B2 its treasury.The German people had grievances,

B2 its treasury.The German people had grievances,

B2 September 25, 2011 Reformation DBQ During the Protestant Reformation in Germany around the 16th century chaos ensued. This was lead by Martin Luther, who brought the churches lie out in the open for all to see. He told the people of the corruption within the Vatican, and how they shouldn’t have to pay indulgences.

Secularism spread throughout the lands, people began turning on the church. This all went on while the Renaissance was still affecting the European nations. The Roman church fell into a great deal of corruption, under Pope Leo X who began spending more money than the church had in its treasury.The German people had grievances, brought before the diet, they felt that the church was heartless using people’s sins against them. (D4) The economy of the time was a mix of prospering upper and middle class, and poverty struck peasants. At this time people were looking to the church for salvation from the evils of life, this is where indulgences came into play.

A short tempered German monk named Martin Luther, talked of feeling week and insufficient, under the control of the church. (D1) He studied the Latin and the Bible, knowing one helped him understand the other.After studying the original text Luther came to find that many things were not sufficient, such as the Seven Sacraments he ended up only keeping only two-baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The church declared that for salvation people must obey the Pope, this was defined under the rain of Pope Boniface VIII, a tyrant of his time in 1302. (D10) At this time in history people started to shy away from the church, separating themselves from the Pope. According to Ulrich Zwingli, times changed, the word of God became confused with the human ambitions.

They have been lead astray by the people who say they speak the word of God. (D5) People like John Calvin, who later started his own religion Calvinism, agreed, saying that we must resist the lust of material goods, but be grateful for what God has given us. (D6) They were all against the paying of indulgences, they believe that God wouldn’t want us to buy his forgiveness for the sins we have committed.

Luther is most known as the leader of the Reformation, and for this he was called a heretic.In response to this Luther attacks the Pope in stating that, he has twisted the word of the scripture, reminding him of the bloodshed under Julius II, the horrible tyranny under the late Pope Boniface VIII who ‘came in as a wolf, resigned as a lion, and died as a dog. ’ and lastly telling the Pope that the German people would not stand for this kind of leadership. (D7) This is around the time when Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses and nailed it to the church door, declaring the church as a ‘fraud.

Not only did the Reformation affect the church, but it affected the arts of the time, Renaissance art to be exact. Myconius, a German Protestant reformer, spoke of how in two weeks Martin Luther’s 95 Theses had spread through Germany, and months later through the Christian world. (D3) His thesis would have never gone so far, so fast without Guttenberg’s printing press. One of the ages most famous Dutch Renaissance humanists Erasmus, used the Reformation as a theme in his writings.

In his play Julius Excluded Erasmus tells of how the laws seems not to apply to the Pope, ‘for he can cancel any canon he does not like. ’ (D2) He writes about the Reformation again in The Annotations on The New Testament claiming that the church is so busy with other matters that it no longer has time to understand the gospels. (D8) Artists even recorded the scenes surrounding the new movement, illustrating the hustle and bustle of the vendors receiving so much money that new coins have to be minted on site.

D9) The people where leery about indulgences, yet they bought them to have some chance in saving their family members souls. In conclusion many wars were fought over the ideas of the Reformation thinkers like Martin Luther, and John Calvin. In the end politics and national convictions outweighed the religious convictions in Europe, allowing church and state to exist together.

You might say that Martin Luther was able to air the churches’ dirty secrets for all to see. Overall, the Reformation opened the doors for new opportunities of thought and prepared Europe for the changes soon to follow.