Many factors contributed to the Protestant Reformation. The spiritual lethargy and bureaucratic corruption besetting the Roman Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century made it a fit target for reform. The thriving business in the sale of indulgences, payments to the church to help release dead relatives from purgatory, was a public scandal; while the luxurious lifestyle of the popes and the papal court in Rome was another. Yet countless earlier religious reform movements had generated little or no change. The fact that the movement launched by Martin Luther in 1517 and carried forward by men like John Calvin addressed genuine shortcomings in the Roman Catholic Church does not entirely explain why it led so directly to the rupture of Christendom.
The charismatic leadership of Luther and the compelling brilliance of Calvin made their protests more effective than earlier efforts at reform. Probably more important, so did the political possibilities let loose by their challenge to Rome’s spiritual authority. German princes seized on Luther’s campaign against the sale of indulgences to stop all payments to Rome and to confiscate church property within their domains. Swiss cities like Geneva, where Calvin took up residence in 1536, and Zurich joined the Protestant revolt for spiritual reasons, but also to establish their political independence from Catholic kings.
The decision of Henry VIII of England in 1534 to break with Rome was at bottom a political one. The refusal of Pope Clement VII to agree to an annulment of Henry’s marriage of twenty years to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, provided the occasion. Catherine had given birth to six children, but only a daughter, Mary, survived childhood; Henry was without a male heir. By repudiating the pope’s spiritual authority and declaring himself head of the English (Anglican) church, Henry freed himself to divorce Catherine and to marry whomever—and however often—he saw fit. By the time of his death, five wives and thirteen years later, England had become a Protestant nation. More important for our story, the English colonies in America were mostly Protestant.
As the commercial classes rose to positions of influence, England, France, and the United Provinces of the Netherlands experienced a flowering of trade and industry. The Dutch built the largest merchant fleet in the world. Dutch traders captured most of the Far Eastern business once monopolized by the Portuguese, and they infiltrated Spain’s Caribbean stronghold. A number of English
St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican was built between 1506 and 1626. Catholic popes defended the magnificent church as a suitable expression of love for a God who had redeemed humankind. Protestant critics denounced St. Peter's as a form of idolatry that celebrated human attainments rather than those of God. Puritans insisted that their houses of worship be simple and their altars plain.
Merchant companies, soon to play a vital role as colonizers, sprang up in the last half of the sixteenth century. These joint-stock companies, ancestors of the modern corporation, enabled groups of investors to pool their capital and limit their individual responsibilities to the sums actually invested—a very important protection in such risky enterprises. The Muscovy Company, the Levant Company, and the East India Company were the most important of these ventures.
World History
