Religion’s Future in View of Its Past
Part 16—9th-16th century C.E.—A Religion Badly in Need of Reform
“Every abuse ought to be reformed.”—Voltaire, 18th-century French essayist and historian
EARLY Christians taught no purgatory, worshiped no images, honored no “saints,” and venerated no relics. They did not engage in politics and did not resort to carnal warfare. But by the 15th century, none of this was any longer true of many who professed to be their imitators.
“Heretics” Call for Reform
“The first seedbeds of heresy [against Roman Catholicism] appeared in France and northern Italy around the year 1000,” says The Collins Atlas of World History. Some of the early so-called heretics were heretics only in the eyes of the church. It is difficult today to judge accurately to what extent individual heretics adhered to early Christianity. Nevertheless, it is apparent that at least some of them were trying to do so.
At the start of the ninth century, Archbishop Agobard of Lyons condemned image worship and the invocation of “saints.”a An 11th-century archdeacon, Berengar of Tours, was excommunicated for questioning transubstantiation, the claim that the bread and the wine used at Catholic Mass are turned into Christ’s actual body and blood.b A century later Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne rejected infant baptism and worship of the cross.c For doing so, Henry lost his freedom; Peter lost his life.
“By the middle of the twelfth century the towns of Western Europe were honeycombed with heretical sects,” reports historian Will Durant. The most significant of these groups were the Waldenses. They gained prominence at the end of the 12th century under French merchant Pierre Valdès (Peter Waldo). Among other things, they disagreed with the church on Mary worship, confession to priests, Masses for the dead, papal indulgences, priestly celibacy, and the use of carnal weapons.d The movement quickly spread throughout France and northern Italy, as well as into Flanders, Germany, Austria, and Bohemia (Czechoslovakia).
Meanwhile, in England, Oxford scholar John Wycliffe, later known as “the morning star of the English Reformation,” was condemning ‘the power-grasping hierarchy’ of the 14th century. By translating the entire Bible into English, he and his associates made it generally available to common citizens for the first time. Wycliffe’s followers were named Lollards. The Lollards preached publicly, distributing tracts and portions of the Bible. Such “heretical” behavior did not sit well with the church.
Wycliffe’s ideas spread abroad. In Bohemia they caught the attention of Jan Hus (John Huss), rector of the University of Prague. Hus questioned the legitimacy of the papacy and denied that the church had been founded on Peter.e Following a controversy over the selling of indulgences, Hus was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1415. According to Catholic teaching, indulgences are a provision whereby punishment for sins can be partially or fully remitted, thereby shortening or eliminating the period of time during which a person suffers temporary punishment and purification in purgatory before entering heaven.
Calls for reform continued. Girolamo Savonarola, 15th-century Italian Dominican preacher, deplored: ‘Popes and prelates speak against pride and ambition, and they are plunged in it up to their ears. They preach chastity and keep mistresses. They think only of the world and worldly things; they care nothing for souls.’ Even Catholic cardinals recognized the problem. In 1538, in a memorandum to Pope Paul III, they called his attention to parochial, financial, judicial, and moral abuses. But the papacy failed to make the obviously needed reforms, and this provoked the Protestant Reformation. The early leaders included Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin.
Luther and ‘16th-Century Bingo’
On October 31, 1517, Luther set the religious world aflame when he attacked the sale of indulgences by nailing a list of 95 points of protest to the church door in Wittenberg.
The selling of indulgences originated during the Crusades, when they were granted to believers willing to risk their lives in a “holy” war. Later they were extended to people offering financial support to the church. Soon, indulgences became a convenient method of raising money for building churches, monasteries, or hospitals. “The noblest monuments of the Middle Ages were financed in this way,” says professor of religious history Roland Bainton, dubbing indulgences “the bingo of the sixteenth century.”
With the sharp tongue for which he became noted, Luther asked: “If the pope does have the power to release anyone from purgatory [on the basis of indulgences], why in the name of love does he not abolish purgatory by letting everyone out?” When asked to contribute money to a Roman building project, Luther retorted that the pope “would do better to sell St. Peter’s and give the money to the poor folk who are being fleeced by the hawkers of indulgences.”
Luther also attacked Catholic antisemitism, advising: “We should use toward the Jews not the pope’s but Christ’s law of love.” And regarding the worship of relics, he ridiculed: “One claims to have a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel, and the Bishop of Mainz has a flame from Moses’ burning bush. And how does it happen that eighteen apostles are buried in Germany when Christ had only twelve?”
The church responded to Luther’s attacks with excommunication. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, bowing to papal pressure, put Luther under ban. This created such controversy that in 1530 the Diet of Augsburg was called to discuss the matter. Efforts at compromise failed, so a basic statement of Lutheran doctrinal belief was issued. Called the Augsburg Confession, it amounted to a birth announcement of Protestantism’s first church.f
Zwingli and Luther Disagree
Zwingli stressed the Bible as being the ultimate and sole authority for the church. Although encouraged by Luther’s example, he objected to being called Lutheran, saying he had learned Christ’s teaching from God’s Word, not from Luther. In fact, he disagreed with Luther on certain elements of the Lord’s Evening Meal as well as on a Christian’s proper relationship to civil authorities.
The two reformers met only once, in 1529, at what the book The Reformation Crisis calls “a kind of religious summit conference.” The book says: “The two men did not part friends, but . . . a communiqué issued at the end of the conference, signed by all the participants, skillfully disguised the extent of the rift.”
Zwingli also had problems with his own followers. In 1525 a group broke away, disagreeing with him on the issue of State authority over the Church, which he affirmed and they denied. Called Anabaptists (“rebaptizers”), they viewed infant baptism as a useless formality, saying that baptism was only for adult believers. They also opposed the use of carnal weapons, even in so-called just wars. Thousands of them were put to death for their beliefs.
Calvin’s Role in the Reformation
Many scholars view Calvin as the greatest of the reformers. He insisted that the church return to the original principles of Christianity. Yet one of his main teachings, predestination, is reminiscent of teachings in ancient Greece, where Stoics said that Zeus determines all things and that men must resign themselves to the inevitable. The doctrine is clearly not Christian.
During Calvin’s day French Protestants became known as Huguenots, and they were severely persecuted. In France, beginning on August 24, 1572, in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, Catholic forces struck down thousands of them, first in Paris and then throughout the country. But the Huguenots also took up the sword and were responsible for killing many during bloody religious wars during the latter part of the 16th century. They thus chose to ignore the instruction given by Jesus: “Continue to love your enemies and to pray for those persecuting you.”—Matthew 5:44.
Calvin had set the example, using methods to promote his religious convictions that the late Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick described as ruthless and shocking. Under the church law that Calvin introduced to Geneva, 58 people were executed and 76 were banished within four years; by the end of the 16th century, an estimated 150 had been burned at the stake. One of these was Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician and theologian, who rejected the Trinity doctrine, thereby becoming Everyman’s “heretic.” Catholic authorities burned him in effigy; the Protestants went a significant step further by burning him at the stake.
Finally, “A Fearful Reality”
While agreeing with Luther in principle, some would-be reformers held back. One was Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus. In 1516 he became the first to publish the “New Testament” in the original Greek. “He was a reformer,” says the publication Edinburgh Review, “until the Reformation became a fearful reality.”
Others, however, pushed ahead with the Reformation, and in Germany and Scandinavia, Lutheranism spread rapidly. In 1534 England broke away from papal control. Scotland, under Reformation leader John Knox, soon followed. In France and Poland, Protestantism found legal recognition before the end of the 16th century.
Yes, as Voltaire so aptly expressed it, “Every abuse ought to be reformed.” But Voltaire added the qualifying words, “Unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.” To appreciate better the truthfulness of those words, be sure to read “Protestantism—Really a Reformation?” in our next issue.
[Footnotes]
a For evidence that these doctrines and practices were unknown to early Christians, see Reasoning From the Scriptures, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., under subjects “Apostolic Succession,” “Baptism,” “Confession,” “Cross,” “Fate,” “Images,” “Mary,” “Mass,” “Neutrality,” and “Saints.”
b For evidence that these doctrines and practices were unknown to early Christians, see Reasoning From the Scriptures, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., under subjects “Apostolic Succession,” “Baptism,” “Confession,” “Cross,” “Fate,” “Images,” “Mary,” “Mass,” “Neutrality,” and “Saints.”
c For evidence that these doctrines and practices were unknown to early Christians, see Reasoning From the Scriptures, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., under subjects “Apostolic Succession,” “Baptism,” “Confession,” “Cross,” “Fate,” “Images,” “Mary,” “Mass,” “Neutrality,” and “Saints.”
d For evidence that these doctrines and practices were unknown to early Christians, see Reasoning From the Scriptures, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., under subjects “Apostolic Succession,” “Baptism,” “Confession,” “Cross,” “Fate,” “Images,” “Mary,” “Mass,” “Neutrality,” and “Saints.”
e For evidence that these doctrines and practices were unknown to early Christians, see Reasoning From the Scriptures, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., under subjects “Apostolic Succession,” “Baptism,” “Confession,” “Cross,” “Fate,” “Images,” “Mary,” “Mass,” “Neutrality,” and “Saints.”
f Significantly, the term “Protestant” was first applied at the 1529 Diet of Speyer to followers of Luther, who protested a ruling granting greater religious freedom to Catholics than to them.
[Pictures on page 18]
Martin Luther, born in Germany in 1483, ordained to the priesthood at 23, studied theology at the University of Wittenberg, became professor of Holy Scripture at Wittenberg in 1512, died at 62
Huldrych Zwingli, born in Switzerland some two months after Luther, ordained to the priesthood in 1506, died in battle at 47 as a Protestant chaplain
[Credit Line]
Kunstmuseum, Winterthur
John Calvin, born 25 years after Luther and Zwingli, moved to Switzerland from France as a young man, established a virtual church-state in Geneva, died at 54