Reformation splits

In 1517, a German monk and theology professor named Martin Luther publicly listed 95 arguments, known as the 95 Theses, criticizing the Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences -- payments people made in the belief that they could reduce punishment for sins. One of his sharpest lines, aimed at Pope Leo X's fundraising for the massive new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, is often translated: "Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest men, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?" Luther also argued for two big ideas: that individuals are saved through faith alone, not through paying for indulgences, and that the Bible, not the Church hierarchy, was the ultimate religious authority.

Thanks to the printing press you studied last week, copies of Luther's arguments spread across Germany and beyond within weeks, far faster than the Church could contain them. When Luther refused to take back his views at the Diet of Worms in 1521, he was excommunicated, but protected by a sympathetic German prince, and went on to translate the New Testament into German, again spread rapidly by print, making scripture more directly accessible to ordinary German readers. Luther's movement, soon called Protestantism, split further as other reformers -- John Calvin in Geneva, and separately King Henry VIII in England, who broke from Rome in 1534 for his own political and personal reasons -- founded their own branches. The Catholic Church responded with its own reforms at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), clarifying doctrine and addressing some of the abuses Luther had criticized, a period historians call the Counter-Reformation. This unit studies these events as history -- what happened, when, and why -- not as an argument for any side.