Problems of the Late Medieval Church: Origins of the Reformation
Please
read and high- light key ideas.
While
it is accurate to recognize the "religious uniformity" of Western
civilization at the beginning of the sixteenth century, this is not to be
confused with universal religious happiness.
Problems
within the Papacy.
The prestige of the popes declined as a result of a number of factors.
We have already discussed the questions raised in many minds about the
motives behind of the calling of the later Crusades.
People began to suspect they were less about the Holy Land and more about
the power of the Holy Father. That most Europeans ignored repeated papal calls
for additional Crusades testifies to the declining authority of Rome.
For
much of the 1300s, the popes abandoned Rome and established the papacy in a
small city in southern France called Avignon.
The Avignon Captivity of the papacy undermined the prestige of the
popes for several reasons. Abandoning
the "city of Peter" looked bad. The
elaborate papal palace and luxurious style of living practiced by the Avignon
popes looked even worse. The
Avignon Captivity, which lasted until 1370, led to an even stranger episode for
the papacy: the so-called Great Schism (split).
At the death of the pope in 1370, a group of cardinals in Avignon and a
separate group of cardinals in Rome each elected popes.
From 1370 to 1417, you had at least two, and sometimes three, different
men claiming to be pope. Very embarrassing.
Then
there was the problem about the group of popes elected in the 1400s to early
1500s, a group of popes known to history as the "Renaissance Popes."
Even the Catholic Encyclopedia
Indulgences.
The practice of selling indulgences for the forgiveness of
sins. This is the issue
that first captures the attention of Martin Luther.
Simony.
The selling of high Church offices, such as bishops and archbishops.
Absenteeism.
The common practice of bishop absent from their dioceses, not serving
the
duties
of bishop, but collecting the tithes and revenues for personal use.
Nepotism.
The papal practice of granting high offices to family members.
The tragedy for the Church was a leadership who ignored the problems and refused to listen to voices calling for reform. By the time the Church begins a significant effort to reform itself in the middle of the 1500s, the Protestant Reformation was well underway and much of the population of Northern Europe had already left.
The
Protestant Reformation represents one of history's more dramatic confrontations
between an established institution and rebellious
ideas. When Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church in 1517, he
set in motion a religious revolution. A consequence was that much of the
northern half of Western Europe broke away from the Roman Catholic Church.
The remarkable religious uniformity that marked Western civilization
for more than a thousand years was at an end.
The age of the Reformation chronologically overlaps the period of the
Renaissance, and, indeed, the spirit of questioning established ideas--such an
essential part of the Renaissance
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