The Reformation In Germany: The Religious Divide Of Europe

Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been multiple schisms. These events triggered significant historical changes and became part of the medieval political struggle. The Great Schism of 1054 led to the final split of Christianity into Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The Western Schism, during which three individuals simultaneously claimed to be the Pope, each supported by different European states. Even so, none of these divisions became as well known as the Reformation. At the end of the Middle Ages, under pressure from the Ottoman Turks, the Byzantine Empire and its capital, Constantinople, the center of Eastern Christianity, that is, Orthodoxy, fell. By the end of the 15th century, all countries with an Orthodox majority, except for the Grand Principality of Moscow and the Principality of Moldavia, had come under the rule of either the Muslim Ottoman Empire or the Catholic Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland. Meanwhile, Western Christianity, that is, Catholicism, centered in the Papal States and Rome, stood on the threshold of colossal change. Throughout the Middle Ages, religion played a central role in the lives of Europeans, which meant that the Pope, cardinals and bishops wielded immense power, and the Roman Catholic Church was a major player in international affairs across the Mediterranean region. Religious authority competed with secular power. The Church built a complex hierarchy, similar to that of the secular world. The clergy possessed vast lands and, thanks to the deep religiosity of medieval people, had the ability to shape public ideology. Such immense power led to abuses, enormous expenditures on the Church, levies and extortion, and the selling of indulgences. As early as the 14th to 15th centuries, there were attempts to reform the Catholic Church. Forerunners of the Protestant Reformation included John Wycliffe in the Kingdom of England and his follower Jan Hus in the Czech lands of the Holy Roman Empire. For his views, the Czech reformer was declared a heretic and burned at the stake. The Catholic Church made attempts to prevent a new schism. In particular, it convened the Council of Constance and later the Unified Council held in three cities, Basel, Ferrara, and Florence. Still, all of these only temporarily halted the religious crisis that was brewing in Europe. The Catholic Church had long held a special status in the Holy Roman Empire. The Pope crowned emperors, German knights played a major role in the Crusades, and German archbishops were part of the College of Electors that chose the emperors. It is therefore not surprising that the center of the Reformation became Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, which lacked strong centralized power. This allowed for the growing influence of the clergy and the Roman Curia. Everything began with a monk of the Order of St. Augustine and a German Catholic priest, Martin Luther. In 1516, another German monk, the Dominican Johann Tetzel, was appointed by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences in the Holy Roman Empire. His official purpose was to raise funds for the reconstruction of the old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Nonetheless, starting the following year, he began using the collected money to pay off the Tetzel was a master of his craft. He offered access to heaven for the dead and sold forgiveness for sins not yet committed. He is even credited with the phrase, as soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs. The actions of the Dominican friar outraged Martin Luther. Under the guise of a noble cause, the reconstruction of the Basilica, Tetzel committed blatant abuses for personal gain. Luther's discontent was expressed in the writing of a work in 1517 titled Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, later known as the 95 Theses. At first, Luther did not intend to enter into conflict with the Church. In its format, this work was a list of propositions for academic discussion, but it also contained quite controversial ideas for the time. For instance, in Thesis 86, Luther asks, Why does the Pope, whose wealth is now greater than that of the richest Crassus, build the Basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own? Along with the letter of concern, the 95 Theses were sent to Albrecht of Brandenburg, and soon this work was copied and spread by supporters of the reformers' ideas. There is a legend that Martin Luther nailed the text of the 95 Theses against the sale of indulgences to the massive wooden doors of the castle church in Wittenberg. This event is considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, but its authenticity still raises doubts among historians. In any case, for the next three decades, Wittenberg was the center of the Reformation in Germany. Martin Luther taught that salvation and eternal life cannot be earned through good deeds. They are given as a free gift from God through faith in Jesus Christ. The reformer challenged the authority and status of the Pope, opposed the mediation of clergy between God and man, and asserted that the only source of divine wisdom is the Bible. Martin Luther's theological beliefs became the foundation of Lutheranism, the main branch of Protestantism. While Rome did not yet view Luther's teachings as a serious threat, Catholic theologian Johann Eck opposed Luther in the Leipzig debate of 1519. This theological dispute covered topics such as free will, the existence of purgatory, the sale of ideas. Despite Eck winning the debate and Luther even acknowledging his opponent's victory, Luther's teachings gained even greater popularity, and the reformer had no intention of renouncing his ideas. At that point, the Catholic Church took action. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine. It condemned Luther's teachings and threatened him with excommunication if he did not recant his views. The reformer refused to obey the supreme pontiff and publicly burned a copy of the papal bull in Wittenberg, for which he was excommunicated from the Church at the beginning of the following year. In the same year, at the Diet of Worms in 1521, the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Habsburg demanded that Martin Luther recant his views. The reformer refused, so the emperor declared him an outlaw. The Edict of Worms led to a public split between the Lutherans and the Catholic Church. It prohibited the citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from promoting or defending Luther's ideas, and the punishment for violating the ban or assisting the reformer was the confiscation of all property. After the Diet of Worms, repression began against supporters of Lutheranism, and Martin Luther, under the name Junker Jurg, went into hiding in central Germany in the Wartburg Castle. It was there that he translated the New Testament into German. The source text was the Greek translation Textus Receptus, published by the Dutch theologian and the philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam. Luther deliberately chose not to use the Vulgate of Jerome of Striden, the Latin translation of the Bible. Luther did not translate the entire Bible on his own. He was assisted by his followers, and the inspiration for the translation came from the reformer Philip Melanchthon, one of Luther's most important disciples. The New Testament of Luther was printed the following year, but it took 12 more years for the complete edition of Luther's Bible to be published. The reformer continued to refine the text until the end of his life. The final version of Luther's Bible was published a year before his death. In addition to everything else, the publication of Luther's Bible was an important moment in the speed of literacy in early modern Germany. The Holy Scripture became much more accessible to laypeople, who did not know Latin, and it also influenced the early standardization of written German. Religious disputes in the Holy Roman Empire eventually led to armed conflicts, the first of which was the Knights War, also known as the Zickingen's Expedition to Trier. Knighthood in Germany was in decline. On the political stage, knights were being displaced by more influential imperial princes and clergy, while on the battlefield, mercenaries and firearms took over. At the same time, the Ebernberg Castle, owned by Franz von Zickingen, became one of the centers of Lutheranism in Germany. The castle's owner, together with another influential knight, Ulrich von Hutten, formulated a political program. They wanted to secularize the lands of the clergy and establish a noble democracy, led by a monarch. In 1522, Zickingen and Hutten gathered free imperial knights and attempted to remove the Elector and Catholic Archbishop of Trier, Richard von Greifenklaut zu Vollrats, who was an opponent of the Reformation. The knights claimed that they were acting on behalf of the Emperor himself, but in reality, Zickingen and Hutten had not received any authorization from the authorities. They began the Siege of Trier, but were forced to retreat to Ebernberg. Meanwhile, the imperial government in Nuremberg prohibited the knights' military campaign. Hutten fled to Switzerland, where he sought support for a new military campaign, while Zickingen went to Nanstein Castle, which also belonged to his family and was one of the strongest castles in Germany. The following year in 1523, the Archbishop of Trier and his allies captured Nanstein, and Zickingen died from a serious wound during the siege. Hutten also did not survive the year. He died from syphilis in a Swiss monastery. The uprising came to an end. The castles of most of the knights who participated in the uprising were confiscated. The Knights' War is considered the last major event in the history of German chivalry. At the same time, it served as a catalyst for the next, much larger-scale armed conflict, the German Peasants' War. The largest and most extensive popular uprising in Europe before the French Revolution began in 1524 in the southwestern part of Germany. The spiritual leader and inspiration of the uprising was the German preacher Thomas Müntzer, who called for socio-political changes. At the same time, Luther condemned the uprising and urged the aristocracy to harshly suppress the rebellion. In his pamphlet, Against the Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants, he opposed violence as the work of the devil and suggested to the aristocracy to put down the rebels like mad dogs. Soon, the Peasants' War spread throughout Germany. According to a popular version, at the height of the rebellion in 1525, the peasants had an army of three hundred thousand. On the other hand, numbers did not equate to quality. Most peasants lacked military experience and their armies lacked unified command. In contrast, the German aristocracy had experienced commanders, a disciplined army, artillery, and cavalry. All of this led to the defeat of the peasant uprising. The Battle of Frankenhausen saw Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Duke George the Bearded of Saxony defeat the forces of Thomas Müntzer, who was captured, tortured, and executed. In total, the army of the German aristocracy, primarily represented by the League, displayed extreme cruelty during the war, killing up to one hundred thousand German peasants. Those who survived were heavily fined. The consequences of the German Peasants' War led to even further restrictions on the rights and freedoms of peasants, as well as the devastation of some rural areas due to a shortage of labor. In 1529, six princes, including Elector John the Steadfast of Saxony, and representatives of fourteen free imperial cities submitted a joint petition to the Imperial Diet in the city of Speyer. This was the so-called Speyer Protest, in which supporters opposed the persecution of Martin Luther and disagreed with the prohibition of his works and teachings. The younger brother of Emperor Ferdinand Habsburg, who presided over the Diet, refused to accept the protest. It is from this Speyer Protest that the terms Protestants and Protestantism originated. The same year, the Marburg Colloquy took place. Martin Luther and the Swiss theologian Ulrich Zwingli, who in the early years of the Reformation had developed his own doctrine, Zwinglianism, tried to reconcile their views on the reform of the Catholic Church. This occurred at the request of Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who sought political unity among Protestants, with religious unity being the pathway to it. After lengthy disputes, Luther and Zwingli agreed on almost everything, but a final union did not occur. The reformers had differing views on the presence of Christ's body and blood in the Luther believed in the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine, while Zwingli regarded this as a symbolic phenomenon. In 1530, Charles V Habsburg became the last Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the Pope. The coronation took place not in Rome, but in the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna. Clement VII, who had previously been an opponent of the Habsburgs, became a situational ally of the Emperor. This strengthened Charles V's connection with the Catholic Church. That same year, the Imperial Diet of Augsburg took place, with one of its key issues being the search for a compromise between Catholics and Lutherans. At the request of Emperor Charles V Habsburg, who called on his Protestant subjects to explain their religious views, Philip Melanchthon prepared and presented the Augsburg Confession, written by him and approved by Luther. It was the first official statement of Lutheran doctrine and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Reformation. Under the influence of the Catholic Church, the Augsburg Diet and Emperor Charles V Habsburg rejected the document, while papal theologians, led by Johann Eck, prepared an official Catholic response, the papal refutation of the Augsburg Confession. In turn, Philip Melanchthon wrote an extended version of the Lutheran doctrine, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. In 1531, the Lutheran principalities and imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire formed the Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance aimed at opposing the religious policies of Emperor Charles V Habsburg. The founders and leaders of the union were influential Protestant rulers of Germany, Elector John Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse. In the following years, the Schmalkaldic League strengthened its forces. For some time, the Reformation in Germany proceeded without significant events or military conflicts. Charles V Habsburg was occupied with external wars against the Kingdom of France and the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, in 1534, the English Parliament, under pressure from King Henry VIII Tudor, passed the Act of Supremacy, which marks the beginning of the Protestant Anglican Church. In 1536, French reformer Jean Calvin published his foundational work, Institutes of the Christian Religion in Basel, Switzerland, which became the basis of his religious doctrine, Calvinism. In 1545, after years of negotiations with Pope Paul III, under the influence of Charles V, the Council of Trent was organized. This was the 19th Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the last one held outside of Rome. The Council issued key statements, clarifications of doctrine and teachings, and condemned the supporters of Protestantism. The start of the Council of Trent is typically considered the beginning of the Counter-Reformation, a period of renewal and reform within the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation. Though some historians date the beginning of the Counter-Reformation earlier, with the founding of the Jesuit Order by Spanish priest and theologian Ignatius of Loyola. In 1546, Martin Luther, the founding figure of the Protestant Reformation, passed away. He is still considered one of the most influential figures in Christian and European history. At the time of his death, Luther remained excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Among other things, Luther's model of marriage with his former assistant Katarina von Bora became a model for Protestant clergy, who were allowed to marry from that point on. Interestingly, Martin Luther initially tried to convert Jews to Lutheranism, but in his later works he integrated anti-Semitic views into his teachings and called for the expulsion of Jews and the destruction of synagogues. Although Luther did not directly advocate for the killing of Jews, some historians believe that his views contributed to the development of anti-Semitism in Germany and even indirectly influenced the later rise of Nazi ideology. After Martin Luther's death, Charles V of Habsburg decided to take action against the Schmalkaldic League, which refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Council of Trent. This led to the start of the Schmalkaldic War, during which the emperor attempted to suppress Protestant resistance. The Battle of Mühlberg was crucial, during which the Spanish general Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, better known as the Duke of Alba, decisively defeated Elector John Frederick and Landgrave Philip of Hesse. The confident victory was achieved due to the skillful command and numerical superiority of the imperial forces. John Frederick and Philip of Hesse were captured and subsequently imprisoned. This battle marked the end of the Schmalkaldic War. That same year, the Capitulation of Wittenberg took place, which had been the center of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, and the Schmalkaldic League was dissolved. Even so, the German Protestants were not ready to surrender. In 1552, the Prince's Revolt, or the Second Schmalkaldic War, took place. This time, the leader of the Protestants was Elector Maurice of Saxony, who had supported Charles V of the Habsburgs during the First War. Additionally, French King Henry II Valois promised the rebels financial and military support. The Protestants achieved a few minor victories, but the Prince's Revolt quickly ended with the compromise Peace of Passau, which paved the way for long-term settlement in the future. The Protestant princes renounced their alliance with France, and the Emperor guaranteed religious freedom for the Lutherans and freed Johann Friedrich and Philip of Hesse. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 finally ended the confrontation between Emperor Charles V of the Habsburgs and the German Protestant princes. It established new rules regarding religious matters and laid the legal foundation for the coexistence of Catholicism and Lutheranism within the Holy Roman Empire. The Peace of Augsburg declared the principle, whose realm, his religion, and allowed the influential German aristocracy to choose either Catholicism or Lutheranism as the official confession in their territories. At the same time, Calvinism was prohibited until the Peace of Westphalia. In 1556, Charles V Habsburg, partly due to fatigue from the religious conflicts in his vast empire, abdicated the throne and divided the Habsburg monarchy between his younger brother Ferdinand I, who became the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and his older son Philip II, who became the King of Spain. This led to the division of the Habsburg dynasty into the Austrian and Spanish branches. The system established by the Peace of Augsburg collapsed at the beginning of the 17th century and became one of the causes of the Thirty Years' War, one of the most destructive conflicts in European history.