The Reformation
The Short Term Causes of the Reformation
- John Wycliffe (1320-1384) was an English reformer who argued that the Church was becoming too remote from the people and advocated for simplification of its doctrines and less power for the priests. He believed that only the Scriptures declared the will of God and questioned transubstantiation, the ability of the priests to perform a miracle turning the wine and bread into Christ’s blood and body. His views were branded heretical, but he was able to survive in hiding though his remains were dug up by the Church in 1428 and burned. He left an underground movement called the Lollards who faced constant persecution.
- Jan Hus (1369-1415) was a Bohemian who argued that priests weren’t a holy group, claiming instead that the Church was made up of all of the faithful. He questioned transubstantiation, and said that the priest and the people should all have both the wine and the bread. He was burned at the stake in 1415, but his followers, led by Zizka, raised an army and won against the emperor, who let them to set up their own church (the Utraquist Church) in which both the wine and bread were eaten by all.
- The Avignon Exile and Great Schism were both events that greatly undermined both the power and prestige of the Church, and made many people begin to question its holiness and the absolute power of the Papacy. People realized that the Church was a human institution with its own faults.
- The Printing Press before the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s, many people didn’t have access to information or changes in religious thought except through word of mouth and the village viellées. With the printing press, new ideas, and the dissatisfaction with the church, could spread quickly, and people could read the Bible for themselves.
The Long Term Causes of the Reformation
- • The growth in the power of the secular king and the decrease in the power of the Pope.
- • The popular discontent with the seemingly empty rituals of the Church.
- • The movement towards more personal ways of communicating with God, called lay piety.
- • The fiscal crisis in the Church that led to corruption and abuses of power – IMPORTANT!
Abuses of Church Power
- Simony the sale of Church positions, which quickly led to people becoming Church officials purely for economic motives, and not for spiritual ones.
- Indulgences the sale of indulgences was the biggest moneymaker for the Church. When a person paid for an indulgence, it supposedly excused the sins they had committed (the more $, the more sins forgiven) even without them having to repent. Indulgences could even be bought for future sins not yet committed and for others, especially those who had just died, and were supposed to make a person’s passage into heaven faster.
- Dispensations payments that released a petitioner from the requirements of the canon law.
- Incelibacy church officials getting married and having children.
- Pluralism having more than one position at a time.
- Nepotism control by a particular family.
