Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Luther spent his early years in relative anonymity as a monk and scholar. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the world, with more than 2 billion followers.
The Christian faith centers on beliefs regarding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While it started with a small group of adherents, many historians regard The Renaissance, roughly spanning the 14th to 17th centuries, marked a time of cultural, intellectual and scientific advances.
From European discoveries of continents and shipping routes to new views of mathematics and astronomy to the advent of the printing press, the period of His theses challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, and sparked the historic split in It remains one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million casualties resulting from military battles as well as from the famine and disease caused The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement known as Puritanism that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century.
They believed the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church and should eliminate ceremonies and practices not The Bible is the holy scripture of the Christian religion, purporting to tell the history of the Earth from its earliest creation to the spread of Christianity in the first century A. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have undergone changes over the centuries, Indulgences could be sold on behalf of departed friends or loved ones, and many indulgence salesmen used that pressure to great effect.
Enter Martin Luther. A Catholic monk in Wittenberg, Luther found himself disillusioned by the practices of the church he loved. If God really did send his only son, Jesus, to die on the cross for the sins of mankind, then why were indulgences even necessary?
In autumn whether the actual date of October 31 is accurate is debatable , Luther nailed his 95 theses — most of the 95 points in the document, which was framed in the then-common style of academic debate, objections to the practice of indulgences — to a Wittenberg church door. His intent was to spark a debate within his church over a reformation of Catholicism.
Instead, Luther and those who followed him found themselves at the forefront of a new religious movement known as Lutheranism. By , Luther had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Soon after, he found himself at the Diet council of the city of Worms, on trial for heresy under the authority of the very Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. At that council, the emperor declared Luther to be an outlaw and demanded his arrest.
The answer has as much to do with politics as with religion. And when a prince converted, his entire principality was seen to have converted too. It originally referred to a number of German princes who formally protested an imperial ban on Martin Luther, before becoming a more general term for reformers who founded movements outside the Catholic Church.
Meanwhile, Luther was able to spread his ideas more quickly than ever before due to one vital new piece of technology: the printing press. For the first time in human history, vast amounts of information could be transmitted and shared easily with a great number of people. The relationship between Luther and the printing press was actually a symbiotic one : The more popular Luther became, the more print shops spread up across Europe to meet demand.
While earlier would-be reformers, such as John Hus, had been burned at the stake for heresy, getting rid of someone as widely known as Luther was far more politically risky. Something that began as a relatively narrow and academic debate over the church selling indulgences significantly changed Western culture.
Luther opened the floodgates for other reformers. Although Luther can be said to have started the Reformation, he was one of many reformers whose legacy lives on in different Protestant traditions. Switzerland saw the rise of John Calvin whose own Protestant denomination, Calvinism, bears his name. John Knox founded the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Each denomination of Protestantism had its own specific theology and approach. But not all Protestant reformations were entirely idealistic in nature: King Henry VIII famously established the Church of England, still the state church in that country today, in order to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.
The most important of these is the idea that salvation happens through faith alone. For Protestants, salvation happens through divine grace received through faith in Jesus Christ. This is in stark contrast with the Catholic Church, in which a wider body of church teaching and church authority play a major role. Other differences between Catholic and Protestant theology and practice involve the clergy and church.
Luther argued against the practice of buying or earning forgiveness, believing instead that salvation is a gift God gives to those who have faith. Luther's objections to the indulgence system paved the way for other challenges to the Catholic doctrine throughout Europe.
For example, John Calvin in France and Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland proposed new ideas about the practice of Holy Communion, and a group called Anabaptists rejected the idea that infants should be baptized in favor of the notion that baptism was reserved for adult Christians.
Broadly speaking, most of the challenges to the Catholic Church revolved around the notion that individual believers should be less dependent on the Catholic Church, and its pope and priests, for spiritual guidance and salvation.
Instead, Protestants believed people should be independent in their relationship with God, taking personal responsibility for their faith and referring directly to the Bible, the Christian holy book, for spiritual wisdom.
Subsequently, King Henry rejected the Pope's authority, instead creating and assuming authority over the Church of England, a sort of hybrid church that combined some Catholic doctrine and some Protestant ideals. Over the next 20 years, there was religious turbulence in England as Queen Mary — reinstated Catholicism in England while persecuting and exiling Protestants, only to have Queen Elizabeth I and her Parliament attempt to lead the country back toward Protestantism during her reign — Some English citizens did not believe Queen Elizabeth's efforts to restore England to Protestantism went far enough.
These citizens fell into two groups, both labeled Puritans by their opponents. The first group, known as separatists, believed the Church of England was so corrupt that their only choice was to leave England, separate from the church, and start a new church.
They called this the English Separatist Church. Around or , some of the separatists tried to start the new lives they imagined in Holland, in the Netherlands. Ultimately, the endeavor failed due to poverty and the sense that the children were assimilating too much into Dutch culture, so many of the separatists returned to England.
By , members of the English Separatist Church were ready for a second try at establishing a new life and church. Those who set sail aboard the Mayflower for New England and eventually landed near Plymouth, Massachusetts, would, in time, become known as the Pilgrims.
The other group of English citizens who did not believe Queen Elizabeth's reform efforts went far enough were called nonseparatists; over time, the term " Puritan " would become synonymous with the nonseparatists.
They did not seek to leave the Church of England; they wanted only to reform it by eliminating the remnants of Catholicism that remained. In terms of theology, most of them were Calvinists. Although they did not desire to separate from the Church of England, some Puritans saw emigrating to New England as their best chance at true reform of the church and freedom to worship as they chose. In , a decade after the Pilgrims embarked on a similar journey for similar reasons, the first Puritans traveled to the New World and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, Massachusetts.
Though the separatists and nonseparatists disagreed about whether to sever ties to the Church of England, both groups of early North American colonists shared a dissatisfaction with the church and a mindset that they were free to establish a church more in alignment with their spiritual views.
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