Protestant Reformation essays

Throughout the Middle Ages of the 5th through 15th centuries, the Holy Catholic Church has plagued Europe as one of its most corrupt powers in Europe’s history. Many issues regarding the Church had caused lost trust and power in the people. During the Protestant Reformation, many people rose up against the ideas of the Catholic Church including reformers such as John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. The impact they had on Christianity forever shaped the different outlooks on the...

Sixteenth century Europe was a time of change; it was moving forward from the Renaissance period and is commonly regarded as the rise of Western Civilisation. The economy was booming, technological advances were seen and there was a dramatic shift in religion. Catholicism was the dominant, if not the only religion in Europe, and became known as the Holy Roman Empire by the thirteenth Century when German Emperor Otto I (r. 962 – 73) won by military conquest the empire...

Introduction What is the Protestant Reformation? The Protestant Reformation, also known as the Protestantism, is commitment to the custom of the Christian ideology which is normally considered as Protestantism instead of Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. In tradition the Protestant Reformation involves all churches that are external from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church traditions. The name, Protestantism, originated when people who supported the Protestant Reformation were called Protestants because they disapproved of the way things were done due to papacy...

The Bubonic plague was an extremely infectious illness that became wide spread across Europe and Asia. The plague was an enzootic disease that was transmitted from a flea that was previously attached to some type of rodent, usually a rat, to humans. At the time, the sudden illness and immediate death that followed soon after was unexplained because there wasn’t a way for society to get a medical explanation. Because of the lack of knowledge, people believed this was the...

The Reformation was a movement in Western Christianity in sixteenth-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the Pope’s authority in particular. Although the Reformation is considered to have started with Martin Luther’s publication of his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, the truth is that the hatred between the Catholic Church and Luther started in 1521 with the Edict of Worms. This edict condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman...

Introduction Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark can be analyzed through many critical approaches, positions, and lenses. For instance, it is commonly recognized by critics as one of the most diverse works in English literature. Shakespeare illustrates the topics of feminism, insanity, power, romance, and religion. However, one issue discussed in its pages often goes unnoticed but plays a large role in the mechanics of the plot. The ghost of Hamlet’s Father inspires and persuades major actions in...

34-year-old Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther shocked the German Church in the 1500s by starting what is now called the reformation against the church. What he achieved during this campaign was very significant in the formation of the Christian church and our morals that we live by today. Therefore, we can say that Martin Luther rocked Christianity significantly by starting the reformation, but how exactly did he do this? Before Martin Luther started the reformation, he decided...

The Protestant Reformation challenged medieval Catholic Christianity in three categories; Sacraments, writings, and causing The Counter-Reformation. Because of authors like John Calvin, free thinkers like the Anabaptists, and historic meetings like the Council of Trent, Catholic Christianity had to adapt to the new world to remain in power. The Protestant Reformation started as an evangelical movement that was concerned with certain church practices including the Sacraments. Huldrych Zwingli, who was a parish priest and former army chaplain, denied the Catholic...

Between 900 and 1100, religious society and culture in Europe underwent multifaceted changes, which reshaped the relationship between religious and secular society and the authority to each. Most historical narratives depict the changes in the church during this period is as the “Gregorian reform,” underlying the changes as a top-down and centralized reform. This characterization of reform views the agenda and activity of Gregory VII as the fullest expression of these goals and ushered in a radical reconceptualization of the...

Upon the invention of the European printing press around 1439, the very fabric of society was destined to change. With reading materials more readily available, literacy rates throughout the continent rose steadily, allowing commoners access to new ideas, both political and cultural, beckoning in events such as the Protestant Reformation, and allowing people the opportunity to not only voice their ideas, but to be heard. A better informed populous gave rise to the exchange of radical ideas of reform. The...

The Enlightenment was a consequential movement that allowed some power to be taken away from the government and the church, and in return gave more power to the people. This movement resulted in the major influence of democracy and completely changed the way nations were governed. However, it took many new ideas and solutions to eventually allow the enlightenment to work efficiently, and it all started with the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a period of time between the 14th and...

In order to really dissect what the ninety five theses were, we need to look into the person who created it. So who was Martin Luther? Why is he such an important figure in history? Luther was born in Eisleben in eastern Germany in 1483, and did not come from a high class family. His Mother was from a professional bourgeois background, and his father was in the mining industry. Martin was ordained as a priest in 1507 and took...

When studying any time period over the course history, one commonality that each era will share is that they all have people who made a difference in some capacity or another. Some call them influencers, some call them leaders, but what these people truly are, are people who sought out change and were not afraid to go for it. Martin Luther was one of these people who sought out change no matter what it took. Throughout his life, he did...

The shift in art from the religious to the secular initially created some tension between the authority of the Catholic Church and secular European monarchies. Different issues during this time period consisted of art that displays the shift from the religious to the secular. I chose to look further into the Scientific Revolution, The Enlightenment, and the Protestant Reformation because they are all so different from each other, which will provide me with differing perspectives on the art. I found...

Catholics presuppose this state of trance as the elevation of the soul to intimate union with God and its consequent detachment from the sensible world. What they however disregard to address is the grounds on which Protestant believers establish their claims that trance or swoon could conceivably be caused by diabolical influence. More common, they state that the state of absorption and rapture could be induced by natural psychological causes and should not necessarily be associated with religious experience. Mystical...

It can be argued that few movements have had as much impact on the world as the Protestant Reformation. Aside from the obvious impact that the Protestant Reformation had on religion and the church, in its aftermath the world changed both politically and culturally. Not only was there an initial impact but there is also a continued impact that is still being felt today. Whether positive or negative, one cannot deny that the impact that the Protestant Reformation has had...

Religious change was largely brought about by the protestant and catholic reformations. This had ultimately changed the religious landscape throughout Europe. Martin Luther, was arguably the most significant player in bringing about reform within the catholic church, ultimately bringing about religious change. Catholicism was one a global religion and so the protestant reformation effectively threatened and radicalised the catholic church. The protestant reformation “began life as a negative concept”. This meant that many viewed the protestant movement as a threat...