Lutheranism and It's Impact on Germanic Peasants

In 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on a Church in Germany and began a change Europe. Many people second guessed how the Catholic Church was practicing religious teachings and this grew in Germany. After years of battling for religious reforms, a new religion was formed named Lutheranism. Between 1524 and 1526, German peasants began to revolt the Holy Roman Empire. The peasant revolts were caused by greed and wanting to get rid of serfdom and corrupt leaders in the Holy Roman Empire, and both positive and negative responses were seen. Most positive responses were seen by peasants while most negative responses were shown by some religious leaders and Holy Roman Empire leaders.

Among the many religious changes that occurred throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, few were as widely influential as the Reformation. There were three streams of the Reformation: the common class, the educated middle class, and the monarchs and princes. All three streams wanted the church to be fixed and hoped it could combine old ideas and new ones. The Reformation was influenced by many different people, yet the most important was John Wyclif, who stated that the church did not need possession in order to be powerful. Different ideologies came from the influences of Wyclif, and many others. Lutheranism began in the mid 1500’s by Martin Luther, and he developed a doctrine of Justification by Faith where he wrote of how people stay in the church and get to heaven from faith

The main ideology of Lutheranism is that salvation can be gained by three fundamental precepts: by faith, by grace and by scripture alone. Luther felt that Salvation could not be achieved through good works such as prayer or holy living: "Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works." (Luther, On Christian Liberty, p.9). Faith in God is created through the belief and love for Him; salvation would rise from it nonetheless. Luther felt that it was up to every individual to interpret the Scriptures and decide for himself what was good. This was a revolutionary concept, as previously it had been only the Pope who could interpret the Scriptures. Another concept of Lutheranism was that every believer could achieve priesthood. All men who had true faith had the opportunity to serve God and were equal in His eyes. "Among Christians there shall and can be no authority; rather all are alike subject to one another." (Luther, Part Two. How Far Temporal Authority Extends, p.31). Bishops and priests in the Lutheran church were not authoritative figures but simply serving an office.

Between 1524 and 1526, Europe is coming out of the Renaissance and entering a stage of religious reformation.  Many theologians have protested the Catholic Church and have decided to break away from it.  The new religions formed inspired many different peoples and resonated with them.  The peasant revolts in the German states was caused by the peasants’ new sense of faith in the new protestant religion of Lutheranism and the reformers boldness to break away.  This lead to a very negative response by their German leaders.

This left Lutheranism the dominant form of Christianity in the land. Causing commoners and lords alike to rally around the idea of returning Christianity back to its roots in Jesus’ teachings and The Gospel. The church did not bow to Luther and except that he was right. Instead, they branded him a heretic. They began to wage what one could call a religious war on Lutheranism(End of in-class time).

The German Peasants Revolt took place in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. The peasant’s revolt was the result of the reformation in which Martin Luther and others went against the religion and traditions of the Catholic Church . The protestant reformation was led by Martin Luther who in 1517, nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The Ninety Five theses which pointed out the pope or the head of the church was suppressing the peasants by taking their money to sell them an indulgence. The clergy told the peasants if an indulgence paper was not purchased, their deceased loved one would suffer in purgatory . In the year 1522, the Pope excommunicated Luther from the church for the crime of heresy because of what he wrote in the ninety five thesis about the pope and the papacy. After this, Martin Luther and his followers broke away from the Catholic Church. Martin Luther then started to preach that the pope was “antichrist” . Martin Luther’s followers did not believe in teachings of the Catholic Church, and instead believed that only the relationship that mattered is their relationship with God. Followers of Martin Luther only believed in two of the seven sacraments, baptism, and the Eucharist or Holy Communion. Martin Luther did not believe that violence would help solve the problem of how the church made money of the peasants, through indulgences sold. So, Luther told his followers that even though they were suppressed by their rulers, they

In the mid-sixteenth century, religious reformation was a frontrunner in the Germanic states with Luther and his 95 theses, along with the Diet of Worms. All of this reformation and change sparked a peasantry uprising against the German aristocracy, including the land-owning nobility and the German Princes. The tension between the oppressed peasants and powerful Germanic aristocracy created a lower class backlash that caused aggressive Aristocratic response, tabulating another blow for the peasantry and their newfound Lutheran ideals.

Germany during 16th century was a petri dish of religious reformation. The small independent states that comprised Germany began to move away from the catholic church towards the belief of Lutheran ideals. This change in religion and ideals towards everyone being equal in the eyes of God and the dissatisfaction towards their place in society caused the peasants’ revolt of 1524-1526, which was met with force by nobles because they under minded the peasants’ and saw them as an economic transaction who were witless, outliers and middle men attempted to save their own skins and would say anything that might help them.

The Church changed with Martin Luther’s returning. The German princes who supported Luther took control of Catholic churches in their own territories. This caused the formation of separate churches under supervision of the government. The Peasant Revolts, in 1524, helped Luther. Peasants thought that social issues should be changed like church issues had been. 100,000 people ended up being killed, leading many to go back to the Catholic Church. In 1555 the Peace of Augsburg was put into effect. The Peace of Augsburg was an agreement to accept the division of Christianity of Germany. The German princes could choose whether they wanted to accept Lutheranism or just stay Catholic. The people of had no choice.

The protestant reformation happened at the moment that it did because the Catholic Church was very a powerful force in Europe. It controlled people lives both spiritually and temporally. The church had so much power that it maintained political control over a large portion of Italy. The fact that the church held so much control over countries and governments became a point of contention among European countries such as the Holy Roman Empire, Italian city-states outside of Rome, England, France and Spain. The power of the rulers of these areas had greatly increased in the 14th century and they were eager to take the chances offered by a Reformation to weaken the grip of the Catholic Church in Europe and also to develop their own powers across the European continent. For quite some time the Catholic Church had been an institution rampant with internal struggles. Such as the Avignon Papacy from 1309 to 1377 when seven popes opted to live in Avignon, France and not reside in Rome which was and is the traditional home of the Papacy. The Pope and other high ranking church officials often lived opulent lifestyles rather than a more austere lifestyle that should befit a spiritual leader. Many church leaders and Popes maintained political powers. They led armies, waged wars and made many political decisions. Church offices were sold, and many Popes and bishops practiced nepotism to fill church offices. With all of these worldly issues for the Pope

12. ’98 Compare and contrast the Lutheran Reformation and the Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth century regarding the reform of both religious doctrines and religious practices.

The German Peasants’ War of 1525 has been seen as both the last great medieval peasant revolt and as the first modern revolution. For more than 150 years the War has been the topic of ongoing historical debate. Indeed, it has always been a subject of contention among historians who seek to determine its relation to the Reformation. While most Reformation scholars have arrived at a consensus as to the series of events that transpired during the war, there has not been such agreement regarding the perplexing inner dynamic of the uprising. Set against the backdrops of both the German revolutions of 1848 and the political developments that characterized 1970s Germany, this debate has seen engagement from the historians Friedrich Engels and Max Steinmetz, who provide a Marxist interpretation that attempts to depict the war as the “high point of the early bourgeois revolution”, locating it within a German revolutionary tradition by citing the socioeconomic tensions that arose through the peasants’ oppressive relationship with the feudal lordship of their rural communities. Departing from the Marxist interpretation, Günther Franz has entered into the debate, defining the revolt as a “political revolution of the German peasant estate” that was made possible by the Reformation. Although he acknowledges the troubling nature of the evident economic difficulties, Franz understands the war as a response to the changing political structure of 16th century Germany. Submitting his own

The Lutheran Reformation is particularly associated with the German territories and the pervasive personal influence of one charismatic individual Martin Luther. Luther’s concern was the doctrine of justification, which formed his central point of his religious thoughts. The Lutheran Reformation was initially an academic movement, concerned primarily with reforming the teaching of theology at the University of Wittenberg (McGrath 2007). The Lutheran began in 1822 this happen after Luther’s return to Wittenberg from his enforced isolation in Wartburg. Luther was condemned for “false doctrine” by the Diet of Worms in 1512 (Noll 2000).

“We could keep on arguing for a hundred years and it wouldn’t get us anywhere! Until you can get rid of my verse I will not admit defeat.” (Documents on the Continental Reformation, p.97) When people are liberated with the power to think for themselves and own their own ideas, differences in opinion will occur. When we look at the Protestant Reformation we will see that key individuals such as Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, even though they are protesting similar things, develop differences upon the way, especially in the way they interpret Scripture. These differences, in any movement, will ultimately affect the outcome and the development of the Protestant movement that started in 1517 with Luther. This essay aims to examine these differences between Luther and Zwingli and find out how the Protestant movement was affected by their differing opinions. Firstly, Luther and Zwingli’s reformations will be observed individually and what they each stood for and then we will discuss their major differences and the influence they had on the Protestant movement.

The attendant effects of Martin Luther’s reformation in the early period of the sixteenth century occasioned by his posting of the 95 theses that raised objections to some of the then prevalent practices of the Roman Catholic Church eventually led to a significant breakaway from the church of a relatively more liberal Christian sect known as the “Protestant”. It is worthy of note however that the Roman Catholic Church tried albeit unsuccessfully to placate the breakaway by instituting a “counter-Reformation” but this only achieved a cleansing of the church internally without achieving much in its most important mandate to prevent the protestant breakaway. Consequently, Europe was enmeshed in bloody religious war largely between forces loyal to the papacy in Rome and those who sympathized with the runaway protestant movement. As a result, the Roman Catholic Church invariably began to lose its pole position in the scheme of things in an already divided Europe.