The Reformation
Explore one of the biggest historical events in European history
You might have heard about the Reformation, one of Europe’s biggest historical events. It was a movement across Europe to reform Christianity and replace rituals and superstitions with the word of the Bible and introduce a simpler form of Christianity.
At the start of the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful organization in Europe. It was headquartered in Rome, and its head was the Pope. The Pope was said to be God’s representative on Earth and had a lot of power. He was powerful enough to start crusades, and wars, and make or break European royal families. However, by the beginning of the 1500s, they became corrupt.
Catholic nuns and monks were supposed to live a simple life, but they started living luxurious lives. They wore vestments made of the finest silk, and churches were decorated with gold altars, stained glass windows, and so on.
To raise money, the Catholic Church sold indulgences, or certificates given to people so that they could gain forgiveness for their sins. People could buy indulgences even for their dead relatives. The Catholic Church also sold relics, or body parts of saints, Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary. They were usually fake. Pilgrims paid them money to feel and touch the relics, which they believed had divine powers. This made the Catholic Church extremely rich.
Some priests argued that the Pope was not following the rules of Christianity. He was living a lavish life, even though he had to live a simple life. Jesus Christ had a simple life, and he preached against greed, and so they should follow his principles.
Those priests attacked the Pope by preaching against him and writing books explaining their beliefs. Due to their ‘protest’, they were known as Protestants. The Reformation came in waves- the first one from Martin Luther, the second one from Switzerland, and then other waves came. These waves created different sorts of Protestantism.
One of the Protestants was Martin Luther, a German monk. In 1510, when he visited Rome, he was angry with the wealth and corruption he saw there. Luther wrote the 95 Theses, a list of arguments about church abuses. He nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517. This is said to have started the Reformation.
During that time, Henry VIII was the second Tudor king of England. He had a wife called Catherine of Aragon, an erstwhile Spanish princess. Henry desperately wanted a male heir, but Catherine couldn’t give one. And, by 1525, she was unable to bear any more children.
By that time, Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, who was beautiful, intelligent, and witty. To marry her, he needed to divorce Catherine. To do so, he needed the Pope’s permission. But, the pope didn’t give him the permission to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. For six long years, he tried but failed. Then, he had an idea. If England was no longer Catholic, he would be the Supreme Head of the Church of England and would no longer need the Pope for his personal matters. In 1534, the Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which confirmed England’s break from Rome and the creation of a separate Church of England. This made a separate Church of England and Henry became its Supreme Head. He also started the Dissolution of Monasteries, in which he shut all of England’s monasteries and abbeys down, and amassed their wealth and land.
However; Henry did not reform the Church of England much. It remained Catholic throughout his reign. It was just independent and not controlled by the Pope.
After Henry died in 1547, his son Edward VI succeeded him. He was a strong Protestant and a stronger believer in the English Reformation than his father. He made further Protestant reforms in the Church of England, like the banning of Catholic celebrations and rituals like Mass; authorization of the first prayer book in English, the Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer, etc.
In the year 1553, Mary I became the queen of England. She was a Catholic. She tried to revive Catholicism in England. That time, under Pope Paul III’s reign, the Catholic Church tried to stop the spread of Protestantism, known as the counter-reformation.
Mary is known as “Bloody Mary” because she killed a lot of Protestants by burning them at the stake, a method of execution used by English rulers. John Foxe, a Protestant cleric, fled to Switzerland during her reign. He wrote Foxe’s book of martyrs, which tells in detail how each Protestant martyr was killed.
After Mary died in 1558, Elizabeth I became England’s queen. During that time, England was divided between the Catholics and the Protestants. To solve this problem, she established a Church of England which was Protestant in doctrine, but Catholic in appearance. Church services were compulsory on Sundays. Catholics who didn’t attend had to pay a fine of 12 pence. Other reforms included that priests could marry; church services were conducted in English; Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer, outlawed under Mary I, returned and more. However, some Catholic features were retained, like bishops, church decorations were permitted, and priests could wear traditional clothes.
The Reformation triggered violence between Protestants and Catholics, like, the Thirty Years’ War. At present, most Christians are Catholic, and Protestants are the second largest in terms of population, as you can see in the data. But it also gave birth to many ideas we enjoy today, like capitalism, modern democracy, civil rights, individualism, and more.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I hope you found this article to be interesting and informative. To know more about the Reformation or topics relevant to it, you can either go to BBC History Extra or watch movies like Luther, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age or the TV series The Tudors.
Pic: Courtesy Microsoft edge and Google
Thank You!
