Paper Topic:

religion

The Role of the Christian Protestant Reformation in the Middle Ages

The Reformation began , not as a split or an attempt to destroy the Catholic church , but as an attempt to reform it . Men such as Martin Luther were unhappy with practices within the church . In 1517 this exploded as reported in The History of Chrsitianity when Luther nailed a list of 95 of his Theses to the church door in Wittenburg . It was originally jus t away of bringing into debate the theology of indulgences . People at the time had a very

real fear of purgatory and believed that they could only be forgiven for their sins by priests

The Reformation served to open the debate about this and many other ideas . The authority of the Pope had already been challenged by the Waldesians , a group that began as Catholic , but were later labelled as heretical . People began to read the scriptures for themselves instead of relying upon the church . They made their own choices instead of letting all decisions be made by the hierarchy of the church . Luther continued to believe in infant baptism , but many reformed groups choose to baptise believers only , adults who were able to decide for themselves about such things

Within the Catholic church there began the movement known as the Counter -Reformation as detailed by Robert Linder in his article `Rome Responds . At first the church seemed to be unaware of the dissatisfaction that many were feeling . Later they realized that Luther was a threat to their authority . Later they would respond positively by reforming the papacy , holding the ecumenical Council of Trent , the Oratory of Divine Love was established to stress reform along liberal lines . Many new groups came into being and the church was renewed with fresh vigour and was able to expand

So on both sides there were positive actions as a result of the actions of on e grumpy monk fired by what he felt the Bible was teaching

Bibliography

Atkinson , J .1977 , Reform in A Lion Handbook of the History of Christianity , Hertfordshire , Lion Publishing

Linder , R . 1977 , Rome Responds in A Lion Handbook of Christianity Hertfordshire , Lion Publishing...

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