Writers and Thinkers of the European Age of Reformation

Introduction: Ideas Versus Power in the Reformation Era

It is a cliché that the pen is mightier than the sword — that ideas shape the course of human events to a far greater extent than the exercise of power. Many ideas have been discussed about the Age of Reformation in Europe: not only those of religious thinkers such as Luther and Calvin, but also those of political thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes, as well as scientists and social commentators such as More and Montaigne. Historians have also examined the careers and achievements of those who wielded power — not only kings and queens, but also popes, ministers such as Richelieu, and rebels such as Coligny and William the Silent. Did the writers and thinkers of the Age of Reformation have a greater impact on this period than its politicians? The Age of Reformation, like most periods of reform, was influenced most heavily by the opinions and dialogues of the time.

European Expansion and the Challenge to Medieval Worldviews

There were actually several influences responsible for the Reformation Era. One is that Europeans were suddenly expanding all over the globe, driven largely by the economic activity of mercantilism. The world for Europeans at the beginning of the fifteenth century was small and contained. While they were aware of faraway places such as China and southern Africa, they remained focused on their immediate world — Europe and the Mediterranean. By the beginning of the 1600s, Europeans had traveled across the entire world and had established settlements on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. In fact, most of the coastline of the Americas and all of the major cities in eastern Africa were under European domination. The discovery of the Americas did not merely challenge Europeans' ideas of world geography; it fundamentally changed their view of history as well.

As Richard Hooker writes: from the time of early Christianity through the Middle Ages, Europeans thought of history as an ordered and rational affair. History was largely understood as salvation history — the larger meaning of all historical events being the salvation of humanity in a Christian sense. The meaning of any historical event could be determined by correlating it to events or sayings in the New Testament, which served as a kind of decoder ring. This way of understanding human experience and history is called typology.

When the New World was discovered, Europeans began to realize that there was an entirely different human history on this new continent — one not only different from European history, but "unknown and unknowable," because most Europeans could not decipher the writings they encountered. The salvation model of history could no longer apply to all human experience, because a total history had existed entirely outside the context of salvation history. Europeans therefore began to think of history in new and different ways.

The Catholic Church, Indulgences, and Northern Humanists

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the history of the Catholic Church is one filled with spiritual, artistic, and intellectual accomplishments, yet also with shameful abuses and doctrinal failures. During the Middle Ages there was strong criticism and passionate reaction to Catholic doctrine and church practices; however, none had such an impact as Martin Luther. Luther's impact permanently changed the face of Christianity and European culture. His call for the reformation of corrupt church practices eventually erupted into "the greatest spiritual and political challenge medieval Catholicism ever faced." Not only were wars waged — Christians killing Christians — but the European state itself was shaken to its core by the political implications of Luther's newly formed church.

Luther's initial call for reform concerned the church practice of selling indulgences. The concept of indulgence is based on the medieval doctrine that sinners must repent, confess their sins, and make some form of retribution — the idea being that without retribution, no one could truly know whether a sinner had repented, and therefore some outward action, such as performing a good deed, was necessary as proof. With the rise of mercantilism came money, replacing the barter system, and by the late thirteenth century the church had begun to sell indulgences. The logic was that since the expiation of sin involves temporal punishment, which in turn involves doing good works, one might substitute someone else's good works for one's own. Thus arose the Catholic practice of selling indulgences for money. Indulgences became big business for the church, and criticism mounted, especially in northern Europe.

Two major influences from the north were Desiderius Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Erasmus (1466–1536) developed a simple theology of Christian love and believed that Christianity was essentially an ethical religion — the philosophy of Christ — centered on selfless love and piety. He believed that the Church's practices and dogmas were a profound departure from that philosophy, and some of the foundational texts of Protestantism can be found in his writings.

Martin Luther's Theology and the Break with Rome

Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) was the most prominent English humanist of the sixteenth century and an unwavering Catholic who was ultimately executed by Henry VIII for refusing to renounce his Catholicism. Yet, although he never converted to Protestantism, his writings were highly critical of the papacy and church abuses, and thus also became part of the foundation of English Protestantism. The terminology and ideas laid down by these Northern Humanists would fuel the Reformation movement sparked by the German monk Martin Luther, who became the catalyst for what was already stirring in many areas throughout Europe.

When Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses — attacking papal abuses and the sale of indulgences by church officials — to the door of the Wittenberg Church, that act became the symbolic fire that began the Reformation. Luther did not view the Reformation simply as a revolt against church abuses; he saw it as a fight for the gospel, and claimed he would have "happily yielded every point of dispute to the Pope, if only the Pope had affirmed the gospel." At the core of his argument was the doctrine of justification by faith: that Christ's own righteousness is imputed to those who believe, and that "on that ground alone, they are accepted by God."

Luther believed that because of original sin, man was completely depraved, and that even good works were simply an outgrowth of a corrupted will. Therefore, man could only be saved by faith alone. The resulting doctrine — "Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ" — gradually developed into one of the central doctrines of Christianity. For Luther, man is saved by believing that God will pardon him and grant him an unconditional release from sin's penalties. Therefore, the church hierarchy and priesthood are not divinely instituted or necessary, and ceremonial or exterior worship is neither essential nor useful.

The Ninety-Five Theses outlined the argument against the use of indulgences, based on the idea that Christianity is fundamentally a phenomenon of the inner world of humans and has nothing to do with the secular world or temporal punishments. This was the heart of the argument — not the indulgences themselves — and it led to Luther being brought before the court in 1518 to defend himself before Cardinal Cajetan. When Luther refused to recant, the split with the church was set in motion, and many Northern Humanists embraced Luther and his ideas.

In his Sermon on Good Works, Luther argued that good works do not benefit the soul and that only faith can do so. This led Pope Leo X to declare forty-one articles of Luther's teachings heretical and to order his books publicly burned in Rome. In his more combative Address to the Christian Nobility of Germany, Luther urged the German nation to use military force to compel the church to address its grievances and reform itself. His Prelude Concerning the Babylonish Captivity of the Church went further still, calling on the church clergy to openly revolt against Rome.

Conclusion: Religion as the Foundation of Reformation Europe

Religion was not, nor had it ever been, a personal preference during this period of European culture — it was the very basis of society. Although there were several factors that played a part in the Reformation, it was "the reordering of religion and the sundering of the social unity that it had once provided to European culture" that was the most significant development of the sixteenth century. The writings and ideas of reformers, humanists, and political theorists together drove these changes far more profoundly than the exercise of military or royal power alone could have done.