Factors of the Protestant reformation

After the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in 476, the Europeans turned to the strong guidance of the papacy and the Catholic Church to be the authoritative voice in their lives. (Howe 4) Secular rulers, recognizing the growing power of the Church, gave its leaders vast grants of land in order to befriend the new, powerful entity. This land was taxed, and the surfs who worked it paid tithes to the Church. With more and more grants of land coming in, the Church grew greatly in size and wealth to become the mightiest of powers in the Middle Ages, where wealth was judged on land ownership and not currency. However, wealth and political influence sometimes led to corruption. The Church became interested in management of this new power. In time, unrest among the common people, together with new emphasis on relating faith and reason, brought forth new ideas that challenged the Church's undisputed authority. (Howe 356-357) Therefore, the growing secular power of the Church and the new spirit of questioning between the early 1100s and the late 1500s that instigated unrest among European Catholics were the leading factors in the Protestant Reformation of the 1600s.

The wealth of the Church in the middle ages was seen everywhere in Europe. In the twelfth century, the monastery of Fulda, in northern France, owned 15,000 small villas. The Monastery of St. Gall contained 2,000 serfs. Alcuin, a monastery in Tours owned 20,000 serfs. Worse, the Church became bound by feudalism when archbishops, bishops and abbots in Germany gave their loyalty to the king and became no different than great nobles, managing agriculture and owing miliary service. (Durant 564)

Church leaders grew stronger than secular rulers with the newly-founded power inherent in the institution. In the 1100s-1200s, an intricate network of leadership arose to command the dioceses, and the papacy became, for a time, the unrivaled and unchallenged power of medieval Europe. (Roberts 167)

Within the Church new monastic orders were founded: the Franciscans in 1209 and the Dominicans in 1220. These establishments were intended to offer the faithful models of simplicity and devotion. For many years they did, and they grew in popularity (and, ultimately, power) when they aided local clergies in providing leadership in prayer, guidance, confession, and he administration of the sacraments. However, in this newly found favor, the two orders strayed from their true evangelical missions. Their monasteries became rich as the faithful showered them with gifts of all sorts, many of which had great value, such as books and jewelry or ornaments to adorn the Church. (Chodorow 306-308)

Yet these malpractices did not go unseen, and fortunately the true Christians in the Church were able to step up and reform the Church's leadership when it could not have been needed more. Starting with Pope Leo IX in 1049, a string of popes attempted, each in succession, to stop the abuses within the Church and restore the values that had gone awry. Leo's successors were, in order: Victor II, Stephen X, Nicholas II, Alexander II, and St. Gregory VII, whose reign ended in 1085. (Britannica 1; Roberts 167; "The Reforming Popes" 1) Chief among the malpractices which these popes sought to correct were clerical incontinence and simony, the buying and selling of Church offices. The influence of secular courts on clergy was another source of trouble the popes reformed. The popes believed that the power these state courts had over the clergy could sometimes cloud the purity of their interest in affairs of the Church: the constant threat of prosecution in a secular court could cause the clergy to act unjustly toward the Church while intending to meet the interests of secular leaders. Finally, the reformers intended to extirpate the practice of bequeathing one's Church position to the next male of one's family. (Collins 106)

The reforms succeeded, but ironically they only led to greater abuses within the Church. The six reforming popes, who meant to return the Church to the early and saintly days of spirituality, had instead created a centralized papal power vulnerable to far worse abuses. It was simply a matter of time before this power was tapped by a pope who was willing to abuse his office. (Collins 107)

Therefore, the reforming popes unintentionally brought on a new era of corrupted leadership in the Catholic Church. The corruption was evident everywhere, but particularly in the monasteries. With their wealth, monasteries lost sight of their religious ambitions, and the once-rigid vows and laws concerning friarhood became lax. (Chodorow 283-284) The problem of monastic integrity was only compounded by the fact that the orders, the Dominicans, especially, found favor in the pope's eyes and were appointed to perform many job such as legates, agents, and judges, where they had little knowledge, . (Howe 360) And, when it seemed the dignity of the monastic life of the Church could not be injured any more, a further controversy arose over their favor with the papacy. Many bishops complained that they had lost exclusively reserved rights to the monks, such as the task of appointing bishops to given dioceses. (Chodorow 306)

Yet far worse misuse of position originated from the papacy itself. A new era of papal exploitation of power had begun. The first in the new line of corrupt popes was Innocent III, who, after his coronation, proceeded to proclaim that he was the "Vicar of Christ." He then announced his god-given authority to intervene in issues of secular power and national authority (issues in which he had no business). He even went so far as to claim that an emperor could not be elected until he was in agreement with the pope, since, Innocent claimed, without the pope's blessing no emperor truly held office. (Roberts 165)

Innocent III also targeted heretics. He granted the Catholic kings the right (and furthermore, he encouraged them wholeheartedly) to exterminate the Albigensians, a race in Northern Europe which the Church had failed to convert and which it now perceived as a possible threat to the Church's security, even though they were hardly a danger. Innocent was therefore encouraging the murder of a group that would not assimilate into Catholicism, an act of violence and with no relationship to the interests of Catholicism. (Durant 671)

At the apex of his power, Innocent flamboyantly asserted his view of his place in the world:

No king can reign rightly unless he devoutly serves Christ's vicar [the pope].

The priesthood is the sun, and monarchy the moon. Kings rule over their

respective kingdoms, but. . . the Lord gave Peter rule not only over the universal

Church, but also over the whole world. (Howe 356)

Later that century, in 1294, Boniface VIII, who had a background as a canon lawyer and a mind for politics, was corronated as pope. He came to the Seat of Peter at a time when the majority of Europeans, already discouraged with the state of the Church, had turned toward their country as their first priority. (Chodorow 324-325; Roberts 168) As a result of this, he fought with France and Britain during his reign to free the Church from secular rulers. In 1303 Boniface and Philip the Fair of France heatedly argued over the taxation of the French clergy for one of Philip's wars. Boniface was strongly opposed to any taxation of the Church, being as it would take away from the Church large sums of money. (Roberts 168)

He issued the Unam Sanctum, a papal decree outlining the pope's power. This decretal is considered by many historians to be the "strongest statement of papal power ever made." (Collins 118) The Unam Sanctum stated:

Now, therefore, we declare, say, determine and pronounce that for every human

creature it is necessary for salvation to be subject to the authority of the Roman

pontiff. (Britannica 2)

One of the messengers of Philip, the king of France at the time of Boniface, responded to the decree with this reply:

The pope pretends that we are subject to him in the temporal government of our

states and that we hold the crown from the Apostolic See. Yes, this kingdom of

France which, with the help of God, our ancestors. . . created -- this kingdom

which they have until now so wisely governed -- it appears that it is not from God

alone, as everyone had always believed, that we held it, but from the pope!

(Chodorow 325)

At this time, resentment toward the pope exploded, and later that year Boniface was kidnaped by a band of Italian and French noblemen. Apparently out of shock, the aged pope died three weeks later. (Collins 118)

The general reaction among the central powers of the Church was a sudden fear and realization of the power of the Philip. At Perugia the Cardinals converged for the selection of Boniface's successor. Not surprisingly, they appointed the archbishop of Bordeaux, who became Clement V. Clement had no background with the central powers of the Church, and he hardly held the credentials necessary for the office. But the deciding factor in his appointment was not concerned with these matters: he was a close friend to Philip at a time when Philip was a troubling and dangerous obstacle to the Church. Therefore, the new pope was elected for reasons far from his spirituality and capability for the job, but instead purely because of his political relations. (Collins 118)

The papacy had become subject to the rule of France; Philip was the undisputed controller of Clement. Clement allowed Philip to have his way on every issue. (Chodorow 326) Worse, the six popes that followed Clement were all French, and each in turn submitted to every demand of the French. They took the salaries and donations from dioceses and bishops for themselves. The Curia overflowed with french leaders, causing an incredible unbalance of power. The Avignon papacy found funds wherever they could: the pope created a tax for the clergy whenever they entered a new position with a salary. Worse, the popes selected their favorite bishops, and then awarded them multiple positions in several Churches so that the bishops rarely ever visited any of their parishes. This act was known as pluralism. (Durant 744)

The corrupted elections of the pope were realized, and the cardinals attempted to elect a pope who was not French. They appointed Urban VI, an Italian, as the successor to Peter's throne. However, after violent disputes between he and the cardinals, the latter fled to Anagni to elect a new pope in protest of an invalid election, saying that their methods were not official and the election should be annulled. (Collins 119)

A new Clement was elected who took up residency in Avignon. There were now two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon. The cardinals met in Pisa in an attempt to settle the confusion in the Church government. They elected a new pope, Alexander V, making a total of three men claiming to be the head of the Church. When Alexander, the valid pope, died, he was succeeded in accordance to the legitimate cardinal election by Gregory XII. (Durant 745)

The cardinals realized a drastic measure had to be taken to salvage what remained of the Church's prestige. The three bickering popes were all requested to resign after the Council of Constance met, and in 1406 all three men agreed to abdicate. Martin V was elected as the next to the position. Order had been restored to the Church, but not until much prestige and honor to the government and Catholicism were destroyed. People were now more willing than ever to hear what reformers, those who sought to correct the mistakes of the Catholic Church by establishing new religions, had to preach. (Collins 120; Durant 751)

Throughout this second era of papal abuse after the schism, ancient Church traditions had been manipulated in order to benefit the central Church powers. One place where this was apparent was canon law, which were a set of holy regulations issued by the papacy. In the Middle ages, canon law had established morals for people to live by, since the Roman Empire was no longer a central authority for the European theater. (Chodorow 292) However, starting with Boniface, canon law developed into a court system of its own completely separate from spiritual matters of the Church. The pope became involved with secular disputes; the state courts and Church courts argued over control of matters that were not of spiritual concern. (Roberts 165) Another issue was the immunity of clergy who had committed criminal offenses from secular courts; the pope refused to allow clergy to be tried in any other court but that of the Church, and this created controversy with the French and British empires. (Howe 357)

Other areas of Church tradition had been manipulated, one of which was the sacraments. In the middle ages the sacraments were tightly knit into the lives of every European Christian, from birth until death. However, they became a political weapon for the papacy during the second era of corruption. The papacy could threaten a leader with interdict, which would remove that leader and everyone inhabiting dioceses within his jurisdiction from the practice of the sacraments. The pious Europeans of the latter Middle Ages would never stand for it, and their rulers knew it. When excommunition was threatened, every ruler would succumb to the religious powers of the Church. (Howe 357)

In part because of the corruption in the Church, a series of philosophers arose. Each pondered methods of thought that bordered or crossed the boundary of what the Church at the time considered heresy. These philosophers influenced each other and also the general public of Europe. ("Church Pre-Refomers" 2)

One of the first of these great philosophers was Peter Abelard, who was an active skeptic of using only Church tradition to solve theological problems in the late 1100s. He was famous for saying, "I must understand in order that I may believe. (Howe 393) Abelard rejected the extremes of both realism and nominalism. He zealously attacked those who formed the radical opinions of both philosophies, believing that the true answer to the question of the validity of universal terms lay somewhere in middle of both arguments. ("Peter Abelard" 3) As a teacher he raised many questions against the Church where Church doctrine contradicted logic. Many of these were documented in one of his works, Sic et Non, which included 150 statements of the Church fathers, many of which contradicted each other. (Roberts 167)

Another great philosopher was Thomas Aquinas, who rejected dogma and looked toward reason for. He was not a critic of the Church (in fact he was very much a part of it), but his approach to philosophy, which he wrote many treatises on in the late 1300s, would effect later reformers. (Howe 394) He believed that those who sought truth solely through either science or through spirituality would not fully reach their destination. Instead, he argued, the pure answer could only be found by integrating reason and revelation, and then attempting to understand a problem. (Chodorow 294)

One of Thomas Aquinas' greatest works was the Summa Theologica, which consisted of over 600 questions with arguments for and against them, arguments which Aquinas tried to prove were not contradictory. The true answer was the mean of the two arguments, where reason and faith were both used to reach a conclusion which reconciled them. (Chodorow 295)

Even though Thomas never contradicted the Church and always arrived at an answer in accordance with Church teachings, (Howe 394) he received criticism from more conservative Church leaders. These critics believed that Aquinas was flawed greatly in his method of using human comprehension to arrive at a divine answer, since these critics believed divine topics were beyond our comprehension and could not be comprehended through human understanding. (New 11)

The Catholics of Europe generally adopted Aquinas' way of reasoning, leaving the traditional dogma for scholasticism. The search for answers through reason were put into practice by the people, and the Church's power through old dogmatic laws were rendered (Howe 392)

Other scholars refused to put their faith in the hands of corrupt Church officials, again rejecting the clergy who were untrustworthy and seeing the corruption in the establishment. One of these men was John Wycliffe, who, in the mid 1400s, placed his trust in the words of the Holy Scriptures. He found many faults in the Church, and he called upon the institution to change its course and return again spiritually and morally to the time after Jesus, when the Church was small, weak, and pure. (New 16-17)

Wycliffe rejected many values and traditions in the Church. Among the most widely remembered were his refusal to accept the doctrine of excommunication, his complaint about the growing impurity of many of the friars, and his disagreements about parts of the mass and sacraments. (Kelly 8) He believed that Penance, Confirmation, and Extreme Unction (the Last Rites accorded to an individual on his deathbed) should be removed from the seven sacraments. (New 16)

Wycliffe's thoughts were rebellious in many aspects. He advocated the doctrine of predestination, by which it could logically be inferred that only chosen people would gravitate toward the Church and therefore everyone in the parish would be naturally pure. Assuming this was true, he argued than, that the imitation of the saints and the intricate system of leadership and monitoring in the Church were therefore rendered useless. (New 16; Kelly 8)

By far Wycliffe's most bold and controversial opposition to the Catholic tradition was his refusal to recognize the doctrine of transubstantiation. This doctrine stated that the bread and wine in the Eucharist were transformed (or transubstantiated) into the body and blood of Jesus, after a commandment made in the Bible by Jesus that his followers must recreate the last supper by eating his body and blood. (New 17) Wycliffe wrote the Trialogus, a scholastic interpretation of many Catholic beliefs which he believed to be at fault. Part of this document is an argument over transubstantiation, in which Wycliffe, a scholastic, claims the wine and bread could not possibly transform as they are simply material things and no more. Instead, he claimed, the food and drink spiritually became the Christ (Kelly 9; New 18) He attempted to form this idea in Trialogus in a dialogue between three people:

Alithia: I must request upon you, brother, to show still farther, from reason or Scripture,

that there is no identification of the bread with the body of Christ. . . For I am no means

pleased with the spurious writings which the moderns use, to prove an accident without a

subject, because the Church so teaches. Such evidence should satisfy no one.

Phronesis: As to identification, we must, in the first place, agree on what you mean by the

term. It signifies, God's making natures, which are distinct in species or number, one and

the same - as though, for instance, he should make the person of Peter to be one with Paul. . .

For if A is identical with B, then both of them remain; since a thing which is destroyed is

not made identical, but is annihilated, or ceases to be. And if both of them remain, then

they differ as much as at first, and differ consequently in number, and so are not, in the sense

given, the same. . .

Pseudis: In the first place, you cannot escape this expository syllogism: First, This bread

becomes corrupt, or is eaten by a mouse. Second, The same bread is the body of Christ. Third,

Therefore the body of Christ does thus become corrupt, and is thus eaten; - and thus you are

involved in inconsistency.

-Excerpt from Trialogus "(John Wycliffe: On the Sacrament of Communion 1)"

Wycliffe created a controversial name for himself, and he and his followers became known as the Lollards. Although the Church labeled him a heretic, tried him for blasphemy, and condemned his writings, his word and his Lollard Bible were carried to Bohemia, where they would later effect Jan Hus many Slavs. The authority of the Church was failing from years of abuse of the prestige of the Holy See, and now people were listening to reformers rather than to the Church. (New 16)

Other small movements, all though their voices were muffled before they ever gained fame, further instigated restlessness in the Europeans toward the Church. A German Dominican who lived from the late 1300s to the early 1400s, Meister Eckhart, preached several ideas that were considered heresy by the Church. He taught that, through prayer and meditation, one could reach a mystical union with God. This contradicted Church teachings, which claimed one could only unite with God after death. (Britannica 2) His works were seized by the Church and a papal bull discredited his teachings, but his word carried throughout France and Germany. (New 14)

A series of pre-reformers followed men like Wycliffe and Eckhart, each building off the anothers' teachings, but all having common goals: to return the Church to its early state before it had turned into a secular empire, or to secede and form new churches. These men were now more powerful than they had ever been before. The Church had reached a point where its years of abuse and poor management of its power had left the people willing to consider the messages of pre-reformers (Chodorow 299)

That poor use and management of the Church's power had come from a number of places: poor leadership from the pope and bishops, who engaged in many malpractices, from the monastic institutions, who strayed from their purpose when they found wealth institutions, or from the use of ancient and outdated traditions like dogma and canon law. For many years in the 1100 and 1200s the Church had been building its power and authority in Europe, and when the six reforming popes rid the Church of many of its bad leaders and bad ways, the power was kept in the institution. It was when this power was applied in the affairs of the secular rulers, a place where the Church had no business being, that people truly started to resent their Church. (Durant 989)

The resent came from people who spoke against Church teachings, like Eckhart and Wycliffe. Abelard and Aquinas were two men who were both strongly affiliated with the Church, but even they brought up contradictory points of doctrine or taught things that the Church was against. From inside and outside the Church, people began to re-evaluate the Catholic tradition. When this happened, it was only a matter of time before Luther composed a thesis to nail on a Church wall, a thesis greatly influenced by the many pre-reformers and the contradictions and malpractices of the Church they had brought attention to. (Roberts 202; Howe 367; "Background of the Reformation" 3)

Works Cited

"Background of the Reformation" Encyclopedia Britannica. CD-ROM. New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1999.

Chodorow, Stanley el al. The Mainstream of Civilization to 1500. Philadelphia: The Harcourt Press, 1994.

"Church Pre-Reformers" Catholic Encyclopedia Online. Feb. 2000. The Catholic Encyclopedia. 18 Feb. 2000

Collins, Michael. The Story of Christianity. New York: D.K. Publishing House, Inc., 1999.

Durant, Will. The Age of Faith. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1950.

"Eckhart" Encyclopedia Britannica. CD-ROM. New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1999.

Howe, Helen. Ancient and Medieval Worlds. New York: Longman, 1992.

John Wycliffe: On the Sacrament of Communion. Medieval Sourcebook. 18 Feb. 2000.

Kelly, Hnery Ansgar. "Trial Procedures against Wyclif and Wycliffites in England and at the Council of Constance." Proquest. (1999): 18. Feb. 2000

New, John F. H. Renaissance and Reformation: A Short History. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1961.

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Roberts, J.M. A History of Europe. New York: Allen Lane, 1997.