Religious reform, whether Protestant or Catholic, was a common element of the sixteenth-century intellectual tradition. The introduction of the printing press permitted the distribution of new ideas throughout society.

Printing developed out of a series of related technological advances. Gradually, paper replaced sheepskin, or vellum, as the primary material for the recording of copyists’ work. Metalsmiths also perfected the use of moveable type to allow the mechanical reproduction of manuscripts, which was much more rapid and accurate than hand copying. The best known of the early printers was Johannes Gutenberg. Because of the expense of paper and skilled labor necessary for the production of metal type, printing remained expensive. Printing spread rapidly from Germany to neighboring countries. It quickly revolutionized education, scientific study, and legal training. The ease of repetition also standardized language and created an international community of literate scholars.

Humanism, as defined in the Italian Renaissance, benefited from the print revolution. In northern Europe, humanistic techniques of text reproduction and evaluation were applied to religious documents. Christian humanists wished to better society through education based on examination and critique of religious texts. The humanistic approach to education began to diverge from that of the Catholic Church. Scholasticism remained the principal form of ecclesiastical training.

Humanist scholars criticized the Church for intellectual crudity and superstition. The two great humanists, Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More, both questioned the authenticity of relics. Humanists were not isolated, but corresponded across state boundaries. The New Monarchs tended to support and protect humanists from ecclesiastical interference. Christian humanists concentrated on the translation of religious texts. The Polyglot Bible, produced in Spain in 1522, offered comparative versions of the Scriptures in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

The man most closely associated with Christian humanism is Desiderius Erasmus. Educated in a lay brotherhood, the Brothers of Common Life, Erasmus set out on an international career that took him to France and then England. He published two popular works of humanistic criticism, In Praise of Folly and Adages. After studying Greek, Erasmus offered a critical edition of the New Testament, followed shortly by a new Latin translation of the same. Like most humanists, Erasmus had little patience for Scholasticism and the traditional forms of education in the Church. He hoped that the practice of Christian education could be extended to the masses.

The Church survived the late medieval crises of the Babylonian captivity and the Schism to reemerge as a powerful factor in sixteenth-century politics. The popes in Rome survived the Italian Wars and maintained their independence. Despite the majesty of the Church, many demanded reforms of abuses—inordinate wealth of clergymen, ignorant priests, pluralism, and sale of Church offices.

Generally speaking, sixteenth-century Europe was experiencing a revival of religious fervor. Religious pilgrimage sites were active; ecclesiastical endowments rose. As religious demands for reform grew, so did demands for traditional religious services. The search for spiritual fulfillment led to great abuses of church practices and teaching such as indulgences. Indulgences were a portion of the treasure of merit earned by the saints that Christians could dip into to be released of their time in Purgatory. Although the Church taught that indulgences were only a dispensation for punishment in purgatory after contrition for sins, people came to view them as a quick solution to ensure salvation of themselves and their loved ones. In the lax Church environment of the late middle ages the sale of indulgences came to replace confession and penance with a (hopefully) pious contribution. And people began to buy these dispensations for their own sins or those of their loved ones. In an attempt to reduce the abuses, an earlier reform decreed that the papacy alone could issue indulgences through licensed agents. The sale of indulgences to fund the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 1517 provoked a revolutionary response. Although ostensibly a strictly religious question, the furor over the sale of indulgences was, at least in part, a competition between two German lords in possession of relics suitable for the indulgence business. Into the dispute stepped Martin Luther, a professor of theology at Wittenberg University. He attacked the theological basis for indulgences in a series of 95 theses or arguments. Luther’s attack on indulgences was rapidly translated into German and received wide dissemination throughout Germany. The assault on indulgences as ineffective nostrums for the superstitious met with the approval of Christian humanists, but earned the enmity of the papacy who depended on the income from the sale to rebuild St. Peter’s.

Martin Luther began his ecclesiastical career as an Augustinian monk and priest. He continued his studies at the universities at Erfurt and Wittenberg. In 1512 he became a professor at the latter school. He was a renowned teacher and debater. Luther suffered, however, from inner doubts concerning the safety of his soul. Through his studies of the Bible, Luther resolved his doubt and, in the process, created a theological revolution. Following a critical review of the Pauline Epistles, Luther developed a series of fundamental beliefs. Justification, or salvation, came only from faith, not good works. All that anyone needed to know concerning religion could be found in the Bible, the sole authority for all spiritual matters. All men and women who had achieved faith were on an equal footing, and no man or woman could hold supernatural powers over another. All men were equally priests. Each of Luther’s fundamental beliefs challenged the traditional doctrines of the Church. Justification by faith made the works of the Church—particularly the sacraments—useless. Sola scriptura, or the Bible as sole authority, struck at the collective authority of interpretation and regulation, including the canon law. The priesthood of all believers destroyed the superiority of all clerics. Luther’s arguments reached a population ready to receive them. The concept of faith alone alleviated the oppressive burdens of confession, penance, and indulgence placed on Christians by the Church. His emphasis on the Bible echoed the concerns of the humanists and was fueled by the printing revolution. Luther’s call for a spiritual elite fulfilled the desires of Germans for independence from an Italian clergy. Luther, himself, did not realize the impact of his theology.

Both the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor challenged Luther’s theology. Their attacks led Luther to increasingly radical statements including a condemnation of the papacy and general Church councils. In his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther requested that princes in Germany take over their local churches and initiate religious reform. In response, the pope excommunicated Luther in 1521. Under external military and political pressures, neither pope nor emperor was free to dispose of Luther as they wished. In addition, the electoral prince of Saxony offered Luther protection within his domain. The reformer became an effective pamphleteer, publishing many works that were distributed throughout Europe. Luther’s work attracted the support of additional German princes and the cities. To the princes of the fragmented territories of Germany, Luther’s religion offered an opportunity to free themselves from papal taxation and interference. To the independent imperial cities, Luther’s theology stressed the superiority of civil power over the Church and gave the city governments access to Church properties. The reform doctrine spread more rapidly in the cities as reformed clergy married and became townsmen. The reform message was particularly attractive to the middle orders of towns—the lesser merchants and craftsmen. Women also responded favorably to the reform movement. Some aristocratic women saw Lutheranism as another form of humanism. The doctrine of the equality of all Christians made women theoretically the equals of men, although the tradition of a male priesthood continued. Education for women improved. In contrast, because of the loss of the model of the female saints, Lutheranism tended toward male dominance in spiritual matters. The decline of the convent deprived women of the only spiritual calling outside of marriage.

Lutheranism spread rapidly throughout the decentralized Holy Roman Empire and from there to the states bordering the empire. Luther’s students, printed materials, and merchants carried the reform message outward from Germany. Poland-Lithuania, the lands of the Teutonic Knights, and Prussia all established Lutheran churches. In Scandinavia, the monarchs of both Denmark and Sweden embraced the new reform religion. In each state it was seen as a means of expressing independence—in Denmark from the Roman church, in Sweden from Denmark. In the Swiss towns, Luther’s reforms were radicalized. The leader of the radical reform movement was Huldrych Zwingli of Zurich. Trained as a humanist, Zwingli sought to reestablish the purity of the ancient Church and reject the innovations of the medieval Church. Zwingli adopted the three foundation beliefs of Lutheranism and attacked the “superstitious acts” of Catholicism. He departed from Luther in reducing the significance of the mass as something done in remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice rather than a literal reenactment of the sacrifice. In Swiss towns that adopted Zwingli’s radical reform, the members of the new church became the civil government and created a theocracy.

Luther had attacked Catholicism, but had offered almost nothing as a constitutional structure to replace it. The Protestant reformers who came after Luther undertook the task of creating forms of ecclesiastical government for the new reformed churches.

In the sixteenth century Geneva successfully freed itself from the overlordship of both the Catholic Church and the duke of Savoy. In 1536 the citizens of Geneva voted to embrace Protestantism on the model proposed by Zwingli. As a director for the newly accepted Protestantism, Geneva turned to John Calvin, a French lawyer and the author of The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin’s theology differed from Luther’s primarily in the emphasis he placed on the doctrine of predestination—the belief that only some are predestined from the moment of creation for salvation. This permitted the formation of a spiritual and political elite of those sure of salvation—the “elect.” The elect were divided into four governing offices: pastors to preach, doctors to develop theology, deacons to oversee the public institutions of Geneva, and elders to govern the population in matters of morality. Power to discipline offenders was vested in the consistory, a meeting of elders and pastors. With its strong constitutional structure, Calvinism was an effective evangelical church. It spread from Geneva to France and the Low Countries as well as parts of Germany.

The catalyst for the English Reformation was Henry VIII’s need for a divorce. Without male heirs, Henry wanted to rid himself of his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn. The papacy, heavily involved in the diplomacy of the Italian Wars, dragged its feet on the issue. Frustrated by delay, Henry VIII took the issue to Parliament. By statute, papal interference was denied. The case was handed over to the jurisdiction of the head of the English church, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer. Once the divorce was granted, Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, continued to construct a national church system independent of Rome. The king became head of the Anglican church, Catholic properties were confiscated, monasteries were dissolved, and a Lutheran form of church service was imposed. Nevertheless, the basic tenor of the Anglican church was close to Catholicism. The identity of church and state government in England meant that continued demands for reform were actually assaults on the state. In the reign of Edward VI, further reforms were initiated. The Anglican church under Thomas Cranmer adopted the Zwinglian interpretation of the Eucharist, services were conducted in English rather than Latin, and the priesthood was converted to a Protestant ministry. With the reforms, Catholics remaining in England began to be persecuted. There were even major Catholic revolutions. Under Mary I, Catholicism was temporarily restored as the official religion in England. Archbishop Cranmer, the architect of the Anglican church, was burned at the stake as were some other leading Protestants. Other Protestants fled to the reformed communities of the Continent. Under Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I, the Anglican church was brought back to Protestantism. While the restored Anglicanism continued to reflect deliberate moderation when compared to radical Protestantism, some Calvinist doctrines entered the Elizabethan church.

Protestantism rapidly fragmented into various theologies, despite Luther’s warnings concerning sectarianism. Various radical interpretations of scripture emerged, the most virulent of which were the groups called Anabaptists—those who baptized adults. Arising on the border of Switzerland and Germany, Anabaptists believed in an exclusive membership of the spiritual elite. Adult baptism was the rite through which one entered the elite. As infant baptism was one of only two sacraments that the other Protestant groups retained, all of the major Protestant groups rejected the Anabaptists. Anabaptists also tended to mysticism and claimed to be commanded by direct communications from God. Many rejected entirely the authority of the state and refused to pay taxes, abide by the decisions of the courts, or perform military service. Both Protestants and Catholics regarded Anabaptists with horror and persecuted them for heresy. The largest groups of Anabaptists, the Moravian Brethren, were eventually driven to the eastern edges of Europe, to Bohemia and Hungary. Smaller pockets of Anabaptists—the Mennonites, for example—settled in the Low Countries.

The Protestant reform movement failed to eradicate Catholicism. Much of Europe remained resolutely Catholic. Within Catholicism, reform and renewed zeal for evangelism brought about a complete reform of the Catholic church.

Late medieval Europe saw a renewed search for personal piety. This new piety led to the formation of communal societies of lay brethren, the most influential of which was the Brethren of the Common Life. Christian humanism was also very influential within Catholicism. The leading Humanists, such as Erasmus, who were the leading proponents of reform rejected Protestantism. These two movements defined the nature of early Catholic reform. Bishops took up the call for reform. Their concern was improving the quality of pastoral care provided by parish priests. New religious orders abounded in the sixteenth century. The Capuchins were an example of attempts to return to principles of asceticism, poverty, and devotion. Women were also engaged in the reform of religious orders. Teresa of Avila led the reform of the Carmelite order. In Italy Angela Merici founded the Ursulines.

Ignatius Loyola began his life as a member of the Spanish aristocracy and as a soldier. A war injury led him to a religious life. During his convalescence, Loyola discovered the spiritual discipline necessary for Christian devotion. He recorded his methodology in The Spiritual Exercises. While seeking an education in France, Loyola gathered a small group of priests dedicated to the Spaniard’s form of religious discipline. In 1540 the papacy recognized Loyola’s brotherhood as the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The Jesuits became the principal arm of Catholic evangelism. Jesuits served as missionaries in the Orient and in the colonies and wilderness of the New World. The Jesuits continued Loyola’s initial concepts of a disciplined society marshaled against the world’s evils.

The Jesuits reflected the Catholic Church’s desire to confront Protestantism aggressively. Before an effective challenge on Protestants could be waged, reforms within Catholicism were necessary. The push for church reform was complicated by the relationships among the major Catholic monarchs of Europe and the Italian Wars in which they were enemies. These conflicts within Catholicism delayed the calling of a general council of reform until 1545. The Council of Trent (1545-1563), dominated by Italian clergymen, recognized the demands of the papacy for a restatement of traditional orthodoxy. Reforms removed the most obvious abuses, such as indulgences. The early Catholic emphasis on pastoral care was recognized and reinforced. The council rejected Protestant theology outright.

Divisions within Protestantism and the fragmented nature of the Holy Roman Empire prevented the outbreak of warfare between Catholic and Protestant forces. Only after Luther’s death did Charles V initiate an assault on Protestant territories in Saxony and Thuringia. Protestants then joined with the Catholic monarch of France and the Muslim Ottoman Empire in an alliance that drove Charles V to negotiation. In the Treaty of Augsburg of 1555, the emperor granted the princes of Germany the right to determine religion within their principalities.