Reformation

In the 16th century a series of reforms, attempted reforms, and religious crises led to a permanent split in the historic unity of western European Christianity, creating a permanent split between Catholic and Protestant churches.

The Reformation, scholars note, began in 1517, when the German monk Martin Luther protested against the sale of indulgences, but the roots of the Reformation extend further back. Many observers have noted that the thought of the 14th-century English reformer John Wycliffe, the 15th-century Bohemian reformer Jan Hus, and the lay religious movement known as the Modern Devotion all contributed to its origins. Such reformers sought a simpler, more egalitarian faith and complained of corruption within the church. Reaction to these movements was varied: While the Modern Devotion faced relatively little opposition, Wycliffe was convicted of heresy, and Hus was burned at the stake.

On the eve of the Reformation, critics and reformers complained about the wealth and corruption of Rome, about the sale of indulgences and church offices, and about absentee priests who lived off money collected in their parishes but did no pastoral service there. They also objected to a system of fees and tithes that redistributed money into the church’s coffers, and some complained about the dry formalism of scholastic theology. These calls did not lead inevitably to the Reformation; many critics stayed within the church and sought internal reforms (see Counterreeormation). Nor was the church universally reviled. One historian has suggested that critiques of the church coexisted with “extravagant lay devotion to a conventional, ritualized, often materialistic piety.” Another has even argued that the term Reformation be used with care, in part because the term itself implies that the Reformation replaced “a bad form of Christianity [with] a good one.”

Important reformers included Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, Henry VIII, and John Knox. The early reformers initially sought to rescue a church that they believed had strayed, not to cause a schism in Christianity. But the church did not accept the reformers’ theological ideas or implement their proposed reforms, and as religious wars spread across much of Europe the reformers tended to grow more convinced that the Catholic Church could not be rehabilitated.

The Reformation itselfwas characterized by great diversity of opinion, but most Reformation thinkers and movements can be placed into one of four groups: Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans (see Church oe England), and radicals.

Lutherans

Luther was the first great theologian of Protestantism. He introduced two crucial theological ideas that most reformers came to defend: the belief in justification by faith alone (sola fide) and the conviction that the church should base itself on scripture alone (sola scriptura). He also rejected papal claims to authority, proclaimed the centrality of the Bible (and translated the New Testament into German), redefined the significance of the Eucharist, and rejected the cult of the saints and the veneration of relics. His ideas roused great controversy, and Pope Leo X excommunicated him in 1520. The following year, upon his refusal to recant his beliefs, he was condemned as a heretic and declared an outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms.

Luther’s ideas spread rapidly, aided by popular sermons, religious plays, and the publication of pamphlets via the new technology of the printing press. Luther’s ideas of Christian liberty helped spark a devastating Peasants’ Rebellion in 1525, although Luther himself condemned the revolt. Intermittent religious wars continued in the Holy Roman Empire until 1555, when the Peace of Augsburg decreed that a region would be Catholic or Lutheran depending on the personal religious affiliation of its prince. By 1560 Lutheranism had become the dominant religion in Scandinavia and much of Germany, especially in urban areas.

Reformed Churches

Theologically, the Reformed churches had much in common with Lutheranism. Like Luther, they accepted justification through faith and the authority of scripture. Likewise, they placed great emphasis on Christianity as a religion of the word, and so emphasized literacy,

A small crowd gathers to watch as Martin Luther directs the posting of his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. (Library of Congress)

Preaching, and teaching over ritual. Congregants in the Reformed churches generally felt that Luther had been too willing to compromise with Catholic custom in such matters as the retention of images in churches. They were perhaps most notable for their emphasis on religion as a community matter.

The city of Geneva, where John Calvin’s ideas had transformed the church and the community, was particularly important in Reformed religion. It served as a home for refugees and a training ground for ministers. These missionaries then founded congregations in France and elsewhere, spreading Reformed patterns of religion. The Genevan pattern of close cooperation between civil and church authorities influenced Reformed churches in other cities, as did its fourfold division of church offices into pastors, teachers, elders, and the consistory. Reformed churches emphasized duty and the need to live an orderly life, one of obedience, modesty, temperance, and diligence. This religious pattern had particular relevance for urban artisans, lawyers, and tradesmen, and scholars have observed that the devotion to secular duty and hard work promoted by Reformed churches proved to fit well in a capitalist economy. Reformed churches, like Lutheran ones, thrived in urban environments. Reformed cities included Basel, Bern, Constance, Geneva, and Zurich. Although the Reformed movement was strongest in western Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, it also reached Scotland and parts of France and England.

Anglicans

Lutheran ideas reached England by the 1520s, but clerical authorities initially suppressed them. By the late 1520s King Henry VIII was enmeshed in matrimonial difficulties. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, had borne several children, but only one, a daughter, had survived. Henry hoped for a son and petitioned the pope to annul his marriage, freeing him to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The pope, under pressure from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, refused. This problem, combined with political rivalries between England and other states and the king’s irritation at the English clergy, convinced Henry that he should assert his dominance over the church in England. In 1534 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, declaring the king to be “the supreme head of the Church of England.”

The Reformation took greater shape during the reign of Henry Vlll’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. Religious controversies had worsened during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, and Elizabeth sought to end religious disputes in England. Her Act of Supremacy of 1559 established her status as “Supreme Governor” of the church and mandated the use of the Book of Common Prayer. Nonetheless, the Anglican church also retained some Catholic elements, such as a governing structure of bishops and a greater use of ritual than was common in Lutheran or Reformed churches. Elizabeth was not a religious zealot, but she wanted stability and expected English subjects to adhere, at least nominally, to the Church of England. Those who publicly refused, whether Catholics or Puritans, faced persecution.

Radicals

The term radical Reformation covers a wide range of groups that had little in common with one another. In general, most radical groups believed that the world would end soon and hoped to restore the practices of the earliest Christian churches, including the holding of goods in common. Unlike other Reformation churches, which saw themselves as including every member of a city or territory, from the very dedicated to the nominal believers, radical groups tended to consist of a small number of core believers. Many of these groups rejected infant baptism, earning the name Anabaptists, or “re-baptizers.”

The radicals took the principle of “scripture alone” further than the major reformers ever would. While Luther, Calvin, and others argued that scripture was the sole authority, they also believed that it must be studied and interpreted by theological experts. Untrained laypeople were incapable of discovering for themselves the meaning of the scriptures. Many radicals argued that anyone could read and understand the Bible. The diversity of the radical churches only increased when some sects claimed that believers might receive the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Major radical leaders included Conrad Grebel, Hans Hut, Thomas Muntzer, and Jan Matthijs. The radicals distrusted political and religious elites and often drew their membership from among the poor. The radicals’ theological novelties, rejection of political authority, and apparent links to the Peasants’ War led both Catholic and Protestant authorities to persecute them. Radical communities existed in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Effects of the Reformation

By 1560 Protestantism was firmly established in much of Europe. England, Scotland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, many of the cities of the Holy Roman Empire, parts of France, and parts of eastern Europe had adopted one or another of the Protestant faiths. Areas that remained officially Catholic, including France, Spain, and Italy, also saw religious change, as internal reform impulses and the desire to challenge Protestantism led to the Counterreformation.

In Protestant areas the Reformation changed patterns of religious observance. Such traditional practices and beliefs as the veneration of Mary and the saints, the doctrine of purgatory, compulsory fasting, and clerical celibacy were abolished or limited in many European cities and territories. The number of sacraments was reduced from seven to two (or, in some areas, three), and the Catholic administrative structure of priests and bishops was swept away.

What effect did the reformers’ messages have on ordinary Christian believers? As a general rule, it appears that most people heard about the reformers from preachers and pamphlets. Their initial response, drawing on a combination of anticlericalism and irritation at Catholic church failings, was often enthusiastic. Such early ardor encouraged the reformers to believe that their efforts were blessed by God and to expect widespread conversions to the new faith. Reformers wrote catechisms to express important beliefs in simple, easily understood ways. They encouraged literacy in order to allow people to read the Bible and come to a more thorough understanding of their faith. Nonetheless, their early hopes were frustrated. In an age of limited literacy, it is unlikely that the reformers’ theological ideas, many of which were complex, were readily understood by the peasants and artisans who heard or read (or had read to them) the works of Protestant propagandists.

As the Protestant churches established themselves and came to accommodations with secular authorities, the enthusiasm of the early years died down. Protestantism, rather than representing a challenge to authority, became a new authority. Ministers often found their initial high hopes of a better educated, more pious, more dedicated population frustrated. They complained that they could reach only a minority of true believers, while a larger number of lukewarm adherents showed little interest in or understanding of religion.

Protestant reformers rejected the medieval Catholic ideal of the monastic life. They denied that the celibate life of priests, monks, and nuns was better than that of other people, and they praised family life. Ministers themselves married, and their sons sometimes became ministers. Because Protestants praised married life as a “calling” equal in value to any other, some scholars have suggested that the Reformation raised the status of women. Others have maintained that women’s status stayed much the same and that, if anything, the closing of the convents destroyed one of the few careers open to women in the 16th century.

The Reformation had important implications for the settlement of the Western Hemisphere when the colonizing European powers competed with one another in the race to found colonies. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America and the French colonies in North America became Catholic, while the English colonies of North America included a range of Protestant churches.

Further reading: Michael G. Baylor, ed. and trans., The Radical Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250-1550 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980).

—Martha K. Robinson

To increase as Native populations decreased from abuse, starvation, and the introduction of European diseases. As time passed the length of service increased and the break between service requirements decreased. Some people served on local estates, and others were shipped to distant worksites. Any type of labor needed during the early colonial period, such as mining, farming, and ranching, among a host of others, received at least part of its workforce from the repartimiento. Many people avoided the repartimiento by migrating to those areas that did not have it. This created labor shortages in areas using the repartimiento and, in general, destabilized the labor force throughout Spanish America. Most of the work in repartimientos was intensive, dangerous, and debilitating. Eventually, wage labor and other forms of work relationships developed to replace the inefficient repartimiento.

Further reading: Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountains: Indian Labor in Potosi, 1545-1650 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984);-, “Min

Ing in Colonial Spanish America,” in Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 110-151; Enrique Tandeter, Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosi, 1662-1826 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).

—Dixie Ray Haggard

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