Protestant Reformation There Were Several

Protestant Reformation

There were several problems within the Christian church which led to 16th-century religious revolution called the Protestant Reformation and ended the supremacy of the pope in Western Christendom. The Medieval Christian Church had developed as an institutionalized intermediary between man and God. As individualism gained ground in the Middle Ages, and God began to be perceived as an unknowable absolute ruler, the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works could no more cater for the changing spiritual requirements of many people. Moreover, since the 13th century a.D., the greed, immorality, and ignorance among the officials of the papacy had become widespread. The Church had acquired vast tax-free possessions all over Europe, constituting as much as one-fifth to one-third of the lands of Europe, which incited the envy and resentment of the land-poor peasantry. The last straw proved to be the sale of indulgences when in 1517 Pope Leo X offered their sale for those who gave alms for the construction of St. Peter's Bascilia in Rome. The sale provoked Martin Luther to write his famous 95 theses that signaled the start of the Protestant Reformation. ("Protestantism" 2006; "The Reformation" 2004)

Even before the 16th century reform movement, several attempts had been made to challenge the authority of the Church but the dissent was successfully suppressed. However, by the 16th century, a number of political and social factors made the conditions in Europe ripe for the success of the reformation movement launched by Martin Luther. By then, both the Holy Roman Empire and the pope were declining in power and were faced with potent threat from the Ottoman Empire; the invention of the printing press in the 15th century made rapid distribution of dissenting opinion possible; and finally, the rise of secular learning and nationalism in Europe had made the population receptive to the ideas of Protestantism. ("Protestantism" 2006)