I mentioned recently that I’m starting a new blog series to share things I learn as I dip into a textbook called The Western Humanities. My first topic request from a reader was a post about the Protestant Reformation, so here goes.

The Reformation is covered in “Chapter 13: Northern Humanism, Northern Renaissance, Religious Reformations, and Late Mannerism, 1500-1603.” The sections about the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are a fair (though brief) overview of a pivotal period in world history.

Background to the Protestant Reformation

The authors of The Western Humanities identify two basic causes for the breakup of Europe’s religious unity:

1. “[T]he radical reshaping of Western society and culture that began around 1350”
2. “[T]he timeless spiritual yearnings of human beings”

They go on to list the historical trends that made Europe ripe for religious revolution:

1. Corruption in the church (leading to anticlericalism)
2. Rise of sovereign states (the rulers of England and France had managed largely to free the church from papal control, and German princes struggled to follow suit)
3. Decay of medieval thought
4. Revival of humanism

Four Things I Learned About the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

I already had a basic grasp of the principle players, events, and trends of the Reformation period, but here are four things I didn’t know:

1. Martin Luther’s writings constitute the largest legacy of any German author.
2. Out of 19 German Bibles in print in 1518, Luther’s has had the most lasting impact. (“His pithy style engaged the reader’s emotions with realistic images and idiomatic speech.”)
3. As part of the Counter-Reformation’s attempt to purify the Roman Catholic Church from Protestant teachings, an Index of Forbidden Books was drawn up, which was updated until the 1960s.
4. The Counter-Reformation also led to monastic reform, such as the Ursulines (an order of laywomen) being reorganized under male supervision.

Illustrations of Key Figures

This section of The Western Humanities  includes seven illustrations, all engravings and paintings of key figures. The one below is a copper engraving of Martin Luther, done by his friend Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1520.

Albrecht Durer on Martin Luther

The Western Humanities also includes a sidebar with an extensive quotation from Albrecht Durer, a German painter and printmaker. Durer feared for Luther’s safety after he was kidnapped, allegedly by the Holy Roman Emperor’s soldiers, in 1521. Here is an excerpt:

“And whether he yet lives, or whether they have put him to death — which I know not — he has suffered this for the sake of Christian truth and because he rebuked the unchristian Papacy, which strives with its heavy load of human laws against the redemption of Christ… Oh God, if Luther be dead, who will henceforth expound to us the Holy Gospel with such clearness? What, of God, might he not still have written for us in ten or twenty years?”

Fortunately, the rumours turned out to be false. Luther was “kidnapped” by his own supporters and taken to a safe refuge. He lived until 1546.

Call to Action

I hope you learned something new about the Protestant Reformation from this post. Please chime in with your requests for future topics. I can look into any period from ancient Near Eastern civilizations up to “The Age of Anxiety and Beyond, 1945 –,” so don’t be shy!