Abuses in the Christian church can be identified from the earliest times, but by the beginning of the 16^th century the profound corruption of the church, from popes down to parish priests, was a source of alarm to many, and there was a strong need for reform – from within and without the Catholic Church. The growing independent-mindedness on the part of some humanists contributed to the sense that the church no longer held a monopoly on the thinking of scholars and teachers. The age of the individual conscience was being born.

 

This gradual shift represented an enormous change in the medieval Christian order, which was understood to be ordained and supported by the Will of God. All the social orders from kings and popes to peasants had their respective place in that medieval political, economic, social, cultural, religious and spiritual order – each person being placed into that order by the logic of his birth.

 

Within this climate of unease and transition, one of the chief catalysts for change was the German monk Martin Luther (1483-1546). Luther’s own spiritual struggle came to a head in 1517 when a papal representative came to his city of Wittenberg to raise money for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Luther was appalled by the offer of indulgences to finance the project (indulgences being the remission of sins or reduction of time in Purgatory in exchange for money). His response was to write a series of statements criticizing ninety-five beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church which he posted on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral.

 

Luther wanted a more personal kind of faith in which a man could pray directly to God rather than through intercessors. He only acknowledged two of the seven Sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist. Faith alone rather than ritual and ceremonial was the foundation of Luther’s philosophy. The influential Dutchman Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More felt that the Reformation should be carried out by popes and princes from within the church. Luther wanted a popular revolution, carried out by princes.

Kings could not afford to let heresies such as Luther’s take root because they encouraged social divisions, sedition and even revolution. Religious doctrine was a matter for those best qualified to understand and interpret it, not the ordinary person.