A SHORT HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

A. The Western Schism/Second Great Schism/Babylonian Captivity.

1. The Western Schism seriously called into question the authoritative claims of the papacy seeing that each one of the three popes excommunicated one another! Who were people to follow? Where was Spiritual certainty to be found?

2. The Council of Constance in 1415 was called by Pope/Antipope John XXIII to try and settle the schism. This same Council condemned John Wycliffe on 260 different counts and burned John Hus at the stake on July 6, 1415.

a. John Wycliffe (c.1320-84) is known as “The Morning-Star of the Reformation.”

b. John Hus (c.1372-1415) was a champion of Wycliffe’s views.

c. Martin Luther was often condemned for following the “error of Hus” because of his appeal to Scripture’s authority.

“Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, tell the truth, learn the truth, defend the truth even to death” (John Hus).

For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [now Pope Benedict XVI], Principles of Catholic Theology, trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989] p.196).

B. In Luther’s day, the Latin translation of Scripture was authoritative. One of the key discoveries that led to the reformation was that scholars began studying the Bible in its original languages.

1. Desiderius Erasmus “Prince of Humanists” (c.1466 - 1536) was the first editor of the Greek New Testament. His motto was the Latin phrase ad fontes which means “to the sources.”

2. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was a Hebrew scholar who argued we should go back to Hebrew and Jewish sources.

3. Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) was a Christian Renaissance scholar. He wrote a Hebrew primer (de Rudimentis Hebraicis [1506]) used by the Reformers (Reuchlin was the uncle of Philip Melanchthon but he never left Rome).

a. The Reformation’s emphasis upon sola scriptura was upon Scripture in the original languages (see Westminster Confession of Faith 1:8).

b. Roman Catholics did not appeal to the Scriptures in the original languages but rather to the translation of the Latin Vulgate (see the Council of Trent, the Fourth Session). Catholics were not unlike those who argue today for the “King James” Only”.

“The three most complicated machines that most people would ever see in this world were the pipe organ, the clock, and the windmill – the first two were almost exclusively to be found in churches. What better proof that the Church was in command of humankind’s most adventurous and innovative thinking? What better organization than the Church to give western Europe a sense of its common identity?” (Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation, pp.33f.)

i. Catholic scholars were misled by the Latin word justificare which means “make righteous.” The Greek word for justification is a forensic term with the sense of declaring righteous. Justification is an act of God’s free grace and not a work of God’s free grace. (J.I. Packer, “Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification”).

ii. Catholic scholars were mislead because the Greek word for “repent” did not mean “do penance” as translated by the Latin.[1] This had tremendous implications for Rome’s raising money from the sale of indulgences.

Although provoked by the indulgences peddled by Johannes Tetzel, the very first proposition which Luther offered for public debate in his Ninety Five Theses put the axe to the root of the tree of medieval theology: “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said ‘Repent,’ he meant that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.” From Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, Luther had come to realize that the Vulgate’s rendering of Matthew 4:17 by penitentiam agite (“do penance”) completely misinterpreted Jesus’ meaning. The gospel called not for an act of penance but for a radical change of mind-set and an equally deep transformation of life. Later he would write to Staupitz about this glowing discovery: “I venture to say they are wrong who make more of the act in Latin than of the change of heart in Greek!” (Sinclair Ferguson, “Medieval Mistakes”).

C. Roman Catholicism’s lack of moral authority in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

“While clerical celibacy was the law of the church, there were many who broke it openly; and bishops and local priests alike flaunted their illegitimate children. The ancient monastic discipline was increasingly relaxed as convents and monasteries became centers of leisurely living” (Gonzalez, 7).

1. As an Augustinian monk, Luther had visited Rome in 1510-11 and he was shocked at the rampant immorality. Luther said of his visit to Rome as a monk, “Some people took money to Rome and brought back indulgences. I, like a fool, carried onions there and brought back garlic.” By this Luther meant “that he had carted his despair to Rome, hoping to be rid of it, but had come away with an even deeper despair” (quoted in “The Life of Martin Luther”).

2. The moral authority of Rome was lacking at the highest levels: cardinals, bishops, priests, monks and nuns! Sexual activity of popes in the 15^th and 16^th centuries:

a. Pope Pius II (1458–1464) had several illegitimate children.

b. Pope Innocent VIII (1484–1492) had several illegitimate children.

c. Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) had a notably long affair with Vannozza dei Cattani before his papacy, by whom he had his famous illegitimate children Cesare and Lucrezia. A later mistress, Giulia Farnese, was the sister of Alessandro Farnese, who later became Pope Paul III.[2]

d. Pope Julius II (1503–1513) had three illegitimate daughters.

e. Pope Clement VII (1523–1534) was probably the father of Alessandro de' Medici, whom he made Duke of Florence.

f. Pope Paul III (1534–1549) held off ordination in order to continue his promiscuous lifestyle, fathering four illegitimate children by his mistress. His nickname was "Cardinal Petticoat" because his sister Giulia had been Alexander VI's mistress. He made his illegitimate son Pier Luigi Farnese the first Duke of Parma.

g. Pope Pius IV (1559–1565) had several illegitimate children.

Citation: List of Sexually Active Popes in Wikipedia

“In 1536 Pope Paul III (1534–1549) called for a general council and appointed a commission to prepare a report on the state of the church. Two cardinals, Contarini and Carafa (who was later to become the fanatical Pope Paul IV), drafted the “Consilium” in 1537. Its frank admission of appalling abuses again illustrates the strength of reform impulses within the church” (Janz, A Reformation reader: Primary texts with introductions, pp.346ff.; see also Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia).

D. Many had been calling for the reform of the church well before Luther.

1. Perhaps the most famous critic of Rome in Luther’s day was Desiderius Erasmus who wrote a work “In Praise of Folly” – printed in 1511. Erasmus knew first hand about the church’s need for reform as he was the illegitimate son of a Dutch priest!

2. Savonarola (1452-1498) spoke out most strongly against the corrupt clergy of his day, especially those in Rome,

In these days, prelates and preachers are chained to the earth by the love of earthly things. The care of souls is no longer their concern. They are content with the receipt of revenue. The preachers preach to please princes and to be praised by them. They have done worse. They have not only destroyed the Church of God. They have built up a new Church after their own patter. Go to Rome and see! In the mansions of the great prelates there is no concern save for poetry and the oratorical art. Go thither and see! Thou shalt find them all with the books of the humanities in their hands and telling one another that they can guide men's souls by means of Virgil, Horace, and Cicero....The prelates of former days had fewer gold miters and chalices, and what few they possessed were broken up and given to relieve the needs of the poor. But our prelates, for the sake of obtaining chalices, will rob the poor of their sole means of support. Dost thou not know what I would tell thee! What doest thou, O Lord! Arise, and come to deliver thy Church from the hands of devils, from the hands of tyrants, from the hands of iniquitous prelates (in Philip Schaff. History of the Christian Church; VI, p. 688; Savonarola).

2. The Fifth Lateran Council was called in 1512 for the purpose of reformation but it was closed in March of 1517 without any substantial reform work accomplished.

3. Several months after the Fifth Lateran Council was dismissed, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of Wittenberg (October 31, 1517).

4. Few within the Roman Catholic hierarchy seemed interested to discuss the Scriptural merits of Luther’s 95 theses. According to one historian, Pope Leo X’s (the Pope who excommunicated Luther) main preoccupations were hunting, music and art (Janz, A Reformation Reader, 327).

“There is no reason to believe that he [Leo X] ever fully appreciated the moral dimensions of the crisis that exploded during his pontificate; he appears to have regarded it instead as a temporary interruption of his fund-raising strategy” (Idiots Guide to the Popes and the Papacy, 156).