500 years ago, there was only one Christian denomination throughout most of the world. 500 years ago, the church and the government killed those who resisted tradition. 500 years ago, no one could read the bible in their own language. How did we get from there to here? Discover the wild and exciting story of Christianity for the last 500 years, so you can understand how the world ended up the way it is now, avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, and gain inspiration from heroic people who made a difference.
In this first class, you’ll learn:
1. What the religious world was like 500 years ago in Europe
2. Precursors to the Reformation, including John Wycliffe and Jan Hus
3. The movement called humanism, including Gutenberg’s printing press and Desiderius Erasmus
—— Notes ——
Three aims for this class:
to understand why the world is the way it is now
to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past
to gain inspiration from heroic people who made a difference
I want to talk about Martin Luther, but first need to do some background
key person
reason why this class if 500 instead of 600 or 400
on Oct 31st 1517 he started the Reformation (i.e. the changing of Christianity)
before we can understand what he reformed, we have to understand what was already there
Three points for today:
Setting the Scene
Precursors of the Reformation
Humanism
1| Setting the Scene
life and death
no electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, gas heat, computers, phones, facebook, cars, postal service
thinly populated (black death in 14th)
high infant mortality
15-35% of infants died before first birthday
10-20% of children died before 10
agricultural subsistence
65-90% were peasants or small farmers
suffering and death were pervasive (bad medical care, famine, epidemic disease, war)
highly stratified society, most stay at same status they were born into
towns had extreme differences in wealth
beliefs/practices
infant baptism
church as God’s instrument of salvation on earth
death => eternal torment in hell, purgatory, heaven
needed right belief and right behavior, which was determined by church
faith was not enough for salvation, needed concrete actions
authority on the basis of apostolic succession and good standing with hierarchy
hierarchy: pope, bishops, local priests
religious orders: monks, nuns,
contemplative orders: Benedictines, Cistercians, etc. cloistered lives of prayer and devotion
mendicant orders: Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, etc. served through preaching, teaching, missionizing, and hearing confessions
weekly mass with Eucharist as weekly sacrifice to God (transubstantiation)
priest’s words make bread and wine Christ’s actual body and blood
sacraments: means by which God dispenses grace through priests who claimed authority on the basis of apostolic succession
baptism, penance, communion, confirmation, matrimony, extreme unction, and holy orders
communion was only once a year before which one did confession and penance to cleanse sins
processions and pilgrimages (relics)
vigorous practices
books of hours were most common printed book 50 years before Reformation
endowing masses, paying for urban preachers, paying for church upkeep
many were taking their faith seriously
anti-clericalism : disliked clergy’s exemptions
clergy exempt from civic obligations (taxes, tithes, civil trial, night watch, firefighting, war)
tithe, clerical fees
greed, holding multiple church offices (Simony), immorality, concubines
Babylonian captivity (popes in Avignon)
2| Precursors of the Reformation
John Wycliffe (1330-1384): translated Bible into English
English philosopher and theologian, teacher at Oxford
translated Bible into English from Latin Vulgate
followers called Lollards, finished this project after John’s death
no printing press yet
“the jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity”
focused on Bible, anticlericalism (did not like pope influencing secular power)
in temporal things the king is above the pope
called “Morning Star of the Reformation”
in 1377 pope Gregory XI sent 5 copies of bull against Wycliffe to England with 18 theses of Wycliffe denounced
he was protected by his relative who was powerful
King Richard II of England married Anne from Bohemia
Wycliffe’s ideas spread to Bohemia
Jan (John) Hus (1372-1415)
translated some of Wycliffe’s writings into Czech
rector (or head) of the University of Prague
fiery preacher against immorality of papacy and clergy
wanted to distribute wine and bread to people at communion
excommunicated by papal bull in 1409 by pope Alexander V
followers called Hussites defeated 5 consecutive papal crusades
a century later 90% of those in Bohemia were non-Catholic
Emperor Sigismund guaranteed him safe passage to defend himself at council of Constance (1415)
made his will before leaving
condemned and burned at the stake
3| Humanism
Johannes Gutenberg (1395-1468)
German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, publisher
invented mechanical movable type printing in 1439
initiated printing revolution
made possible the rapid dispersal of information
played a key role in the renaissance and reformation
the Gutenberg Bible rolled off the press in 1455 (180 copies)
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
Christian humanism (not secular humanism) was an attempt to recover classical Greek and Latin literature and apply it to contemporary morals and politics
“ad fontes” or “to the sources”: the motto of humanist scholars
concern over deteriorated Latin and scholasticism, which overly intellectualized without producing moral change
for Christianity, “ad fontes” meant going back to original Hebrew and Greek
textual criticism began (trying to find best manuscripts of ancient documents)
bible and church Fathers provided authentic Christianity
optimistic view of human nature
Erasmus was the most important humanist “prince of the humanists”
he wanted to slowly reform Christianity from the top down through scholarship
major problems, he thought, were ignorance and immorality
Enchiridion (Handbook) in 1503
Praise of Folly (1511) as a satire criticizing religious practices
Greek NT (1516) with his own Latin translation in parallel
—— Links ——
For this lecture, I leaned heavily on Brad S. Gregory’s History of Christianity in the Reformation Era class at The Teaching Company
The three main textbooks for this class include:
The European Reformations by Carter Lindberg
The Radical Reformation by George Williams
Modern Church History by Tim Grass
Check out these other Restitutio historical podcasts
Intro music: “District Four” by Kevin MacLeod. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
