish), the Jews in

Spain developed their own dialect of Spanish (Ladino), When Ferdinand and Isabella

exiled all Muslims from their lands, they also did the same for Jews. Jews were forced to

make a choice; convert (become a converso), leave or die. Many were executed.

9.13

Important Events of the Faith in the Fifteenth Century

There were also two things that happened in the fifteenth century that impacted the

Christian faith. One involved a person and the other an invention.

The invention that impacted Christianity was, of course, the printing press. This

invention allowed leaflets, letters and Bibles to be printed that gave the common

person a better opportunity to learn how to read and to afford to buy a Bible that was

almost required reading. Up until the printing press, the Church did manage to read

most of the New Testament and much of the Old Testament in three year cycles of

Sunday readings. But the Reformers’ claim of salvation “by scripture alone” would

have had very little traction if the only scripture to be had was in the Church.

The person was Jan Hus. Hus, a Czech, had been influenced by another of the proto-

reformers, the Englishman John Wycliffe. Wycliffe published his own translation of the

Bible in the vernacular (Middle English in his case). Unlike the Venerable Bede, who

translated portions of the Bible (and perhaps the entire Bible) into Old English

centuries earlier, Wycliffe did not coordinate his translations with Church authorities.

Wycliffe also had railed against traditional Catholic belief in purgatory, the eucharist,

the priesthood, monastic orders. He also took Ockham to heart with his theories on

predestination and his notion of the Bible alone. In many ways, John Calvin reflected

Wycliffe’s foundation better than Luther did. Jan Hus was influenced by Wycliffe. Hus

himself agreed with many, though not all, of Wycliffe’s beliefs and promoted Wycliffe’s

ideas throughout his portion of the Holy Roman Empire. Both Hus and Wycliffe were

ultimately declared to be heretics. Hus was burned at the stake. Wycliffe was exhumed

and then burned. The work Ockham had put in place laid the philosophical foundation

of the Reformation to come. Wycliffe and Hus had taken Ockham’s work and used it to

lay the religious foundation. Luther would use both to put the Reformation into motion.

9.14

Important People of the Sixteenth Century

The Renaissance began in the fifteenth century but it reached its peak in the sixteenth

century. Here are some of the people who stood out in that century,

• Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world, (Note: He didn’t complete the trip)

• Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent took the Ottoman Empire to its greatest extent.

• Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince.

• Michelangelo Buonarroti, like Da Vinci, lived into the 16th century, Michelangelo

needs no description.

• Galileo Galilei. Again, no explanation is needed.

• Elizabeth I ruled England with a strong hand for more than 44 years.

• Miguel De Cervantes wrote Don Quixote.

• Paracelsus was a Swiss polymath

There were, of course, many people who played serious roles in the Reformation which

began in the 16th century. We’ll cover them on other slides.

9.15

Papal PoliticsOckham had laid the philosophical foundation of the Reformation. Wycliffe and Hus had

already laid the spiritual foundation. The Avignon Papacy and the subsequent battles

between Popes and anti-Popes proved that the Catholic Church in the West, now called

the Roman Catholic Church, was in great need of reform. Catholic Christianity in the

West had already experienced a number of reformations over the centuries. These were

not general reformations but calls for reform generated by religious orders, largely

monastic, to turn away from the wisdom of the world and seek again the wisdom of

God. By the sixteenth century, many of these orders, originally created for reform, had

themselves become corrupted.

Other Catholic voices such as Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More were also calling

for reform but the Papacy was both a political office as well as a religious one. The Pope

ruled the Papal States, lands situated between the Holy Roman Empire in the North and

increasing French influence in the two Italian kingdoms in the South, the Kingdom of

Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples. The Ottoman Empire was posing increasing pressure

on Western Europe. In 1529, Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent had laid siege to Vienna.

Since the Pope needed money to govern the Papal States, fund Church operations and,

support himself in a style as lavish as many European royalty, tax revenues were

required. The Pope could tax but collecting taxes in the land had its own problems. In

the opening years of the 16th century, A Borgia family member, who took the name

Alexander VI, was the Pope. He had four children including Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia.

Cesare was “the Prince’ that Machiavelli modeled his book on. Alexander was followed

by two popes, Pius III and Julius II. Neither of whom was of any note. In 1513, Pope Leo

X took the throne and his actions provided the spark the Reformation was waiting for.

9.16

And so it begins….Pope Leo X (Giovani de Medici) became Pope in 1513. Leo had plans. He had plans to

build, including the restoration of St. Peter’s Basilica. He had wars to fight. He also had

personal expenses since, after all, political leaders are due a certain lifestyle. While Leo

X had plans for all those things, what he didn’t have was the money to pay for them.

So Pope Leo began a campaign to raise money. Yes, he raised taxes but, as I said, it’s

one thing to proclaim a tax increase but entirely another thing to collect it. An easier

way would be to sell religious offices. Access to the office of Bishop would mean

money to the seller, i.e. Leo. It also meant money to the buyer who would have

donations from the faithful to make use of. Along with the selling of offices, Leo X

authorized the selling of indulgences. You could only tap the rich by selling offices. You

could tap the entire faithful by selling indulgences.

An Augustinian monk named Martin Luther began criticizing these practices. He said

that the Pope had no authority over who was and who wasn’t in purgatory. He also

added that there was no theological foundation for the “treasury of merit” from which

the Pope could apply merit compiled by the saints (and, of course, Jesus’ merits) to

individual Christians. Luther took these and other objections that and put them on a list

of 95 theses and tacked that list to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenburg.

Martin Luther at the time was a professor of theology at Wittenberg University. Tacking

the list to the door was a standard way of beginning of a debate. The invention of the

printing press, however, began to play its important factor in the Reformation. Before

any debate could be scheduled, Luther’s list was printed and distributed in universities

across Western Europe. The torch of the Reformation, intentionally or not, had been lit.

9.17

The TrialIn 1517 Luther sent a copy of his 95 theses to the Archbishop Albrecht who immediately

sent them on to the Pope. The Pope then summoned Luther to Rome. Frederick III,

Elector (political leader) from Saxony who supported reform, persuaded the Pope to

hold the questioning in Augsburg where the Imperial Diet was to meet. The Diet was a

deliberative body in the Holy Roman Empire. The Papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan heard

Luther’s case and had ordered him arrested but Luther escaped to Altenburg in Saxony.

In 1519, a second Nuncio, Karl von Miltizt and Luther spoke to each other in a cordial

manner and some reconciliation seemed possible when each promised to remain silent

to see if some common ground could quietly be established. However, when a single

theologian, Johann Eck, tried to publicly debate Luther’s theses, all bets were off.

In 1520, the Pope issued a Bull, Exsurge Domine, which gave Luther 60 days to

withdraw 21 sentences from his writings. Von Miltizt again tried to broker a compromise

but Eck again ruined any hope for compromise by preaching to whoever would listen to

him that the Pope was going to excommunicate Luther. In 1521 another gathering, this

time of the leaders of the individual petty kingdoms that comprised the HRE, gathered

at a city called Worms. The Emperor himself, Charles V, attended. The Elector from

Saxony, Frederick III promised Luther a safe pass. Johann Eck, representing Trier,

distributed copies of Luther’s writings and accused him of heresy. Luther defended his

writings as being in line with scripture. The Diet deliberated. The Emperor himself read

the verdict. On May, 25, 1521, Martin Luther was declared a heretic. His writings were

banned. Luther was arrested. During his return to Wittenberg, Luther escaped with the

help of Elector Frederick III. He spent some time exiled in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach.

While there, he translated the Greek New Testament into German adding his famous

allein to Romans 3:28 relighting the James/Paul controversy of apostolic times.

9.18

The ImpactLuther was not the fist reformer by far. As I mentioned, various monastic orders were

established to counter the inevitable excesses that come when state and church are so

closely joined. John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were reformers in the mode of Luther but, in

the end, their reforms failed when the declaration of the Church that these men were

heretics was supported by the state. But the situation had changed by the 16th century.

People saw the church as little more than as an extension of the state. The leaders of

both Church and State lived lavishly while the common people did not. While the

Reformation started out as a religious movement, it soon got out of hand and included

the usual politics of state affairs.

Spurred on by Luther’s attack on the Roman Catholic Church, a Peasants War took

place in several districts of the Holy Roman Empire and destroyed a great number of

Churches in the process These districts included Thuringia, Swabia and Bavaria.

Luther and his ally Philipp Melanchthon wrote against these uprisings as did Huldrych

Zwingli (more on Zwingli later).

Two things need to be mentioned here. First, it is important to note that Protestantism

is not itself a Church. It is a movement of different groups protesting against the

Roman Catholic Church. Protestantism included many reformers each of whom had his

own ideas and beliefs. We’ll discuss a few of these later. Second, there are a number of

ways to categorize these various groups but one categorization made this distinction.

There were groups that were completely comfortable with the State having a say in

religious affairs. They were called Magisterial Protestants. They included men such as

Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Henry VIII. Radical Protestants were those who wanted the

state to have no say in religious affairs. This group includes the Anabaptists of Conrad

Grebel and Felix Mantz and Mennonites of Jakob Mennon among others.

9.19

Huldrych ZwingliHuldrych Zwingli was perhaps the most influential reformer about whom people know

very little, if anything. This is largely due to the fact that he never established a Church

of his own. Along with Calvin, Luther and Henry VIII, Zwingli is considered a Magisterial

Protestant.

Zwingli was born on New Year’s day in 1481 in one of the Confederated Cantons of

Switzerland. He became parish priest who was close to the people. Like Luther before

him, Zwingli seriously objected to the selling of indulgences in his town. He came to

this on his own, not influenced by Luther. Zwingli began preaching differently than the

usual cyclical teaching of Scripture where those attending Mass would hear most

portions of the New Testament and much of th Old Testament in three year cycles,

Matthew, Mark and Luke every third year during Sundays in Ordinary Time and the most

theologically important gospel of John during Sundays in Seasonal Time, such as

Eastertide and Christmastide. The commentaries that today we call homilies were

supposed to focus on the gospel of the day.

Zwingli followed instead on the style called the lectio continua. He would read a gospel

up to a point, preach on that, then pick up at the same point the following mass. This

remains a common practice today in many Protestant churches. Over time, Zwingli

began to question the mass, the sacraments and the proper way to interpret scripture.

9.20

Huldrych Zwingli’s ImpactHuldrych Zwingli did not establish his own Church but the principles he established

formed the foundation of what would later be completed by John Calvin. Luther’s

involvement with the state was circumstantial. It was an elector who saved him from

prosecution by the Holy Roman Empire and, as a result, he was involved with the

internal politics of the HRE. Zwingli’s involvement of Church was more planned and it

lead directly to his death.

Zwingli began organizing other cities around Zurich that had become favorable to the

Reformation into a political league, das Christliche Burgrecht (Christian Civic Union).

This forced Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland to form their own organization, die

Christliche Vereinigung (Christian Alliance). Inevitably, war broke out. The first Kappel

War resulted in a victory for Zwingli’s Civic Union but a second war followed in which

the Alliance was victorious and Zwingli was killed. The sad truth is that, once the

Christian Church and State become joined, killing each other in the name of Christ

always seems to follow.

Zwingli tried to include Luther in his organizing but there were some religious

differences that needed to be resolved. A meeting at Marburg Castle (the Marburg

Colloquy) took place to settle the issue. Zwingli was strong in his belief that the

Eucharist was merely symbolic. Luther insisted on that Jesus was physically present in

the Eucharist. The meeting was a failure. The HRE adopted the principle of cujus regio,

ejus religio. Each region could have its own religion. The Reformation had achieved the

same kind of Church and State union with portions of the HRE that Catholicism formed

under Theodosius centuries before with the actual Roman Empire. There were now

political entities that could legitimately give themselves a Protestant religious identity.

9.21

John CalvinIf Huldrych Zwingli was a little-known but important reformer, John Calvin was far

better known and proved to be far more important. To say that Calvin’s importance in

the Reformation was equal to that of Martin Luther is probably an overstatement. To say

that it was different is an understatement.

Calvin was born Jehan Cauvin in Noyon in Picardy in the Kingdom of France in 1509.

His intelligence as a child led him to the patronage of a local family of wealth, the

Montmors. As a young man he was sent to Paris and studied Latin at the Collège de la

Marche and philosophy at the Collège de Montaigu. He then studied law at the

University of Orléans and Koine Greek at the University of Bourges. In 1532, Calvin

received his Licentiate in law but two years earlier, Calvin had a conversion experience

that led him to become part of a general reformation movement in France. This

conversion took place at about the same time that the French government reacted

against the Reformation. Calvin fled to Basil in Switzerland and wrote the first version

of his greatest religious work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Calvin then went to Geneva to present plans for the reformation of the Church there. At

first, he was warmly received but, in the end, they had conflict with the political leaders

in Geneva. Calvin went to Strasbourg. In 1541, he returned to Geneva and found its

leaders more open to his ideas. Calvin himself was never a political leader in Geneva

but he was sufficiently respected by Geneva’s ruling council that his condemnation of

another man, claiming to be a Reformer, Michael Servetus, led to Servetus being

burned at the stake as a heretic. Before he died, Calvin re-wrote his Institutes. Calvin’s

influence can still be found in any number of Congregational, Reformed and

Presbyterian churches to this day.

9.22

Henry VIIILuther, Zwingli and Calvin can be said to be Magisterial Protestants, that is,

comfortable with the State having some involvement with the Church, Henry VIII was

the Protestant epitome of the joining of Church and State.

Caeseropapism describes those churches over whom the political leader doesn’t

simply have some influence but is, in fact, the legal head of the Church. In the

Byzantine Empire, the Emperor considered himself the Head of the Church. Henry VIII

liked that model and used it to “reform” what would be called he Church of England.

Henry was absolutely fine with the Roman Catholic Church especially when that Church

allowed him to marry his brother’s widow. When that same church refused to allow his

to divorce that same woman, Henry was no longer happy. He declared himself to be

both head of State and head of Church. England became more like an Eastern Orthodox

Church than a Protestant Church. Henry put the Church of England into a state of

Schism with Rome.

Henry didn’t make any great changes in Church teaching or in Church practice. He

simply eliminated the influence of the Papacy. After a brief return to Catholicism under

Mary Tudor, it was Elizabeth who put the real Protestant stamp on the C of E. There

were several versions of ruling documents in the C of E. There were the Ten Articles of

1536, the Bishop’s Book of 1537, the Six Articles of 1539, the King’s Book of 1543, the

Forty-Two Articles of 1553. It was this last set of Articles that were revised into the final

set called the Thirty-Nine Articles. This document defines the C of E today. The Church

of England tried to find a middle way between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

The Ten Articles of 1536 seemed very Catholic (and Orthodox) but the Thirty-Nine

Articles put a solid Protestant stamp on England and its Church.

9.23

The Impact of English Protestantism

What Elizabeth I managed to do with the Church of England can be somewhat

compared to what going on with world politics today. The world of Christianity in the

Eastern World did not undergo a Reformation so there was little impact there by the

Reformers. The real impact of the Reformation was limited to Western Europe. In that

arena, the Papacy could be seen as a type of Global government mostly on a religious

level but also on some political levels. When Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of

Aragon and the Pope refused to allow it, Henry VIII wisely positioned this refusal as an

international infringement on local English government. Henry tied support for his

separation from Rome to patriotism for England. Many English citizens who were

devoutly Catholic but were also not particularly fond of the Pope supported Henry in

the question of Papal interference in English affaires. When Mary Tudor took over, she

failed to take this into consideration, Elizabeth I used it to her full advantage. The

menacing Spanish Armada showed that her posturing was not without reason. In any

case, loyalty to England implied loyalty to England’s Church. As Thomas More and

many other Catholics discovered, loyalty to Rome was treasonous no matter how much

the Catholic might claim devotion to the Crown. Death for such traitors was justice.

It is difficult today to say that the Catholic martyrs in England were killed for their faith

or for their politics. That distinction may have been a distinction without a difference.

In any case, the Protestantism of England was largely English. It spread worldwide

because the borders of the British Empire spread worldwide. At the same time,

Calvinism and Lutheranism were spreading, not within expanding political borders

but beyond them.

9.24

The Catholic ReformationIt had been apparent to many Catholics that reform was necessary in the Church. The

problem preventing is the usual problem encountered when Church and State are

joined. There are too many people on both the religious and political end of the union

that have too much at stake in preserving the status quo.

For centuries following the barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire, the

Catholic Church in the West was the pillar of stability across Western Europe. It is well

known how the monks in Ireland preserved Western Civilization. There were other

priests and monks in other European lands that did their best as well. Even as late as

the High Middle Ages, The Catholic Church gave legitimacy to rulers of newly-emerging

nation states. By the time of the Renaissance, however, Europe had grown up and, as

many young adults resent overbearing parents, many nations in Europe began to

resent an overbearing Church. Part of the animosity toward the Papacy was due to the

fact that the Pope symbolized all that these emerging nations resented.

The Catholic Church in the West, the Roman Catholic Church, had to reform itself and,

after, re-invent itself. The reform came with the Council of Trent. A new order called the

Jesuits led the re-invention campaign.

I’ll repeat something here I have said before. I have tried my best to explain the context

in which I understand it. If it weren’t for the courage and, perhaps, the stubbornness of

Martin Luther, the reform that was so needed in Catholicism may never have happened.

From a Catholic perspective, many of Luther’s objections were justified, especially

involving Church practices. In matters of faith, Luther did not stray from traditional

Church teachings as far as Calvin did. But Luther did deny some basic church

teachings and, perhaps thanks to Johann Eck and a Pope as stubborn as Luther,

compromise was never achieved.

9.25

The Council of Trent

Once the Reformation extended beyond the religious declarations of the various

Reformers and extended to the political world, specifically many of the princes of the

Holy Roman Empire, it was clear that the Roman Catholic Church could not wait out the

storm. Calls for reform had been coming in from its own ranks for decades. When Pope

Paul III and HRE Emperor Charles V proposed a council in 1534, many Cardinals

objected to it. After all, hadn’t Charles V invaded and sacked Rome ten years earlier?

Did he not station his horses in St. Peter’s and in the Sistine Chapel? How could he be

trusted? Nonetheless a Council was scheduled to begin in Mantua in May of 1537.

Before the Council could convene, war broke out between Charles V of the HRE and

Francis I, the King of France. In the Fall of 1537, the Council finally convened in

Vicenza, a town just West of Venice. Very few people attended. The Council was put off

indefinitely in May of 1539.

The Council reconvened in 1545 in Trento, a town northwest of Vicenza. The Council

worked for four years but again was placed on hiatus in 1549. It convened again in 1551

and met again at Trent. By this time, Julius III had replaced Paul III. No sooner had the

Council began than its work was suspended in 1552 when the Elector of Saxony had

defeated Emperor Charles V in battle. The Council reconvened in 1562 with Pius IV as

Pope. This time the Council completed it work. It was concluded in December 1563.

9.26

The Declarations of Trent (I)

The Council produced twelve decrees summing up the Catholic positions on; The Holy

Scriptures, Original Sin, Justification, Salvation, one document each on the Seven

Sacraments, a single document regarding Saints, Relics and Images and a document

on Indulgences.

The documents on the Scriptures confirmed that the so-called Deutero-canonical books

were to be considered part of Sacred Scripture. It also confirmed that it was the Church

that Jesus commissioned to preach and to baptize and that Sacred Tradition as well as

Sacred Scripture could be used equally in the completion of that mission. It also stated

that the Vulgate of Jerome was the standard source for translations.

The documents on the Sacraments confirmed that there are seven sacraments;

Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Holy Eucharist, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders and

Matrimony. These documents went on to say that justification came from the reception

of the Holy Spirit at Baptism. Justification could lead to sanctification by cooperating

with the graces received from the Holy Spirit and by the graces that came from works

that imitated Jesus’s call for selfless love, as well as through prayer, sacraments and

any other means by which a person would grow in the love of God and become more

conformed to Christ. The documents also confirmed that grace and justification could

be lost through sin that John’s epistle called “fatal” or “mortal”.

The documents went on to affirm that the Eucharist was both a sacrament and the re-

presentation of the one sacrifice of Calvary. It also stated that Jesus Body and Blood

were truly, really and substantially present in the Eucharist. The Council noted that it

was comfortable with the term transubstantiation but recognized that this was a simply

a way that scholastics used to describe how Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist.

9.27

The Declarations of Trent (II)The Council further stated that the use or withholding of the cup was a practice, not a

dogma, that could remain in place or changed at the good judgement of the Pope. In

any case, only an ordained priest or Bishop could confect the Eucharist at Mass. The

ordination of a man to the priesthood left an indelible mark on the soul of the one who

was ordained. 1

The language of the Mass would continue to be in Latin, the language of the Roman

Rite of the Catholic Church. Celibacy was recommended as the most excellent state for

priests. It seems that the Council, while continuing to recommend the practice of

priestly celibacy, it never spoke of it as dogma. It remains a practice of the Catholic

Church today but not a doctrine or a dogma.

The Council reaffirmed Purgatory as a state (not a place) of final purification for those

people in whom the life of grace was still present but whose process of sanctification

was incomplete. It also confirmed the Church’s beliefs regarding indulgences but

absolutely forbade their sale. They condemned that practice as the sin of simony. The

Council also confirmed the proper use of imagery as instructional and inspirational as

defined by the Second Council of Nicaea on iconoclasm. Relics and images could be

venerated but never worshipped. As part of the Communion of Saints, those who have

passed on can be prayed for. In that same light, those who have been declared saints

can be invoked to ask them for their prayers. Neither Mary nor the saints can be

worshipped. God alone can be worshipped.

1 In the original Church, the power of the priesthood resided in the Bishop, the High Priest. The

Bishop was usually advised by a Council of Elders (presbyters in Greek from which the word priest

derives). As the Church grew and, often, grew very quickly, the Bishop ordained these elders to

participate and assist in his priestly duties. Even today, Catholic priests must receive their “faculties” from the Bishop to be able to say mass in a diocese.

9.28

The Jesuit OrderIn 1491, a year before the voyage of Columbus and the fall of Granada to the King and

Queen of Spain, an event took place which no one noticed. On the Spanish side of the

Pyrenees Mountains in a land where Basque peoples had lived for centuries and

continue to live today, a child was born in a castle in the area called Loyola within the

municipality of Azpeitia. His name was Iñigo, or Ignatius as more commonly known.

Ignatius spent his youth serving in the court of the Kingdom of Castile. He liked the life

of the court. He liked gambling and fighting. At age 30, he tasted real fighting as he

fought to fend of French troops from trying to claim the town of Pamplona. One leg was

wounded the other broken in the battle. He was sent back to Loyola where he was

expected to die but he recovered. During his convalescence, he wanted to read some of

his favorite romance novels but all that was at hand was The Life of Christ and books

about the lives of the Saints.

Ignatius was moved by what he read and decided that, should he survive his injuries,

he would dedicate himself to the imitation of Jesus and the saints. Soon after, his

health took a turn for the better and, except for a noticeable limp, he was healed.

In 1534, Ignatius received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Paris. While in

Paris, he met several men of like mind including a fellow Basque named Francis Xavier,

and formed what he called “The Company”. Later, they went to Rome to offer their

services to the Pope. In 1540, Pope Paul III issued a declaration in favor of this new

order, the Society of Jesus, or, as they later were called, The Jesuits.

9.29

The Jesuit Contribution to Catholic ReformationThe Jesuits began to do what Popes and Bishops and priests of the time seemed

unwilling to do. They took up a vigorous defense of traditional Catholic teaching.

Perhaps too many clerics and religious leaders took for granted that their

establishment Church would simply weather the storm of the Reformation. Perhaps the

was so much the cause of the problem that they could never become part of the

solution. Perhaps the older religious orders which had brought mini-Reformations into

the church of their times were suffering from the same kind of indolence. In any case, it

was the Jesuit order that brought real life and renewed vigor to Catholic teaching. More

importantly, the Jesuits of that time, also lived what they preached.

The Jesuits used many means of revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church. They sent

missionaries into lands that had once been Catholic but no longer were. Catholic

missionaries were forbidden in England yet many Jesuits were smuggled into the

country, living in priest holes and saying mass in certain safe houses. It seems the

notion of house church had returned. Many Jesuits were executed when they were

caught.

The two most powerful tools that the Jesuits put to use were the strength of their preaching and their abilities as teachers. Jesuits established schools all across Europe. They hoped to educate the next generations of Christians in the Catholic faith. The Jesuits had a method of learning called the ratio studiorum. Jesuit schools remain well regarded to this day in countries around the world and the ratio studiorum still plays at least some role in the educational process of these schools.

9.30

Morality and the Reformation

As we have seen in the Garden of Eden, in the faith of Abraham, in the deeds of Moses and in the person of Christ, love, selfless love was the foundation of the moral relationship between God and humankind. Both the Torah and the Gospels stress that love of God and love of neighbor sum up the commandments of the Law.

We have also seen that selfless love was also at the root of the presence of evil in the world. Humans were created to experience whatever level of blissful happiness their souls could contain. That level of happiness could only be found in spending eternity with God, knowing God as God is and being known by God and, for that reason, choosing to love God and trust God for who and what God is. But that kind of love required a completely free will. That meant that human beings were created with the capacity to listen to the wisdom of the God who created them and loved them and to listen to the wisdom of the world, represented by the serpent, and choose that instead. We all know what choice Adam and Eve representing all human kind made and humans have been making that same kind of choice ever since.

All Christians believe that Jesus Christ was sent by God to undue the damage that Adam did. All Christians believe that Jesus Christ lived the life that Adam failed to live. The Sermon on the Mount declared that Jesus was the one human who lived every aspect of the Law and by doing so, fulfilled the Law. In that Sermon, in the “You have heard it said…but I say” section, Jesus explained that love was at the foundation of the Law. Jesus said in all three synoptic gospels that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The same could also be said for the Law.

While all Christians all Christians may have agreed on the principles listed above, the

Reformation showed that there were many differences of opinion on how those

principles were to be lived out. We’ll look at a few examples in the next section.