Martin Luther’s revolution
500 years ago this month, a German cleric mounted a challenge to papal authority that unleashed the Reformation
What happened in 1517?
Tradition has it that on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar, nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Saxony – though the nailing may be a later invention by his followers. The Theses were an attack on the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences – certificates offering a remission of the punishment due in purgatory in exchange for the performance of good works – to raise money for the building of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. On the face of it, the complaint was a relatively narrow one: many previous reformers had attacked corruption in the Church, and Pope Leo X dismissed it as “a quarrel among friars”. But it was to have seismic effects.
Why was Luther’s critique so significant?
Luther came to the radical conclusion that the abuse of indulgences stemmed from a deep perversion of the Church’s doctrine of salvation. Over the following years, he argued that the whole late medieval system of piety and good works – veneration of saints, masses, pilgrimage, indulgences – was corrupt, and had no basis in scripture. Rather than being redeemed by such works, he concluded, man was to be redeemed by faith alone ( sola fide). And if popes could err so badly in matters of faith, he concluded, the whole ecclesiastical system of authority must be bankrupt. Instead, he proclaimed, scripture alone is authoritative ( sola scriptura). In 1520, Pope Leo X ordered Luther, in a Papal Bull, to recant his heresies. Luther refused, and publicly burnt the Bull. He was excommunicated in 1521, and summoned before the Holy Roman Empire’s diet (assembly) in Worms. There, he again refused to recant, declaring: “Here I stand, I can do no other”, or words to that effect (this too may be a later embellishment).
Did the Reformation spring entirely from Luther?
No. There had been comparable reformers in the late medieval Church, such as John Wycliffe in 14th century England and the Bohemian priest Jan Hus, who in 1415 was burned as a heretic. Humanists such as Erasmus had criticised the Church’s corruption and obscurantism before Luther: it was said that Erasmus “laid the egg that Luther hatched”. And independently, parts of Switzerland were moving towards what we now call Protestantism: there, the pastor Huldrych Zwingli, and later the exiled French lawyer Jean Calvin, issued similar challenges to the Church’s authority. Their followers eventually merged into what is known as the Reformed tradition. It was a tradition that had significant doctrinal divergences with Luther, but it likewise held that scripture was the sole basis of truth, and the authority of popes and councils was illusory.
How did the movement spread?
The Reformation spread across Switzerland and Germany in the 1520s – at the time, a patchwork of princedoms and self-governing cities and cantons. The reformers’ exploitation of the new media of the
day – the printing press – was a crucial factor. Sermons and pamphlets could be quickly printed and distributed. A series of “urban reformations” and popular revolts gave way to the “princely conversions” of the late 1520s and 1530s, which saw most of northern Germany convert to Lutheranism. Denmark followed in 1536. Sweden and England declared their churches independent of Rome in the 1530s. The general rule, laid down at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, was cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion): rulers dictated their subjects’ religion.
How did this affect Europe?
It threw the continent into turmoil. Wars of religion erupted everywhere. In 1529, war broke out between Reformed and Catholic Swiss cantons. In 1546 and 1552-1555, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V fought against Germany’s Protestant princes. France, with its large Huguenot Calvinist minority, saw multiple civil wars of religion between 1562 and 1629. Protestants in the Netherlands fought against their Spanish Catholic overlords, eventually dividing into a Protestant north and a Catholic south, which later became Belgium. All of these were dwarfed, though, by the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648 between the Catholic and Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire, among others, which is estimated to have killed eight million people.
How did the Catholic Church react?
Catholicism had its own reformation, a process that began with the Council of Trent (1545-1563). It was designed to clarify doctrine contested by the Protestants (see box) and to standardise religious rites; but also to decree reforms that would eliminate abuses that had fed hostility to the Church. Bishops were ordered to reside in their dioceses and tend to their flocks, and to set up seminaries for the training of clergy. The council played a vital part in revitalising the Catholic Church, while the period also saw the creation of new religious orders, notably the Jesuits.
What is the Reformation’s legacy?
The Reformation shaped modern Europe. In the past, Protestant historians have tended to see it as a story of spiritual liberation: a blow against authoritarianism, heralding individualism and the scientific outlook, as well as – in thriving Protestant cities – the birth of modern capitalism. Today’s historians are more inclined to be circumspect: most Protestants were just as intolerant as their Catholic antagonists. Instead, they suggest a different inheritance. Much of Europe was left with large religious minorities. Wars that were intended to eradicate heresy ended with treaties – notably the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War – that gave people the right to practise their own religion. A crucial, if unintended, consequence of the Reformation was the beginning of the secular state, and one fundamental aspect of modern liberalism – religious liberty.