Protestant Reformation And Moral Decay Of The Catholic Church

In the time of 1500s the Catholic Church, the papacy, was known to hold a large amount of power, both religiously and politically. With this power it allowed for a lot of different corruption to seep into the different seeds of the religious power. This corruption was due to the fact that the church became a lot about the different money that was gained, power in the church was able to be bought by the rich with their money. The church also used money gained from the people

For example, in Document 3, it includes,"Because of the inseparable relationship between the church and politics, many of the clergy had became as corrupt as noble families paid for church offices...People were also upset by the high taxes charged by the bishops to support the Pope and his projects." This means that because of clergy wanting money, the bishops and other clergy members raised taxes to get people to pay the Pope and the other clergy. The church addressed this problem by putting it aside for later examination. The church attempted to fix the problem but it kind of got forgotten. The clergy just went on abusing their power like Nero or Caligula in the Roman Empire. The clergy kept thinking they could get away with anything just because the Pope had the power of excommunication: he had the power to not let other human's souls go to heaven and banish them from the Church. The bishop or parish priest were very important. The priest baptized you and the few people who can actually read the bible were the parish priests. They could only read it because the Bible at that time was written in Latin. That was until Martin Luther copied it into the language the others knew: a form of German. The people of the church were so important that the others paid the high taxes until they had enough of paying them so much. Then Martin Luther came along

The period immediately following the Protestant reformation and the Catholic counter reformation, was full of conflict and war. The entire continent of Europe and all of it's classes of society were affected by the destruction and flaring tempers of the period. In the Netherlands, the Protestants and the Catholics were at eachother’s throats. In France it was the Guise family versus the Bourbons. In Bohemia, the religious and political structures caused total havoc for over thirty years; and in England, the Presbyterians thought that the English Anglican Church too closely resembled the Roman Catholic Church. Religion was the major cause of the widespread

greed when the church was built and dressed so lavishly. There were rumors of corrupt

The Protestant Reformation and European expansion have both left political, social and economic impacts throughout history. The Protestant Reformation which was started in the 1500’s, by a Catholic man named Martin Luther caused political instability and fragmented the Holy Roman Empire. It economically caused the church to go bankrupt and socially allowed for the rise of individualism among the people; Luther gave the people of Europe the long needed reason to break free of the church. The Protestant Reformation and the need for new converts lead to the rise of European expansion. European expansion into the west resulted in a political increase of power for Europe, the social increase in slavery, disease and racism, as well as the

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated as well as they were no longer required to learn and teach the Holy Scriptures because the Church dictated their actions. The pinnacle of the Church’s corruption was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was the “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment” sold by priests as a temporary relief from sins. The indulgences were then sold to the general populace for money as the monetization of a priest’s services. Johannes Tetzel was a prominent preacher of indulgences who relied on the money from the sales to subsidize the rebuilding of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The corrupt sales did not go unnoticed as Martin Luther, in an effort to stop the corruption of the Church, posted the 95 Theses on the door of a Castle

But were the clergy really that bad, and if they were would people not have done anything about it? In the diocese of Lincoln, which had 1,006 individual parishes, they only had 25 complaints of sexual misconduct for the whole year. This is a low figure, which proves that the deficiencies of the clergy have either been fiercely exaggerated or that people didn't have a problem with the incidents and therefore didn't report them. The interesting fact is that after the reformation, the number of complaints rose. Surely this suggests that it was the reformation that caused the anti-clericalism and not the other way round.

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

During the 16th century, Protestantism emerged as a new sect of Christianity. This process was not calm or peaceful in the slightest. Protestant leaders like Martin Luther and John Calvin fiercely attacked and denied traditional Catholic beliefs, causing much controversy and debate upon religion. Many regions of Europe as a whole were converted to Protestantism, and many more Protestants emerged in areas where Catholicism remained the state religion. The Catholic faith became less and less appealing to people as the abuses of the clergy were now publicly addressed by reformers and a new, personal approach to religion was offered in Protestantism. In addition, rulers favored Protestantism as a state religion because it meant that no power

To begin, the Protestant Reformation began in reaction to the Catholic Church’s rather corrupt practices. Prior to the Reformation, the only major Christian denomination in Western Europe at the time was Catholicism, headed by the Pope in Rome. Through many acts of violence such as the formation of the Spanish Inquisition and the slaughter of the Cathars, amongst others, Europe’s Monarchs had wiped out and suppressed any form of religious competition. With the Catholic Church holding a tight stranglehold over Europe, Catholicism was the only option. This allowed

Much of the criticism towards the Roman Catholic Church was administrative rather than theological. In the early 16th century critics of the church concentrated their attacks on clerical immorality, clerical ignorance and clerical absenteeism. Charges of clerical immorality were aimed at a number of priests who were drunkards, neglected the rule of celibacy, gambled, or indulged in fancy dress. Charges of clerical ignorance applied to barely literate priests who delivered poor quality sermons and who were obviously ignorant of the Latin words of the Mass. In regards to absenteeism, many clerics, especially higher ecclesiastics/clergymen, held multiple offices simultaneously- a practice termed pluralism. However, they seldom visited the communities they served by the offices, let alone performed the spiritual responsibilities those offices were entailed. Instead, they collected revenues from all of the offices assigned to them and hired a poor priest

The second ‘category’ being church discipline, which focused on upholding key beliefs and put decrees in place to abolish all bad practices, the following reforms were decided on to put the church back in order;A seminary,which was a place where priests were educate and was set up in each diocese, Decrees were also passed against pluralism and absenteeism. This meant that bishops and others who held religious officers could no longer be appointed multiple positions. Indulgence selling was also abolished.

The attitude of the clergy was worse than that of the laity, as the clergy would have had a clear idea that their greed for profit was a sin. The Decameron clearly reflects the greed and materialism that Renaissance capitalism brought, and new attitude of the people who were no longer as concerned with sinning.

The Catholic Reformation was the response of the Protestant movement in the sixteenth century. By the sixteenth century, many people lost the trust for the Catholic Church because it was corrupt. Popes and Cardinals became involved in politics and were more like kings than spiritual leaders and Nepotism was rampant. This loss of trust led people to moved on into other branches of Christianity which includes, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anabaptism. Catholic Church’s realized it needed to re-establish itself, thus beginning the Catholic Reformation. The Catholic Reformation was successful because it triggered the start of The Society of Jesus and The Council of Trent which helped resolve the church’s corruption through education,

Their presence was followed by an increase of moral deterioration in the church that forced "puritanical souls to revolt. This deterioration is thought to have started in the upper classes of Roman society, which caused many to shift away into the early form of Monasticism.