Lecture notes for

1. Challenges to the
Church
Unintended Consequences From the Renaissance?

2. Objectives
❖ Students will analyze factors that encouraged the Protestant
Reformation.
❖ Students will analyze the changes in European thought and
culture resulting from the Renaissance.

3. Vocabulary
❖ indulgences: pardon for sins committed during a person’s
lifetime
❖ diet: assembly or legislature; assembly of Princes
❖ predestination: Calvinist belief that God long ago determined
who would gain salvation
❖ theocracy: government run by religious leaders

4. Coming of the Reformation
❖ Unrest and uncertainty large part of
Northern Europeans’ lives
❖ Change in traditional economies;
traditional society
❖ Humanism: find ways to understand forces
of their lives
❖ Biggest force in daily life: the Church

5. Church: Issues
❖ Catholic church becoming more concerned with worldly issues
❖ Competing with Italian princes for control and influence
❖ Popes and clergy living comfortable lives
❖ Corruption: Selling indulgences to the wealthy
❖ Until 1400 - only granted for good deeds; after available to
be bought
❖ Caused anger and frustration, especially in the North
❖ Printing press and Erasmus ➙ fuel to the fire

7. Martin Luther
❖ Disillusioned with the church as a Monk
and professor
❖ 1517: Wittenberg, Germany - Johann
Tetzel offering sale of indulgences for
individuals and family
❖ Luther drafted 95 Theses (arguments) to
refute the right of priests or the church
as a whole against indulgences
❖ No basis in the Bible; Christians
could be saved only through faith

8. Spread of Luther’s Word
❖ Copies of Luther’s protest were printed and distributed across
Europe
❖ Stirred debate
❖ Church demanded Luther recant his views
❖ Luther refused and developed even more radical doctrines -
rejecting authority from Rome

10. Outlaw or Hero?
❖ 1521: Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther
❖ Charles V summoned Luther to the diet to demand he give
up his views; Luther refused.
❖ Charles V declared Luther an outlaw; a crime to give him food
or shelter
❖ Luther still had many friends and supporters; support grew

12. Luther’s Movement
❖ New ideas spread quickly throughout the land
❖ Many denouncements of the Church abuses and the hypocrisy
that was seen
❖ Lutherans became Protestants
❖ At the grassroots level: Change of peasants life (Peasants Revolt
- 1524)
❖ For many German Princes: opportunity to throw off rule by
Church and Holy Roman Emperor

13. Peace of Augsburg (1555)
❖ Charles V tried to force princes back into the church
❖ Resulted in wars - costly
❖ Peace of Augsburg allowed princes to decide religion for
themselves
❖ North: Protestant; South: Catholic

14. Switzerland Reformation
❖ John Calvin: French priest who
shared many ideas with Luther
❖ Differed slightly in the idea of
predestination
❖ World was separated into two kinds
of people: saints and sinners
❖ Calvinists believed that saved
individuals were the only ones who
could live good Christian lives

15. Calvinism Spreads
❖ Led to establishing a theocracy in
Geneva
❖ Calvinism spreads to France,
Germany, England and Scotland
❖ Sets off numerous wars across
Europe
❖ Between Catholics and
Protestants; Protestants and
Calvinists; Among them all

16. Page 426 Chart

17. Video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5qR7tflG0