The Reformation was not merely about jurisdictions, or even about the best way to reform the Church: such quarrels had happened before, had caused mayhem, and then the wounds had been healed.[1] In answering this essay question it is necessary to explore the hopes and fears dominating Christendom in the 15th century. It is not merely a simple case that the Catholic Church was a rotting edifice ready to topple. At the beginning of the 16th century everyone that mattered in the Western Church was crying out for reformation.[2]
The Reformation was a popular movement that sprang up from the desire for a revitalised Christianity- a Christianity that had a simpler form of religious practice, an educated clergy, and greater lay participation in the Church. There was a desire for a form of Christian ethics based on scripture, and that these ethics were applied to the ordering of secular life. It should be noted that the movement in the sense of a popular movement, rather than a schismatic sect, began primarily, in the imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire, (The power of state government was also on the rise in England under Henry VIII, Spain under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, their control came from the fact that they were much more powerful than their predecessors. The government though not modern was becoming a little more modern). These cities were under the direct control of the Emperor, thus they attained a style of virtual self –governance, akin to city state republics of Italy.[3] The imperial cities already had historical traditions of lay independence and collective responsibility for the welfare of citizens. Therefore this in turn encouraged the townsfolk to take charge of their own salvation. This goes a long way to explain why the theological messages expounded by Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli were so well received. The teachings of the reformation spread rapidly due to the invention of the printing press, which made it possible for the ordinary common man, to grasp the ideas of the Reformation movement. The great diatribes may have first started in Latin, for example the 95 thesis of Martin Luther, but they would have been translated into the common tongue and distributed to the people. The movement emanated from the cities but quickly spread to the countryside, where again it was well received by the common man. This was not due to a sense of theological outrage at the practices of the Catholic Church; rather it was the appeal to social justice which could be found in the theology as propagated by the reformers. [4]Certainly this would lead to revolutionary unrest, such as the German Peasants War of 1524. This was not however a reaction to the Catholic Church- this was a response to the radical ideas that flowed from the reformation. The peasants were more reactive to the Reformation, whereas the nobility were somewhat cautious; this is unsurprising given the involvement of the nobility in the higher levels of the pre-Reformation Church. Yet as the power of the prince was increasing and the power of the Pope decreasing, Church reformers looked to the government for effective power to reform. Were the ideas new? And just how culpable is the Catholic Church towards the Reformation?
It would have been easy for thinkers in the year 1500 to explain in practical and definitive terms as to what they meant when they expounded the need for reform in the Church. The theoretical authority of the Pope might need to be diminished, but in fact that authority was already limited by the rights of various government states. For example the traditions as already mentioned, of the Imperial Cities. The sale of benefices, agreed by everyone to be deplorable, might be justifiable to the running of a legal system. It is fair to say that what one honest man believed to be an abuse, another honest man defended. Everyone wanted reform of some description, or at least professed to want reform. The question of how to reform and what to reform was not so clear. There had been an Ecumenical Council that sat in the Lateran Church in Rome from 1512 to 1517, which had agreed amongst other things that schism and heresy should be suppressed; that the Turks were a danger to the Christian nation- even though the idea of a united Christendom was collapsing with the rise of the states; that bishops should have more power over monks, and that no one could preach except by lawful authority. It is clear then that there was some sort of reforming spirit within the Church hierarchy, but it was certainly not recognised by some as a full reformation of the head and the body of the Church. Throughout Europe there was a diversified view as to how the Church might be reformed. For the Italians it meant diminishing the power of the College of Cardinals; for Friars it meant the reform of their congregation’s lives, more along the lines of the ideals of Christian sanctity; for secular lawyers it meant the reform of ecclesiastical courts and ecclesiastical exemptions for a more effective administration. Chadwick quite clearly sums it up as follows: “When people of the Church spoke about reformation, they were almost always thinking of administrative, legal, or moral reformation; hardly ever doctrinal reformation.”[5] The Pope’s doctrine was not seen to be erroneous, as the development of Martin Luther’s theological thinking can testify to, but it was in the thoughts of churchmen that the legal system and the bureaucracy hindered efficiency, bred injustice, immorality, and worldliness.
Humanists of the Renaissance,(who were as varied as possible, who had little in common except their love of classical antiquity, southern European humanism was philosophical, artistic, and literary whereas northern humanism was religious, even theological), those great thinkers and proponents of academic reform also wanted intellectual improvement within the Church. They wanted bishops to be less secularized, monks to practice their rule, (Erasmus, In Praise of folly)[6], and parish clergy to be more instructed. Erasmus, “The Prince of the Humanists”, lambasted the papacy for ostentatious living, pursuit of power and failure to imitate Christ. Even though his orthodoxy would become suspect, he was always loyal to the church. Some such as Chadwick[7] have suggested that they had no desire to implement such change, however if we look at the example of Erasmus, the purposes of his writings was to make the church aware of the need for reform and to encourage the kind of reform that would make the faith more meaningful to the laity. Erasmus attacked all forms of hypocrisy wherever he found it. He emphasized a biblical faith based on the gospel and inner piety rather than outward ceremonies. Therefore can humanism be seen as a contributing factor to the reformation, more so than the failings of the Catholic Church? Although it has long been argued that humanism, especially the humanism of Erasmus helped prepare the way for the reformation, Girolamo Aleander, the papal envoy at the imperial court, once stated that Erasmus had done more damage to the church than Luther- Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched is attributed to him. Some historians have questioned this[8]. There is no doubt that the tools of the reformers were attributes of the humanists but there are fundamental differences between them, the most important being theology. After the reformation some humanists sided with the reformers, others did not. Humanism seems to have appealed in a less universal way than the Catholic faith. Humanism appealed largely to the educated minority rather than the masses. Although humanists stressed reform through education it was not likely to bring widespread reform, and as humanism was varied, as I said previously, I do not agree with the idea that Humanism was a prelude to the reformation.
The upper classes, the rulers, and the merchants were beginning to be better educated. The presses were working, the printers were multiplying, and libraries were increasing. The printing press made it possible to study manuscripts as was never possible before. Textual analysis and textual comparison were leading to new forms of study. Knowledge was increasing as more people were reading books. Great powers were being established in Europe and around these more effective governments was the idea of the nation, this was quite different to the idea of a united Christian Europe, the half-conscious and yet patriotic loyalty of their people. The relation between this and the success of the reformation is without doubt, but it is difficult to define. A more efficient government could only be an effective administration with restraints on papal intervention, on ecclesiastical privilege and exemptions, but this did happen before 1500. Hopes and fears abounded between 1490 and 1517 and these also contributed to the reformation cause. The biggest fear was that Christendom might disappear altogether and there was constant worry of Islamic aggression from the east. It is impossible to understand the mood of sixteenth century Europe without bearing in mind the deep anxiety inspired by the Ottoman Empire. This was also coupled with the idea that the end of days was at hand. Preachers such as Girolamo Savonarola 1452-1498, could call for radical political and moral reform, in the name of God. Apocalyptic literature was also in circulation. For example, “Apocalypsia Nova”, (New Account of the Last Days), is claimed to have been written by a Portuguese Franciscan Friar, Amadeus Menezes da Silva. This book predicted the coming of an Angelic Pastor or Pope, who would be heralded by spiritual men. The crucial task was to identify these characters, and that was difficult. Already we can deduce that there was around the time directly before the reformation, and in my view one of the key causes of the reformation, a neo-messianic hope. It may have been propagated by a minority, but it explains as to why the European laity were so receptive to the idea of reformation, rather than the idea that they were fed up with the failings of the Church.
So, to what extent can the failings of the Catholic Church be the cause of the reformation? The Catholic Church is not the only reason that the reformation occurred. Indeed it was not just the failings of the Church, for as I have said, the whole of Europe wanted some sort of reformation, yet it was so vague an idea that they did not know how to go about it. Humanism and, “New Learning”, the advancement of the printing press, the decline of the constantinian model of government, as embodied in the idea of Christendom, and the rise of a more administrative secular government, all prefaced the reformation. To what extent did the failings of the Catholic Church lead to the Reformation? Well it depends on the word failings. We have seen in this essay that yes there were numerous abuses that reformers outside of the theological spectrum wished to address, but these abuses cannot be called fallings. However the Catholic Church was not particularly failing in its role in the society of the sixteenth century. We should not underestimate European laypeople. They were perfectly able to think for themselves about religion. Ordinary people simply drew their own conclusions about the Church and yet despite all the abuses the church was seen as the great unifier, up until the reformation.
Coypright: Numenorian Exile 2012
[1] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700 (London: Penguin, 2004)p52
[2] Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (London: Pelican, 1964)p1
[3] Bob Scribner, “Religion, Society and Culture: Reorientating the Reformation”, History Workshop 14 (1982)p4
[4] Mark Tranvick, trans., Martin Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian (Fortress Press, 2008)
[5] Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (London: Pelican, 1964)p13
[6] Denis R. Janz, A Reformation Reader (Augsburg: Fortress, 2008)p61“Almost as happy as the theologians are those men who are commonly called “religious” and “monks” though both names are quite incorrect, since a good part of them are very far removed from religion”
[7] Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (London: Pelican, 1964)p14
[8] Rudolph W. Heinz, Reform and Conflict (London: Monarch, 2006)p63
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