MODULE II: REFORMATION

Time allotment: 1 week

Instructor: Robert S. Pardillo
Contact details: [email protected]

I. LESSON OBJECTIVES
At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to:
1. Describe the impact of religious conflicts the Inquisition, and the Catholic
Reformation on society and on government.
2. Explain the effects of Reformation on the theological, political, and economic
aspects.

II. INTRODUCTION
In this module you are going to learn about reformation. Reformation is the 16th-
century religious, political, intellectual, and cultural upheaval that splintered
Catholic Europe, setting in place the structures and beliefs that would define the
continent in the modern era. You will also discover the birth of Protestantism that
started in Europe.

In northern and central Europe, reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin and Henry
VIII challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to
define Christian practice. They argued for a religious and political redistribution of
power into the hands of Bible- and pamphlet-reading pastors and princes. The
disruption triggered wars, persecutions and the so-called Counter-Reformation, the
Catholic Church’s delayed but forceful response to the Protestants.

III. LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Activity 1:
LET US START!!!

Direction: The following are important events about Reformation. Let us find out
your prior knowledge about this module. Read the following questions and choose the
letter of the correct answer. Go back to check if your answer is correct as you go through
using this module.

1. Who wrote the 95 theses that questioned the practices and beliefs of the Catholic
Church?
a. John Calvin
b. Martin Luther King Jr.
c. Martin Luther
d. Philip Melanchthon

2. Where did Luther post the 95 theses?

a. In the center of the town square in Erfurt, Germany
b. On the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany
 c. On the door of the Wartburg Castle
d. None of the above

3. Who was the Bohemian religious reformer, and forerunner to Martin Luther, who
was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and burned at the stake on July 6,
1415?
a. Jacob of Mies
b. Jan Hus
c. Conrad Waldhauser
d. Matthias of Janov

4. What was one of the negative results of the Reformation?

a. The Great Schism
b. The Augsburg Confession
c. The Thirty Years War
d. None of the above

5. The 16th-century revolt which divided Christians into Protestants and Catholics is
known as the?
a. The Religious Revolts
b. The Revolt of the Popes
c. The Reformation
d. The Great schism

6. The English Reformation began in 1533 when Henry VIII broke with the pope
because?
a. He taxed the Church too high
b. The pope refused to grant Henry a divorce from Catherine of Aragon
c. The pope sided with the Irish in a revolt against England
d. Differences in religious interpretation of the Bible

7. The basic premise of the Protestants was?

a. Sacrifices should be administered by non-ordained church leaders.

b. Images of saints is wrong.
c. Man can reach salvation through his/her own good works and not by
buying ritualistic selling of indulgences.
d. The Church should give away their money.

8. What practice allowed people to gain forgiveness by giving the Catholic Church
money?
a. Golden forgiveness
b. Paying indulgences
c. Fee for sinners
d. Bribing
 9. The Catholic Church excommunicated Martin Luther for publishing his 95 Theses.
What will happen to Luther?
a. The church will kill him.
b. The church will forgive him.
c. Read his complaints and tried to address him
d. Kicked him out of the church for being a heretic

10. Why did King Henry VIII form the Church of England?
a. Because he wanted to have a church of his own
b. Because he thought Rome was too far away
c. Because the Catholic Church would not allow him to divorce his wife
d. Because the Catholic Church did not like England

Activity 2:

This is Martin Luther.

Make an infographic on
the life of Luther focusing
on its contribution to
Protestantism and the
Catholic church. Make a
short explanation about
your infographic.

Activity 3: EXPLAIN

Early Life

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was born in

Eisleben, Saxony (now Germany), part of
the Holy Roman Empire, to parents Hans
and Margaretta. Luther’s father was a prosperous businessman, and when Luther was
young, his father moved the family of 10 to Mansfeld. At age five, Luther began his
education at a local school where he learned reading, writing and Latin. At 13, Luther began
to attend a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life in Magdeburg. The Brethren’s
teachings focused on personal piety, and while there Luther developed an early interest in
monastic life.

Martin Luther Enters the Monastery

But Hans Luther had other plans for young Martin—he wanted him to become a lawyer—
so he withdrew him from the school in Magdeburg and sent him to new school in Eisenach.
Then, in 1501, Luther enrolled at the University of Erfurt, the premiere university in
Germany at the time. There, he studied the typical curriculum of the day: arithmetic,
astronomy, geometry and philosophy and he attained a Master’s degree from the school in
1505. In July of that year, Luther got caught in a violent thunderstorm, in which a bolt of
lightning nearly struck him down. He considered the incident a sign from God and vowed to
become a monk if he survived the storm. The storm subsided, Luther emerged unscathed
and, true to his promise, Luther turned his back on his study of the law days later on July
17, 1505. Instead, he entered an Augustinian monastery.

Luther began to live the spartan and rigorous life of a monk but did not abandon his
studies. Between 1507 and 1510, Luther studied at the University of Erfurt and at a
university in Wittenberg. In 1510–1511, he took a break from his education to serve as a
representative in Rome for the German Augustinian monasteries. In 1512, Luther received
his doctorate and became a professor of biblical studies. Over the next five years Luther’s
continuing theological studies would lead him to insights that would have implications for
Christian thought for centuries to come.

The 95 Theses

Committed to the idea that salvation could be reached through faith and by divine grace
only, Luther vigorously objected to the corrupt practice of selling indulgences. Acting on
this belief, he wrote the “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” also
known as “The 95 Theses,” a list of questions and propositions for debate. Popular legend
has it that on October 31, 1517 Luther defiantly nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door
of the Wittenberg Castle church. The reality was probably not so dramatic; Luther more
likely hung the document on the door of the church matter-of-factly to announce the
ensuing academic discussion around it that he was organizing.

The 95 Theses, which would later become the

foundation of the Protestant Reformation,
were written in a remarkably humble and
academic tone, questioning rather than
accusing. The overall thrust of the document
was nonetheless quite provocative. The first
two of the theses contained Luther’s central
idea, that God intended believers to seek repentance and that faith alone, and not deeds,
would lead to salvation. The other 93 theses, a few of them directly criticizing the practice
of indulgences, supported these first two.

In addition to his criticisms of indulgences, Luther also reflected popular sentiment about
the “St. Peter’s scandal” in the 95 Theses:

Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest
Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of
poor believers?

The 95 Theses were quickly distributed throughout Germany and then made their way to
Rome. In 1518, Luther was summoned to Augsburg, a city in southern Germany, to defend
his opinions before an imperial diet (assembly). A debate lasting three days between Luther
and Cardinal Thomas Cajetan produced no agreement. Cajetan defended the church’s use
of indulgences, but Luther refused to recant and returned to Wittenberg.

Luther the Heretic

On November 9, 1518, the pope condemned Luther’s writings as conflicting with the
teachings of the Church. One year later a series of commissions were convened to examine
Luther’s teachings. The first papal commission found them to be heretical, but the second
merely stated that Luther’s writings were “scandalous and offensive to pious ears.” Finally,
in July 1520 Pope Leo X issued a papal bull (public decree) that concluded that Luther’s
propositions were heretical and gave Luther 120 days to recant in Rome. Luther refused to
recant, and on January 3, 1521 Pope Leo excommunicated Martin Luther from the Catholic
Church.

On April 17, 1521 Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms in Germany. Refusing again to
recant, Luther concluded his testimony with the defiant statement: “Here I stand. God help
me. I can do no other.” On May 25, the Holy Roman emperor Charles V signed an edict
against Luther, ordering his writings to be burned. Luther hid in the town of Eisenach for
the next year, where he began work on one of his major life projects, the translation of the
New Testament into German, which took him 10 years to complete.

Martin Luther's Later Years

Luther returned to Wittenberg in 1521, where the reform movement initiated by his
writings had grown beyond his influence. It was no longer a purely theological cause; it had
become political. Other leaders stepped up to lead the reform, and concurrently, the
rebellion known as the Peasants’ War was making its way across Germany.

Luther had previously written against the Church’s adherence to clerical celibacy, and in
1525 he married Katherine of Bora, a former nun. They had five children. Although Luther’s
early writings had sparked the Reformation, he was hardly involved in it during his later
years. At the end of his life, Luther turned strident in his views, and pronounced the pope
the Antichrist, advocated for the expulsion of Jews from the empire and condoned
polygamy based on the practice of the patriarchs in the Old Testament. Luther died on
February 18, 1546.

Significance of Martin Luther’s Work

Martin Luther is one of the most influential figures in Western history. His writings were
responsible for fractionalizing the Catholic Church and sparking the Protestant
Reformation. His central teachings, that the Bible is the central source of religious authority
and that salvation is reached through faith and not deeds, shaped the core of
Protestantism. Although Luther was critical of the Catholic Church, he distanced himself
from the radical successors who took up his mantle. Luther is remembered as a
controversial figure, not only because his writings led to significant religious reform and
division, but also because in later life he took on radical positions on other questions,
including his pronouncements against Jews, which some have said may have portended
German anti-Semitism; others dismiss them as just one man’s vitriol that did not gain a
following. Some of Luther’s most significant contributions to theological history, however,
such as his insistence that as the sole source of religious authority the Bible be translated
and made available to everyone, were truly revolutionary in his day.

THE ATTACK OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic Church to root out and
punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas. Beginning in the 12th century and
continuing for hundreds of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures
and its persecution of Jews and Muslims. Its worst manifestation was in Spain, where the
Spanish Inquisition was a dominant force for more than 200 years, resulting in some 32,000
executions.

Catharists
The Inquisition has its origins in the early organized persecution of non-Catholic Christian
religions in Europe. In 1184 Pope Lucius III sent bishops to southern France to track down
heretics called Catharists. These efforts continued into the 14th Century.

During the same period, the church also pursued the Waldensians in Germany and
Northern Italy. In 1231, Pope Gregory charged the Dominican and Franciscan Orders to take
over the job of tracking down heretics.

The Job of Inquisitors

Inquisitors would arrive in a town and announce their presence, giving citizens a chance to
admit to heresy. Those who confessed received a punishment ranging from a pilgrimage to
a whipping.

Those accused of heresy were forced to testify. If the heretic did not confess, torture and
execution were inescapable. Heretics weren’t allowed to face accusers, received no
counsel, and were often victims of false accusations.
Bernard Gui wrote the influential guidebook for Inquisitors called “Conduct of the
Inquisition into Heretical Depravity” in the early 14th Century. Gui himself pronounced over
600 people guilty of heresy and was featured as a character in Umberto Eco’s novel The
Name of the Rose.

There were countless abuses of power. Count Raymond VII of Toulouse was known for
burning heretics at the stake even though they had confessed. His successor, Count
Alphonese, confiscated the lands of the accused to increase his riches.

In 1307, Inquisitors were involved in the mass arrest and tortures of 15,000 Knights
Templar in France, resulting in dozens of executions. Joan of Arc, burned at the stake in
1431, is the most famous victim of this wing of the Inquisition.

Sources:

1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2017/09-10/history-
martin-luther-religious-revolution/
2. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/
3. https://www.history.com/topics/religion/inquisition
4.

Activity 5: ELABORATE
Direction: Find a pair and make a 3–5-minute video of a
simulated mock interview. One of you must take the role of
Martin Luther and the other is the interviewer. You can use any online platform in making
your interview and video. If you are using a script, do not read the script while filming the
interview. The following should be included in the mock interview.
 Life of Martin Luther
 The reason of Luther entering the monastery.
 The content of 95 thesis
 The counter action of the Catholic church against Luther reformation movement.
 The importance of Luther’s work

To elaborate your knowledge about reformation you may watched this video.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IATyzSAjC1w
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhGGjRjvq7w
Direction: Explain the following for 20 points each.

1. Describe the impact of religious conflicts; the

Inquisition, and the Catholic Reformation on
society and on government.

2. Explain the effects of Reformation on the

theological, political, and economic aspects.