The Reformation is known as the great 16th-century religious revolution1 in the Christian Church. It ended the ecclesiastical superiority of the pope, in Western Christendom and resulted in the founding of the Protestant churches. It became a movement capable of shaping history, when courts and princes made evangelical teachings laws within their respective towns and territories2. On October 31 of 1517, Martin Luther, professor of theology, began the Protestant revolution in Wittenberg, Germany, when he published his Ninety-Five theses to the door of the Castle Church, challenging the theory and practices of indulgences (documents offering commutation of penance for money payments)3.
The papal authorities demanded that Luther withdraw and surrender to the churchs authority, but he became more stubborn and insisted that religion should be held upon individual faith based on the guidance found in the Bible. Luther had grasped onto the reality that a man can only be righteous in God and be just (saved/sanctified), by having faith found in Gods Word4. Abandoning oneself to the message of the gospel, created faith.
After being threatened by the pope, Luther publicly burned papal decree, of excommunication, as well as a volume of canon law. The act of rebelliousness symbolized a definitive break with the entire system of the Western church. Charles V, the German princes and ecclesiastics assembled in 1521 at the Diet of Worms, and ordered Luther to retract. Again he refused and was then declared an outlaw. For about a year he hid, writing pamphlets illuminating his philosophy and translating the New Testament into German. Although imperial law forbade his writings, they were sold to many people and were powerful instruments in turning the great German cities into centers of Lutheranism.
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Germany had become sharply divided along religious and economic lines. The emperor, most of the princes, and the higher clergy, supported the Roman Catholic Church. While Lutheranism was supported by the North German princes, the lower clergy, the commercial classes, and large portions of the peasantry, who thought of the change as offering an opportunity for greater independence in both the religious and economic spheres.
Warfare broke out in 1524 between the two religious groups, which became the start of the Peasants’ War. The war was mainly an effort on the part of the peasants to improve their economic lot. Their program was inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther and embedded in religious provisions, called for freeing from a number of the services traditionally claimed by their clerical and lay landlords. Even though Luther disapproved of their use of his demands for modification to justify a radical disturbance of the existing economy, he urged the landlords to please the claims of the peasants in the interests of a peaceful agreement of the disturbing conflict.
Soon after the whole peasantry dispute, he turned against them, and wrote a pamphlet entitled Against the Murdering-Thieving Hordes of Peasants, which had brutally condemned them for turning to violent act5. And eventually a year later, in 1525, the peasants were defeated, yet the differences between Roman Catholics and Lutherans amplified. At last, a compromise was reached in 1526, at the Diet of Speyer. Agreement was that German princes wishing to practice Lutheranism should be free to do so. Later on, at a second Diet of Speyer, the Roman Catholic majority abrogated the agreement. The Lutheran minority protested against this action and became known as Protestants. First Protestants being Lutherans, but the term was extended after to include all the Christian sects that developed from the revolt against Rome.
Melanchthon, the German scholar and religious reformer, came along with a peace-making statement of the Lutheran system of belief, known as the Augsburg Confession. It had failed to resolve the differences between Roman Catholics and Lutherans, but remained the foundation of the new Lutheran church and faith. Charles V made war against the Schmalkaldic League, however, Duke Maurice went over to the Protestant side soon after, and Charles V was obliged to make peace.
The religious civil war ended with the religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Its conditions provided that each of the rulers of the German states, choose between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and enforce the chosen faith upon the ruler’s subjects.
Lutheranism finally gained the official recognition it had deserved, and the ancient theory of the religious unity of a single Christian community in Western Europe under the absolute power of the pope was then destroyed.
