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40 2 • Early Globalization: The Atlantic World, 1492–1650

FIGURE 2.8 Martin Luther, a German Catholic monk and leader of the Protestant Reformation, was a close friend of
the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. Cranach painted this and several other portraits of Luther.

Many Europeans had called for reforms of the Catholic Church before Martin Luther did, but his protest had
the unintended consequence of splitting European Christianity. Luther compiled a list of what he viewed as
needed Church reforms, a document that came to be known as The Ninety-Five Theses, and nailed it to the
door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. He called for the publication of the Bible in everyday
language, took issue with the Church’s policy of imposing tithes (a required payment to the Church that
appeared to enrich the clergy), and denounced the buying and selling of indulgences. Although he had hoped
to reform the Catholic Church while remaining a part of it, Luther’s action instead triggered a movement called
the Protestant Reformation that divided the Church in two. The Catholic Church condemned him as a heretic,
but a doctrine based on his reforms, called Lutheranism, spread through northern Germany and Scandinavia.

CLICK AND EXPLORE


Visit Fordham University’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook (http://openstax.org/l/fordham) for access to many
primary sources relating to the Protestant Reformation.

JOHN CALVIN
Like Luther, the French lawyer John Calvin advocated making the Bible accessible to ordinary people; only by
reading scripture and re`ecting daily about their spiritual condition, he argued, could believers begin to
understand the power of God. In 1535, Calvin `ed Catholic France and led the Reformation movement from
Geneva, Switzerland.

Calvinism emphasized human powerlessness before an omniscient God and stressed the idea of
predestination, the belief that God selected a few chosen people for salvation while everyone else was
predestined to damnation. Calvinists believed that reading scripture prepared sinners, if they were among the
elect, to receive God’s grace. In Geneva, Calvin established a Bible commonwealth, a community of believers
whose sole source of authority was their interpretation of the Bible, not the authority of any prince or monarch.
Soon Calvin’s ideas spread to the Netherlands and Scotland.

PROTESTANTISM IN ENGLAND
Protestantism spread beyond the German states and Geneva to England, which had been a Catholic nation for
centuries. Luther’s idea that scripture should be available in the everyday language of worshippers inspired
English scholar William Tyndale to translate the Bible into English in 1526. The seismic break with the
Catholic Church in England occurred in the 1530s, when Henry VIII established a new, Protestant state
religion.

Access for free at openstax.org.

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