May 29

Today in Western civ we came in a took more notes on a new powerpoint called Luther and the Reformation. Since I couldn't see the board very well I moved up closer to the board. Then we started taking notes.
  • SOCIALLY: the Renaissance emphasis on the secular (worldly) and the individual challenged Church authority
    • The printing press helped spread these ideas
  • POLITICALLY: Some rulers (especially the Germans) began to challenge the Church’s political power
  • ECONOMICALLY: northern merchants resented paying church taxes to Rome

  • Corrupt leadership
    • Renaissance-era popes spent extravagantly on personal pleasure
    • Pope Alexander VI admitted that he fathered several children
  • Many priests and monks were poorly educated
    • How can you teach if you can barely read?
  • Some priests got married and had children
  • Some priests drank to excess, many gambled
  • The selling of indulgences (pardons) “releases a sinner from performing the penalty a priest imposed for sins”
  • Johann Tetzel was a monk who sold indulgences to help rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral
  • A monk named Martin Luther objected to this practice
  •  Martin Luther was born in Germany in 1483
  • He studies the trivium - grammar, logic, and rhetoric - and hates it
  • He attends the University of Erfurt (he calls it a beerhouse and a whorehouse) 
  • After getting his degree, he enrolls in law school (his father’s wish)
  • Martin was on his way back to school after a visit home (he was 21) He was caught in a thunderstorm on horseback, and a lightning bolt almost struck him, knocking him off his horse Martin freaks out, and a cry for help becomes a vow he cannot break...
  • Two weeks later, Martin drops out of law school
  • 1504 - he joins an Augustinian monastery (in closed cloister)
  • 1507 - ordained a priest
  • 1508 - starts teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg
  • 1508 - gets first Bachelor’s degree; 1509 - gets second Bachelor’s degree
  • 1512 - becomes a Doctor of Theology
  • All this before the age of 30...
  • 95 Thesus
The “95 Theses” document was copied and taken to a printer
Within two weeks, it was all over Germany; within two months, all over Europe
Example - Thesis 86: “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”
He also objected to Tetzler saying:
   “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory into heaven springs.”
It’s not just about the indulgences… Luther believes:
  1. People win salvation by faith in God’s gift of forgiveness.
  2. All Church teachings should be clearly based on the words of the Bible. (See why the printing press is so important?)
  3. All people with faith are equal. People do not need priests to interpret the Bible for them.
Luther’s ideas are becoming popular, so the Church criticizes him and his ideas
Luther suggests Christians drive the pope from the Church by force!
  • In 1520, Pope Leo X issues a decree threatening Luther with excommunication unless he takes back his statements
  • Luther, before a cheering crowd of his Wittenberg students, throws the pope’s decree into a bonfire
  • Pope Leo X excommunicates Luther
  • Holy Roman Emperor Charles V is a devout Christian who wants Luther to recant
  • Luther refuses, so Charles orders  Luther put “on trial” at the Diet of Worms
  • (“Diet” means assembly or convention; “Worms” is a city in Germany)
  • There, Luther says: “...my conscience is captive to the Word of God.
  • I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.”
  • Because of his lack of repentance, Luther is declared “an outlaw and a heretic” and he “escapes” from Worms
  • He is to be arrested on sight
  • It is a crime for anyone in the empire to give Luther food or shelter
  • His writings are banned, his books are to be burned
  • Anyone is permitted to kill Luther without legal consequence
  • Prince Frederick the Wise of Saxony disobeys this order, puts Luther up for a year in his castle, where Luther translates the New Testament into German
  • When Luther returned to Wittenberg, many of his ideas/reforms were being put into practice
  • Some of his followers had formed a separate religious group called Lutherans
  • But some princes were still loyal to the pope
  • Other princes who supported Luther signed a protest against the loyalists
  • Eventually, the term Protestant was applied to Christians who belonged to non-Catholic churches
  • Catholic is a term meaning “universal” or “whole”
Then class was over and we left.

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