John S. Ott (c2012)
Department of History
HST 356U - Renaissance and Reformation Europe
READING GUIDEAND STUDY QUESTIONS
for the PROTESTANT REFORMATION


Readings

Background notes

Martin Luther (1483-1546), a chief instigator of the church reform movement of the early sixteenth century, was a complex and controversial individual.  In his early years, there were no signs that he would become a charismatic preacher and ecclesiastical reformer of international influence.  He was born into a lower middle-class family and educated in law and theology at Erfurt University, in northern Germany.  Although his family hoped he would become a lawyer, a near-death experience led him to take up the monastic habit—against his parents’ wishes—in 1505.  Luther persisted in his academic studies and devoted much thought in particular to the issue of indulgences, monetary payments rendered to the church by ordinary Christians to commute the penance of souls in Purgatory.  Although the system of indulgences had much earlier roots as dispensations of the obligation to do penance, which later widenend to include charitable donations made to the church, it had devolved by the fifteenth century to the point where many thought that paying indulgences was a “good deed,” and therefore enough, on its own, to merit salvation.  This belief flew in the face of Luther's growing conviction that faith alone, not works, assured God’s grace and human salvation. (Note, however, that Luther believed that as a matter of course, good men would do good works—they would simply not be saved by them, nor expect salvation through them.)  In fact, Luther’s adherence to this assertion was nothing new—the tradition dates back to St. Augustine—and his “Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” (penned in 1517) was not intended to be a world-shaking manifesto.  But, it touched a raw nerve and tapped into growing anti-papal and anti-clerical sentiments, and fueled the sixteenth-century Protestant reform.  Luther went on to advocate that individual Christians could and should read the scriptures themselves and develop personal relationships with God.  When Luther refused to recant his writings, the pope excommunicated him.  He became something of a German national hero in 1521—for reasons in part political—and left his monastic order, married a former nun, and fathered six children.

Jean (John) Calvin (1509-1564) was a second-generation Protestant reformer, born in northern France and educated at Paris and Orléans for a life in the clergy.  An intellectual and gifted scholar, Calvin gravitated toward Protestant sentiments and eventually fled Paris, where the authorities were stridently Catholic.  A peripatetic life followed, during which (in 1536) he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion.  One of this work’s great contributions to Protestant theology was its assertion that faith alone unites the believer to Christ, and that some men and women were predestined to salvation by God while others were doomed to damnation.  Calvin eventually relocated to Geneva, a haven for reform-minded intellectuals, and there became a leader of social and political reform.  Calvin’s clique outlawed leisure pursuits like gambling, dancing, theater-going, and drinking.  The heavy-handed regime frequently spawned dissent, but the Genevan Consistory, a court composed of twelve town elders and five pastors, strictly enforced morality and patriarchal authority.  Calvin’s Geneva became something of a model for Protestant communities, and his missionaries introduced reforms throughout northern Europe.

Questions

(1) What similarities do Luther’s and Calvin’s theologies share, if any?  What prevailing Christian customs, beliefs, practices are denounced?
(2) What is Luther’s view on spiritual and secular authority?
(3) What are the social/political/economic implications of Calvins views on original sin and predestination?  Wherein lies man’s salvation?  How does Calvin’s theology compare with Pico’s Oration in its view of human nature?