Debates within Christianity

The core shift

The Renaissance was an elite affair. Trade, conquest and diplomacy tied Italian towns and courts to the wider world, and the new culture was admired and copied by the educated and wealthy. Very little of it reached the ordinary person, who could not read or write. But in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, humanist ideas began to attract scholars in the universities of northern Europe. Like their Italian counterparts, they studied classical Greek and Roman texts alongside the holy books of the Christians. The difference lay in who these humanists were: in Italy the movement was dominated by professional scholars, but in northern Europe it drew in many members of the Church itself.

The Christian humanist critique

These Christian humanists called on believers to practise religion exactly as laid down in the ancient texts, discarding rituals they condemned as later additions to a simple faith. Their view of human beings was radically new — men and women as free and rational agents, created by a distant God who then allowed them complete freedom to live their lives in pursuit of happiness "here and now". Later philosophers would return to this idea again and again.

Two figures stand out. Thomas More (1478–1535) in England and Erasmus (1466–1536) in Holland both felt the Church had become an institution marked by greed, extorting money at will from ordinary people. The clergy's favourite method was selling "indulgences" — documents that supposedly freed the buyer from the burden of sins already committed. When printed translations of the Bible in local languages became available, Christians realised their religion permitted no such practice. Peasants across Europe began to rebel against Church taxes.

The common folk resented the clergy's extortion; princes found Church interference in the work of the state irritating. The humanists gave them ammunition. The clergy's claim to judicial and fiscal powers rested on a document called the "Donation of Constantine", supposedly issued by Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor. Humanist scholars proved it was a forgery, produced later than claimed.

Luther and the Protestant Reformation

In 1517, a young German monk, Martin Luther (1483–1546), launched a campaign against the Catholic Church. His central argument: a person does not need priests to establish contact with God. He urged his followers to have complete faith in God, for faith alone could guide them to the right life and to entry into heaven.

This movement — the Protestant Reformation — led the churches in Germany and Switzerland to break their connection with the Pope and the Catholic Church. In Switzerland, Luther's ideas were taken up by Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) and later by Jean Calvin (1509–64). Backed by merchants, the reformers had greater popular appeal in towns; in rural areas the Catholic Church managed to retain its influence.

The radicals: Anabaptists and Tyndale

Other German reformers went further. The Anabaptists blended the idea of salvation with the end of all forms of social oppression. Since God had created all people equal, they argued, no one was expected to pay taxes and everyone had the right to choose their own priests. This naturally appealed to peasants oppressed by feudalism.

William Tyndale (1494–1536), an English Lutheran who translated the Bible into English, defended Protestantism by attacking the clergy for keeping the scripture out of the common tongue.

His aim, he said, was to keep the world in darkness so that priests could sit in the consciences of the people through vain superstition and false doctrine, satisfying their ambition and covetousness and exalting their own honour above king, emperor and God himself. He translated the New Testament because he had seen from experience that lay people could not be established in any truth unless the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, so that they might see the process, order and meaning of the text.

The backlash and the survival of radicalism

Luther did not support radicalism. In 1525 he called on German rulers to suppress the peasants' rebellion, which they did. But radicalism survived, merging with the resistance of Protestants in France. Persecuted by Catholic rulers, French Protestants began to claim the right of a people to remove an oppressive ruler and choose someone of their own liking. Eventually, in France and many other parts of Europe, the Catholic Church allowed Protestants to worship as they chose.

In England, the rulers simply ended the connection with the Pope. From then on, the king or queen was the head of the Church.

The Catholic response …