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The Reformation And The Reformation

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Due largely in part to the selling of indulgences and the flawed teachings of the Catholic Church many people were dissatisfied about their faith during the Renaissance. This led to a period called the Reformation, which began in 1517. The Reformation was led by radical critics Martin Luther and John Calvin, who questioned the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, due to their selling of indulgences and stray from the Bible. The Reformation started in central Europe and spread to encompass most of the continent, during which time people left the Roman Catholic Church and joined a Protestant religion, a religion that is a denomination of the Christian faith. During the Reformation, the Catholic Church was weakened as it was …show more content…

With the invention of Johann Gutenberg’s printing press, the Bible, being the first book he printed, was now widely available to the general population, which made it possible to read the Gospels as Luther had suggested (Flowers 64). Along with the availability of the Bible, the revolution in printing allowed ideas of Protestant faiths to spread quickly across Europe. Despite being persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant faiths appealed to the common people. This mutual dislike for the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church led to a common practice of reading the scriptures to receive guidance from the Lord. Many also believed that the Roman Catholic Churches position was too strict and many could not afford to buy indulgences to get forgiveness for small sins. The Church of England with its lenient position allowed almost all English individuals to grasp Anglicanism to the degree that, for most, it came to be an acknowledged view that to be English was to be Anglican (Linder 125). Therefore, due to the absurd ideas of the Roman Catholic Church at the time and the lenient practices of the Protestant faiths, many were drawn to the Protestant faiths and the Roman Catholic Church was weakened. The mainline Protestant faiths, such as Calvinism and Anglicanism, sought to reform the old Church, whereas the Radical Reformers, Anabaptists, wanted to discard the old Church completely and go back to what they held was the New Testament norm (Linder 81).

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