Protestant Reformation Free Essay Example

It is well known that the Roman Catholic Church used to dominate every single aspect of European life: even the kings, who were supposed to be the most powerful characters in a coujntry oblidged in front of the Pope. But in the Renaissance, things started going badly for the Church (at least the catholic church) and it all started in 1517 when Martin Luther leaves his family and his studies to become a judge and becomes a monk in Germany, where his reformation began.

Martin Luther was an outstanding monk, but when the church starts selling Indulgences, he decides to start his own rebellion, which got him excomunicated from the church. He starts translating the New Testament into German, which was itself a revolutionary movement since until then, only the clergyman could read it and interpret it (since they were the only ones who could understand ancient languages. Also, now people had a direct relationship with God, enabling them to practice faith on their own, which made people stop “believing” in popes and priests).

Martin’s ideas inspired both John Calvin and the King of England Henry VIII to start his own “religions”: Calvinism and Aglicism respectively. Anglicism was first created when the Pope denied Henry’s petition to get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon to marry his lover Anne Boleine, who was pregnant.

Although the situation in England would change several times depending on who was the ruler: with Mary Tudor it became a catholic nation again, with Elizabeth England would become a mildly protestant nation (although not protestant enough, which provoked the aparition of a group or radical protestants called Puritans, which were later persecuted and even punished for their ideas) and so on.

This rivalry brings with itself a lethal conflicto known as the 30 year war, which ended with the Peace of Westphalia and thanks to which the protestants could leave free and peacefully with the catholics.

More than 500 years later, Martin’s ideas are still extremely important and it’s thanks to him that the world is as we know it to be. His reformation brought with it a new mentality far away from the medieval one (people started to rebel against what until then was the biggest power that Earth had known, partially because the Church used fear as a way of submitting people), modern capitalism (not directly thanks to Luther but to Calvin: for the church, lending money was a sin but Calvin argumented that money should be useful since it’s linked to work and work was a godly activity), an increase of the literacy (since people wanted to read the bible seeing that it was now available for everyone who wanted to know God’s words first hand) and church-state separation (for the first time, kings dared to rebel against the Pope and his power) among other things.

Of course, one of the most obvious ones is the option of having a divorce. Until then, it was not possible since marriage was a sacred link in God’s eyes, but with Henry VIII and the Anglicism now we have the possibility to separate from our partner if the relationship is not going good enough.

But of course, the historical context also had a great impact when talking about the Protestant reformation since without printer, there’s no Luteranism. It was that invention that helped Luther to expand his 95 thesis containing his ideas and the Bible’s translations that he did. Also, during the Renaissance, the catholic church was in a perilous situation since they were losing they morals at a quick rate (they were more preoccupied about not losing their properties and organizing orgies than they were about being role models as they were supposed to be, but of course people were lost in their faith and were not able to see this).

In conclussion, although the Protestant reformation is often talked about as a religious reformation, it was in reality much more than that and, still to this day, Luther should be thanked for everything he has done for the modern world.

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