tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/protestant-reformation-38255/articlesProtestant Reformation – The Conversation2024-02-28T19:15:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230932024-02-28T19:15:48Z2024-02-28T19:15:48ZPope Gregory XIII gave us the leap year – but his legacy goes much further<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578180/original/file-20240227-22-e28jpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C32%2C5363%2C3548&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On this day, February 29, conversations the world over may conjure the name of Pope Gregory XIII – widely known for his reform of the calendar that bears his name. </p>
<p>The need for <a href="https://palazzoboncompagni.it/en/podcast/the-gregorian-calendar/">calendar reform</a> was driven by the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar. Introduced in 46 BC, the Julian calendar fell short of the solar year – the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun – by about 12 minutes each year. </p>
<p>To correct this, Gregory convened a commission of experts who fine-tuned the leap-year system, giving us the one we have today.</p>
<p>But the Gregorian calendar isn’t the only legacy Pope Gregory left. His papacy encompassed a broad spectrum of achievements that have left a lasting mark on the world. </p>
<h2>Rise to papacy</h2>
<p>Born in 1502 as Ugo Boncompagni, Gregory made many contributions to the life of the Catholic Church, the city of Rome, education, arts and diplomacy.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.unibo.it/en/university/who-we-are/our-history/famous-people-and-students/gregory-xiii">Before ascending</a> to the papacy, Boncompagni had a distinguished career in law in Bologna where he received his doctorate in both civil and canon law. He also taught jurisprudence, which is the theory and philosophy of law.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of Pope Gregory XIII by Lavinia Fontana" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An oil portrait of Pope Gregory XIII painted by Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lavinia_Fontana_-_Portrait_of_Pope_Gregory_XIII.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>His intellectual influence positioned him as a trusted figure in legal and diplomatic circles even before his election as pope in the 1572 conclave. Upon being elected he adopted the name Gregory, in honour of Pope Gregory the Great who lived in the sixth century.</p>
<h2>Movement in the Church</h2>
<p>One of Gregory’s major undertakings was reforming the Catholic Church in response to the Reformation, a movement which established a distinct new branch of Christianity, Protestantism, <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/protestant-reformation/">separated</a> from the Catholic Church. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-the-reformation-how-passions-sparked-a-religious-revolution-500-years-ago-86048">Revisiting the Reformation: how passions sparked a religious revolution 500 years ago</a>
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<p>Gregory aimed to implement the decisions of the Council of Trent, which met between 1545 and 1563, and defined key Christian doctrines and practices, including scripture, original sin, justification, the sacraments and saint veneration. Its outcomes directed the church’s future for centuries.</p>
<p>Gregory’s administrative reforms were aimed at <a href="https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002038836.pdf">centralising church governance</a> and its operations. As pope, he relished the practice of law, personally engaging in judicial deliberations and surprising his contemporaries with his legal acumen. </p>
<p>His papacy also marked a revision of Gratian’s Decretals, a collection of 12th-century church laws that served as a textbook for lawyers. Gregory aimed to correct numerous errors and unify the various versions of this foundational text of canon law. This culminated in the publication of an amended edition in 1582. </p>
<h2>Gregory’s dragon</h2>
<p>Pope Gregory lived at a time when emblematic and symbolic interpretations were central to the political and cultural discourse. In particular, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-91869-3_6">monsters</a> were interpreted as omens or divine signs and played a significant role in religious and political debate. </p>
<p>Gregory’s coat of arms, the heraldic emblem of the Boncompagni family, featured a dragon. As such, it <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25750536">drew criticism</a> from Protestant propaganda. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The coat of arms of Pope Gregory XIII has a dragon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coat_of_arms_of_Pope_Gregorius_XIII_-_Ceiling_of_Santa_Maria_in_Aracoeli_-_Rome_2016.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Anti-Catholic publications featured the Boncompagni dragon as an emblem of the Antichrist, drawing on the seven-headed monster in the Book of Revelation.</p>
<p>Rooted in biblical and mythological references, the negative imagery of Gregory’s dragon became a focal point for debates over the nature of papal authority, the legitimacy of Protestant criticisms, and the broader struggle to define truth and meaning in a rapidly changing world. </p>
<h2>A legacy enshrined in art</h2>
<p>Gregory’s legal legacy is celebrated in art, particularly in the <a href="https://factumfoundation.org/our-projects/digital-restorations/the-sala-bologna-the-vatican-palace/">Sala Bologna of the Vatican Palace</a>, which commemorates his and other popes’ contributions to the study and codification of law.</p>
<p>Gregory XIII’s pontificate (term of office) was marked by a comprehensive effort to renew and beautify Rome, improving both the city’s functionality and aesthetics. He had a particular focus on the <a href="https://www.turismoroma.it/en/places/campidoglio-capitoline-hill">Capitoline Hill</a>, the political and religious heart of Rome since the Antiquity.</p>
<p>Gregory’s initiatives – which included restoring essential infrastructure such as gates, bridges and fountains – were part of a broader vision to emphasise the centrality of law in Rome’s history and culture. </p>
<p>This is demonstrated by him being honoured by a statue in the Aula Consiliare of the <a href="https://www.turismoroma.it/en/places/senatorio-palace">Senator’s Palace</a>. This hall was designed to showcase the importance of judicial proceedings.</p>
<p>Alongside his urban planning initiatives, Gregory’s commissioning of <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/76012/9781000865509.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">artworks and architectural projects</a> showcased his commitment to fostering a city that was not only the spiritual centre of Catholicism, but also a beacon of Renaissance culture.</p>
<p>In the Sala Regia hall in Vatican City, he commissioned a series of mural frescoes showcasing the triumph of Christianity over its enemies. He also commissioned an entire map gallery for the Apostolic Palace, to demonstrate the extent of Christianity’s spread over the world.</p>
<h2>Reforming the calendar</h2>
<p>Because the Julian calendar fell short by about 12 minutes each year, it was increasingly out-of-sync with the solar year. By the time Gregory’s reign began, this discrepancy had accumulated to more than 10 days.</p>
<p>To correct this, Gregory convened a commission of experts. Their work led to the publication of a formal papal decree in the form of the bull <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/calendar/The-Gregorian-calendar#ref793372"><em>Inter Gravissimas</em></a> on February 24 1582.</p>
<p>This decree not only fine-tuned the leap-year system, but also mandated the elimination of ten days to realign the calendar with the solar year.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The first page of the bull <em>Inter Gravissimas</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_gravissimas#/media/File:Inter-grav.jpg">Wikimeia</a></span>
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<p>The Gregorian calendar reform signified a monumental shift in timekeeping. In 1582, October 4 was followed directly by October 15, correcting the calendar’s alignment with astronomical reality. </p>
<p>This adjustment, slowly adopted by Protestant nations, has had a lasting impact on how the world measures time.</p>
<h2>Faith, intellect and reform</h2>
<p>In St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, you will find a remarkable funerary monument to Pope Gregory XIII. Completed in 1723 by Milanese sculptor Camillo Rusconi, it incorporates representations of both Religion and Wisdom, personified by two statues flanking the pope.</p>
<p>Wisdom is shown drawing attention to a relief beneath the enthroned pope which illustrates the promulgation of the new calendar – the pope’s most significant achievement. At the base of the monument, a dragon crouches unapologetically.</p>
<p>It’s a fitting tribute to a pope whose tenure was characterised by the interaction of faith, intellect and reform – and which can now be marked as a cornerstone in European history.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A dragon, the heraldic emblem of the Boncompagni family, is carved into the base of the monument.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/The Conversation</span></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223093/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pope Gregory XIII was patron of Rome’s renaissance, and a legal luminary whose influence transcends the ages.Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1771932022-04-11T12:09:52Z2022-04-11T12:09:52ZPenance and plague: How the Black Death changed one of Christianity’s most important rituals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456189/original/file-20220404-15-nwkbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C4%2C1008%2C623&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Confession, circa 1460/1470. Artist unknown.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/confession-1460-1470-artist-unknown-news-photo/1314769661?adppopup=true">Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 14th century is known for catastrophe. By midcentury, the first wave of plague spread through a Europe already weakened by successive <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691058917/the-great-famine">famines</a> and the <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1862.html">Hundred Years War</a> between England and France. And crises just kept coming. After the first wave, which has come to be called the <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/tmg/vol1/iss1/">Black Death</a>, the disease returned at least four more times before 1400. All the while, fresh conflicts kept erupting, fueled in part by <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-ae/Medieval+Mercenaries%2C+Volume+I%2C+The+Great+Companies-p-9780631158868">the rising number</a> of soldiers available for hire.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/nambeau/">a medieval historian</a>, I study ways that community leaders used Catholic practices and institutions to respond to war and plague. But amid the uncertainty of the 14th century, some Catholic institutions stopped working the way they were supposed to, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300108286/stripping-altars">fueling frustration</a>. In particular, the unrelenting crises prompted anxiety about the sacrament of penance, often referred to as “confession.”</p>
<p>This uncertainty helped spark critics like <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-reformations-500th-anniversary-remembering-martin-luthers-contribution-to-literacy-77540">Martin Luther</a> to ultimately <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lasting-impact-of-luthers-reformation-4-essential-reads-105953">break from</a> the Catholic Church.</p>
<h2>Saints and sacraments</h2>
<p>During this era, European Christians experienced their faith predominantly through saints and sacraments.</p>
<p>In art, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691169682/why-can-the-dead-do-such-great-things">saints</a> were depicted as standing near God’s throne or even speaking into his ear, illustrating their special relationships with him. Pious Christians considered saints active members of their communities who could help God hear their prayers for <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo3622188.html">healing and protection</a>. Throughout Europe, saints’ feast days were celebrated with processions, displays of candles, <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/the-york-corpus-christi-play-selected-pageants/#tab-description">and even street theater</a>.</p>
<p>Fourteenth-century Christians also experienced their faith through Catholicism’s most important rituals, the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Medieval_Church/8FtcAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+medieval+church&printsec=frontcover">seven sacraments</a>. Some occurred <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Medieval-Church-A-Brief-History/Lynch/p/book/9780582772984">once in most people’s lives</a>, including baptism, confirmation, marriage and <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1438sacraments.asp">extreme unction</a> – a set of rituals for people who are near death.</p>
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<img alt="A medieval manuscript with colorful illustrations depicts rites for people who are dying." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A 15th-century manuscript depicts deathbed scenes: doctor’s visit; confession; Communion; extreme unction; and burial. From the Bedford Hours of John, Duke of Bedford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hours-of-the-dead-1414-1423-vignettes-representing-deathbed-news-photo/463979445?adppopup=true">British Museum/Print Collector/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>There were two sacraments, however, that Catholics could experience multiple times. The first was the Eucharist, also known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-communion-matters-in-catholic-life-and-what-it-means-to-be-denied-the-eucharist-163560#:%7E:text=One%20of%20the%20seven%20sacraments,and%20divinity%20of%20Jesus%20Christ.">Holy Communion</a> – the reenactment of Christ’s Last Supper with his apostles before his crucifixion. The second was penance.</p>
<p>Catholic doctrine taught that priests’ prayers over bread and wine <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900016419">turned those substances into the body and blood of Christ</a>, and that this sacrament creates communion between God and believers. The Eucharist was the core of the Mass, a service which also included processions, singing, prayers and reading from the Scriptures.</p>
<p>Religious Christians also encountered the sacrament of penance throughout their lives. By the 14th century, penance was a private sacrament that each person was supposed to do <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp">at least once a year</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691643823/sin-and-confession-on-the-eve-of-the-reformation">ideal penance</a> was hard work, however. People had to recall all the sins they had committed since the “age of reason,” which started when they were roughly 7 years old. They were supposed to feel sorry that they had offended God, and not just be afraid that they would go to hell for their sins. They had to speak their sins aloud to <a href="https://www.cuapress.org/9780813218694/handbook-for-curates/">their parish priest</a>, who had the authority to absolve them. Finally, they had to intend to never commit those sins again. </p>
<p>After confession, they performed the prayers, fasting or pilgrimage that the priest assigned them, which was called “satisfaction.” The whole process was <a href="https://www.academia.edu/44651890/Leonard_E_Boyle_The_Summa_for_Confessors_as_a_Genre_and_Its_Religious_Intent_in_Charles_Trinkaus_and_Heiko_A_Oberman_ed_The_Pursuit_of_Holiness_in_Late_Medieval_and_Renaissance_Religion_Leiden_Brill_1974_126_130">meant to heal the soul</a> as a kind of spiritual medicine.</p>
<h2>Broken up by Black Death</h2>
<p>Waves of plague and warfare, however, could disrupt every aspect of the ideal confession. Rapid illness could make it impossible to travel to one’s parish priest, remember one’s sins or speak them aloud. When parish priests died and were not immediately replaced, people had to seek out other confessors. Some people had to confess without anyone to absolve them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A manuscript depicts people burying victims of the Black Death plague." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration in the Annales of Gilles de Muisit, from the 14th century, depicts people burying victims of the Black Death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-annales-of-gilles-de-muisit-the-plague-in-tournai-news-photo/535795241?adppopup=true">Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Europe’s frequent wars posed other spiritual dangers. Soldiers, for example, were hired to fight wherever war took them and were often paid with the spoils of war. They <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/3343/john-hawkwood">lived with the constant weight of the commandments not to kill or steal</a>. They could never perform a complete confession, because they could <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/historical-reflections/41/3/hrrh410302.xml">never intend not to sin this way again</a>.</p>
<p>These problems caused despair and anxiety. In response, people turned to doctors and saints for help and healing. For example, some Christians in Provence, in present-day France, turned to a local holy woman, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501753664/souls-under-siege/">Countess Delphine de Puimichel</a>, to help them remember their sins, protect them from sudden death, and even leave warfare to become penitents. So many people described feeling consoled by her voice that a medical doctor who lived near the holy woman set up meetings so people could hear her speak. </p>
<p>But most people in Europe did not have a local saint like Delphine to turn to. They looked for other solutions to their uncertainties about the sacrament of penance.</p>
<p>Indulgences and Masses for the dead proved the most popular, but also problematic. <a href="https://www.septentrion.com/fr/livre/?GCOI=27574100385140">Indulgences</a> were papal documents that could forgive the sins of the holder. They were supposed to be given out only by the pope, and in very specific situations, such as completing certain pilgrimages, <a href="https://ignatius.com/what-were-the-crusades-4th-edition-wwc4p/">serving in a crusade</a>, or doing particularly pious acts. </p>
<p>During the 15th century, however, demand for indulgences was high, and they <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.14315/arg-1984-jg08/html">became common</a>. Some traveling confessors who had received religious authorities’ approval to hear confessions sold indulgences – some authentic, <a href="https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/pardoners-prologue-introduction-and-tale">some fake</a> – to anyone with money. </p>
<p>Catholics also believed that Masses conducted in their name could absolve their sins after their death. By the 14th century, most Christians understood the afterlife as a journey that started in a place called <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo5972676.html">Purgatory</a>, where residual sins would be burned away through suffering before souls entered heaven. In their wills, Christians left money for <a href="https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268104948/rituals-for-the-dead/">Masses for their souls</a>, so that they could spend less time in Purgatory. There were so many requests that some churches performed multiple Masses per day, sometimes for many souls at a time, which became an unsustainable burden on the clergy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An eagle's-eye photograph shows a graveyard being exhumed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Black Death burial trench under excavation between rows of individual graves and the later concrete foundations of the Royal Mint in East Smithfield, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/black-death-burial-trench-under-excavation-between-rows-of-news-photo/467189953?adppopup=true">MOLA/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The popularity of indulgences and Masses for the dead helps scholars today understand <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781903153413/sin-in-medieval-and-early-modern-culture/">people’s challenges</a> during the Black Death. But both practices were ripe for corruption, and frustration mounted as a sacrament meant to console and prepare the faithful for the afterlife left them anxious and uncertain. </p>
<p>Criticisms of indulgences and penance were a focus of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-martin-luthers-reformation-tells-us-about-history-and-memory-85058">reformer Martin Luther’s</a> famous “95 Theses,” written in 1517. Though the young priest did not originally intend to separate from the Catholic Church, his critiques launched the Protestant Reformation. </p>
<p>But Luther’s challenges to the papacy were not ultimately about money, but theology. Despair over the idea of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315246819-5/anxious-penitents-appeal-reformation-ozment-historiography-confession-ronald-rittgers">never being able</a> to perform an ideal confession led him and others to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691643823/sin-and-confession-on-the-eve-of-the-reformation">redefine the sacrament</a>. In Luther’s view, a penitent <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8OEUAAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=martin+luther+95+theses+translation&ots=MwCHZjaBMT&sig=O0_frZBH_On3iTefmQAu1emmDak#v=onepage&q=martin%20luther%2095%20theses%20translation&f=false">could do nothing</a> to make satisfaction for sin, but had to rely on God’s grace alone.</p>
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<p>For Catholics, on the other hand, the sacrament of penance stayed much the same for centuries, although there were some changes. The most visible was the creation of the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7591/9781501744709/html">confessional</a>, an enclosed space within the church building where the priest and the penitent could speak more privately. The experience of penance, especially absolution, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501753664/souls-under-siege/">remained a central</a> ritual meant to heal Catholics’ souls in times of trouble, from the Black Death <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdab193">to the COVID-19 pandemic today</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Archambeau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Churches’ struggles to respond to the plague and constant warfare in the 14th and 15th centuries helped shape the kinds of Christianity in the world today.Nicole Archambeau, Associate Professor of History, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1443252020-08-20T12:17:13Z2020-08-20T12:17:13ZYes, God can be hurt, but not in the way Trump claims, according to theologians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353722/original/file-20200819-14-ezlw0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=84%2C37%2C3013%2C1790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">God creating night and day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/circa-1750-god-creating-night-and-day-news-photo/51241798?adppopup=true">Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53688009">President Trump claimed</a> recently that the prospect of a Biden presidency would “hurt God.” </p>
<p>More specifically, he said, Biden would be “following the radical left agenda, take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns.”</p>
<p>With this speech, delivered in a rally-style address on Cleveland, Ohio’s airport tarmac on Aug. 6, Trump conveyed that a vote for Biden would weaken religion in the public sphere and restrict access to guns, thus tapping into the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/0805/How-Trump-is-moving-heaven-and-earth-to-motivate-evangelical-voters">anxieties of his conservative Christian base</a>. </p>
<p>As experts in <a href="https://www.westmont.edu/people/sameer-yadav-thd">Christian theology</a> and the <a href="http://helendecruz.net/publications.html">philosophy of religion</a>, we explain how in Christian thinking, it might actually be possible to hurt God – just not in the way that Trump claims.</p>
<h2>Impassibility</h2>
<p>Classically, Christians have held that the God described in the Bible is metaphysically ultimate – meaning that everything that isn’t God was created by God and depends for its existence on God. God is believed to be a perfect being, without defect in mind or will. </p>
<p>If, as Christians suppose, God is an ultimately perfect being, then God’s perfect personhood necessarily involves a fulfilled inner life, a perfectly satisfied mind and will. God must possess perfect beatitude, perfect happiness and <a href="https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/theologica/article/view/1313?fbclid=IwAR0uFSlPlEa3H43LAfcQnndA4kCARKDtLQfKyrsM8hvgKfKZohnA1OayoSc">perfect well-being</a>.</p>
<p>God then is believed to not be susceptible to sadness and other such emotions that are expressions of unfulfilled desires. </p>
<p>Theologians have coined the term “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15665399.2002.10819720">impassibility</a>” to this idea that God’s well-being must be unaffected by anything or anyone, for good or for ill. The root of this term is the Latin “passiones,” which means emotions or “passions.”</p>
<p>There are many proponents of this view. <a href="https://t.co/QPDhors1nx?amp=1">Bishop and early Christian author Ignatius of Antioch</a> described God as “impalpable and impassible,” in a letter to a <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/martyrs/polycarp.html">Polycarp</a>, another bishop in the early Christian Church, that dates from around A.D. 118.</p>
<p>A detailed defense of this idea appeared centuries later with the fifth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo. In later years, Thomas Aquinas, a 13th-century Italian theologian with enormous influence in the Catholic tradition, also supported this view.</p>
<p>In the 16th century, the Swiss theologian John Calvin and the German reformer and theologian Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation, made impassibility a standard picture of the divine. </p>
<p>But Christian thought does allow for the possibility of “hurting God” in other ways. </p>
<h2>Harming God’s honor</h2>
<p>The medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury examined how humans might hurt God in his book “<a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ans/ans117.htm">Cur Deus Homo</a>” or “Why God became human.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=188&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=188&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=188&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353723/original/file-20200819-24722-nixli0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sistine Chapel, by Michelangelo Buonarroti, 16th century, fresco, Vatican Museums. God is represented with his arms outstretched as he creates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vatican-city-vatican-museums-detail-of-the-vault-1508-1512-news-photo/186507314">Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In that book, he aimed to answer the following question: If Jesus atoned for our sins, what does this mean? </p>
<p>Sin, as understood by Anselm and other Christians, is wrongdoing against God. Anselm thought that God is impassible, so sin can’t mean that we literally harm God’s inner happiness. However, Anselm thought that it is still possible to harm God’s honor. </p>
<p>To understand what it would mean to harm God’s honor, consider this <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/atonement-9780198813866?cc=us&lang=en&">analogy</a> by Catholic philosopher of religion <a href="https://www.slu.edu/arts-and-sciences/philosophy/faculty/stump-eleonore.php">Eleonore Stump</a>. She asks us to imagine a situation where you spread a false, hurtful rumor about your colleague Beth to your friend Priya. Priya knows you’re lying, so you haven’t harmed Beth. But there is still a sense in which you’ve done wrong by Beth – you have done her an injustice. </p>
<p>Theologians believe that humans can harm God in similar ways: They can’t hurt God, but can still do God an injustice. But unlike human beings, God can’t feel upset or otherwise emotionally dissatisfied. Any such emotional dissatisfaction would be inconsistent with the fulfilled inner life that a perfect divine person must have. </p>
<p>Yet, a puzzle arises: The scriptures frequently talk about God’s emotions. For example, God is often depicted as angry or as taking pleasure in things creatures do. </p>
<p>Aquinas helps us reconcile divine emotions with impassibility, as religion scholar <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/1131/dr-tasia-scrutton">Anastasia Scrutton</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phc3.12065">explains</a>. Aquinas draws a distinction between “passiones,” emotions that are not under our voluntary control, and “affectiones,” which are voluntary and rational. These constitute ways in which God evaluates situations. </p>
<p>In human beings, affectiones and passiones are always bound up together. For example, when a human being is angry – when she witnesses an unjust situation, for example – she will also feel upset. By contrast, theologians imagine that God can become angry without becoming upset. </p>
<p>In Aquinas’ views, when our character and conduct occasion God’s negative affectiones, we harm not God’s inner well-being but God’s relationship to us. </p>
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<h2>A view from the Scriptures</h2>
<p>Under this interpretation, the question arises: What kinds of character and conduct dishonor God, displease God and therefore do God an injustice? </p>
<p>In the Bible, the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+2&version=NIV">Prophet Isaiah</a> says that the time when the Messiah returns is a time when the people of all nations “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” </p>
<p>Put in today’s context, Isaiah’s vision of the social order God aims to establish is one in which tools of war are exchanged for tools of agriculture and ecological caretaking. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353725/original/file-20200819-43015-1egdbtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Bible shows that God prefers justice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alex-photos/6385742691/in/photolist-aJhAPV-p8YVh7-CPHbvR-CPAAHd-EVyCon-9ye8zg-p6YBGj-zFF5o-9s6bfy-icq9g-3A1PnV-DAG7HS-cD1Lum-7eX2vf-8QG6Uc-mXcWp3-7w4yGQ-7zoLW5-DjWTq-dRTgg-bsJcvE-Jt92F-9ohFkH-bAoE59-36xTo2-4oSuMn-CPAAxy-DM743a-icqaz-25b3uEM-36xTt8-yCxSA-2juRkXc-46XMRA-278g3Yx-icqc1-5jBGX-gq5Mw-zr9be-7A9ak8-aqER91-5Rmzy7-3PbyhN-pxj3h-icqa4-8ZKNoy-btEjgF-pCExDj-icq9K-3P7kJM">alex.ch/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For those who take Isaiah’s words to express divine intentions for human beings here and now – those who read Isaiah religiously as Scripture through which God addresses us – this vision calls readers to forfeit their implements of war, such as guns, in today’s world. Thus, in Isaiah being “against guns” does not imply being “against God.” In fact, it is quite the contrary. </p>
<p>On <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/13/president-trump-joins-war-christmas/">erasing religion from the public sphere</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Amos%205:21-24&version=NIV">God speaks</a> through the mouth of the Hebrew Bible prophet: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me.” God despises these festivals, because the people are, in God’s views unjust. Thus, the Prophet says “Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.” Instead of religious festivals, God <a href="https://biblehub.com/amos/5-24.htm">exhorts people</a> to “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” </p>
<p>It would appear then, for readers who take these words in Isaiah to heart, that harming God is not the same as removing religion from the public sphere. Indeed, being unjust would be a greater harm. </p>
<p>No one better embodies this repudiation of violence and being a voice for the underclass than Jesus himself.</p>
<p>According to traditional Christian teaching, Jesus is God manifest as a human being. The Gospels clearly state <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A44&version=NIV">how he advocated</a> “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” He <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023&version=NIV">condemned the religious hypocrisy</a> of seeking the place of honor and public respect while neglecting the poor, oppressed and socially marginalized. </p>
<p>Dishonoring these stances taken by Jesus, God in the flesh, would then appear to harm God. As religion scholars, we then argue that the Christian tradition to which Trump appeals when he claims that a Biden presidency would “hurt God” does not support that claim.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144325/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump recently suggested that a vote for Biden would hurt God. Religion scholars explain what, in Christian theology, it would take to injure the creator.Sameer Yadav, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Westmont CollegeHelen De Cruz, Danforth Chair in the Humanities, Saint Louis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408092020-07-02T12:26:45Z2020-07-02T12:26:45ZThe invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was initially met with skepticism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344310/original/file-20200626-104484-1dbzjs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3344%2C2773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woodcut, circa 1400. A witch, a demon and a warlock fly toward a peasant woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/circa-1400-a-witch-a-demon-and-a-warlock-fly-towards-a-news-photo/51240919">Hulton Archive /Handout via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a midsummer day in 1438, a young man from the north shore of Lake Geneva presented himself to the local church inquisitor. He had a confession to make. Five years earlier, his father had forced him to join a satanic cult of witches. They had flown at night on a small black horse to join more than a hundred people gathered in a meadow. The devil was there too, in the form of a black cat. The witches knelt before him, worshiped him and kissed his posterior.</p>
<p>The young man’s father had already been executed as a witch. It’s likely he was trying to secure a lighter punishment by voluntarily telling inquisitors what they wanted to hear.</p>
<p>The Middle Ages, A.D. 500-1500, have a reputation for both heartless cruelty and hopeless credulity. People commonly believed in all kinds of magic, monsters and <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15568.html">fairies</a>. But it wasn’t until the 15th century that the idea of organized satanic witchcraft took hold. As a historian who <a href="https://history.iastate.edu/directory/michael-bailey/">studies medieval magic</a>, I’m fascinated by how a coterie of church and state authorities conspired to develop and promote this new concept of witchcraft for their own purposes.</p>
<h2>Early medieval attitudes about witchcraft</h2>
<p>Belief in witches, in the sense of wicked people performing harmful magic, had existed in Europe since before the Greeks and Romans. In the early part of the Middle Ages, authorities were largely unconcerned about it. </p>
<p><a href="https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Witches442/PaganTraces.html">A church document</a> from the early 10th century proclaimed that “sorcery and witchcraft” might be real, but the idea that groups of witches flew together with demons through the night was a delusion. </p>
<p>Things began to change in the 12th and 13th centuries, ironically because educated elites in Europe were becoming more sophisticated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henricus de Alemannia lecturing students at the University of Bologna in the second half of the 14th century – one of the earliest illustrations of a medieval university classroom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg">Laurentius de Voltolina/Kupferstichkabinett Berlin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Universities were being founded, and scholars in Western Europe began to pore over ancient texts as well as learned writings from the Muslim world. Some of these presented complex <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08213-4.html">systems of magic</a> that claimed to draw on astral forces or conjure powerful spirits. Gradually, these ideas began to gain intellectual clout.</p>
<p>Ordinary people – the kind who eventually got accused of being witches – didn’t perform elaborate rites from books. They gathered herbs, brewed potions, maybe said a short spell, as they had for generations. And they did so for all sorts of reasons – perhaps to harm someone they disliked, but more often to <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/popular-magic-cunning-folk-in-english-history-9780826442796/">heal or protect</a> others. Such practices were important in a world with only rudimentary forms of medical care.</p>
<p>Christian authorities had previously dismissed this kind of magic as empty superstition. Now they took all magic much more seriously. They began to believe simple spells worked by summoning demons, which meant anyone who performed them secretly worshiped demons. </p>
<h2>Inventing satanic witchcraft</h2>
<p>In the 1430s, a small group of writers in Central Europe – church inquisitors, theologians, lay magistrates and even one historian – began to describe horrific assemblies where witches gathered and worshiped demons, had orgies, ate murdered babies and performed other abominable acts. Whether any of these authors ever met each other is unclear, but they all described groups of witches supposedly active in a zone around the western Alps. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p>
<p>The reason for this development may have been purely practical. Church inquisitors, active against religious heretics since the 13th century, and some secular courts were looking to expand their jurisdictions. Having a new and particularly horrible crime to prosecute might have struck them as useful.</p>
<p>I just translated a number of these early texts for a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/43358448/Origins_of_the_Witches_Sabbath">forthcoming book</a> and was struck by how worried the authors were about readers not believing them. One fretted that his accounts would be “disparaged” by those who “think themselves learned.” Another feared that “simple folk” would refuse to believe the “fragile sex” would engage in such terrible practices.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520320574/european-witch-trials">Trial records</a> show it was a hard sell. Most people remained concerned with harmful magic – witches causing illness or withering crops. They didn’t much care about secret satanic gatherings.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The handbook for detecting and persecuting witches in the Middle Ages, ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ or ‘Hammer of Witches.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J._Sprenger_and_H._Institutoris,_Malleus_maleficarum._Wellcome_L0000980.jpg">Wellcome Images/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1486, clergyman Heinrich Kramer published the most widely circulated medieval text about organized witchcraft, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/european-literature/hammer-witches-complete-translation-malleus-maleficarum?format=PB&isbn=9780521747875">Malleus Maleficarum</a> (Hammer of Witches). But many people didn’t believe him. When he tried to start a witch hunt in Innsbruck, Austria, he was kicked out by the local bishop, who accused him of <a href="https://www.dtv.de/buch/heinrich-kramer-guenter-jerouschek-wolfgang-behringer-der-hexenhammer-30780/">being senile</a>. </p>
<h2>Witch hunts</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the fear of satanic witchcraft grew. The 15th century seems to have provided ideal soil for this new idea to take root. </p>
<p>Europe was recovering from <a href="https://cornellup.degruyter.com/view/title/568227">several crises</a>: plague, wars and a split in the church between two, and then three, competing popes. Beginning in the 1450s, the printing press made it easier for new ideas to spread. Even prior to the Protestant Reformation, religious reform was in the air. As I explored in an <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-02225-3.html">earlier book</a>, reformers used the idea of a diabolical conspiracy bent on corrupting Christianity as a boogeyman in their call for spiritual renewal.</p>
<p>Over time, more people came to accept this new idea. Church and state authorities kept telling them it was real. Still, many also kept relying on local “witches” for magical healing and protection.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The execution of alleged witches in Central Europe, 1587.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Wickiana3.jpg">Zurich Central Library/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The history of witchcraft can be quite grim. From the 1400s through the 1700s, authorities in Western Europe <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Witch-Hunt-in-Early-Modern-Europe-4th-Edition/Levack/p/book/9781138808102?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9s_H7OuV6gIVi8DACh3paAtCEAAYASAAEgLcLvD_BwE">executed around 50,000 people, mostly women,</a> for witchcraft. The worst witch hunts could claim hundreds of victims at a time. With 20 dead, colonial America’s largest hunt at Salem was moderate by comparison. </p>
<p>Salem, in 1692, marked the end of witch hunts in New England. In Europe, too, skepticism would eventually prevail. It’s worth remembering, though, that at the beginning, authorities had to work hard to convince others such malevolence was real.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael D. Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The idea of organized satanic witchcraft was invented in 15th-century Europe by church and state authorities, who at first had a hard time convincing regular folks it was real.Michael D. Bailey, Professor of History, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1033812018-09-19T14:52:13Z2018-09-19T14:52:13ZAuthor of first English novel kept it hidden for ten years – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237072/original/file-20180919-158222-d37jey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Foxe's Book of Martyrs, detailing the grim fate of Protestant clerics Latimer and Ridley, is one clue as to why Baldwin hesitated before publishing his irreverent book.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A dense work of early English prose, strewn throughout with serious and teasing marginalia from its author, might not be the most likely candidate for stage adaptation – but this project has just been undertaken by a team of artists and academics in Sheffield. William Baldwin’s <a href="http://www.presscom.co.uk/halliwell/baldwin/baldwin_cat.html">Beware the Cat</a>, written in 1553, will be performed in September as part of the university’s <a href="http://festivalofthemind.group.shef.ac.uk/">2018 Festival of the Mind</a>.</p>
<p>As a literary form, the novel is usually thought to have <a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/the-rise-of-the-novel">developed in the 18th century</a> with the mighty classics Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. But researchers believe we should be looking back to the relatively neglected prose fictions of the Tudor era to find the earliest English examples. <a href="http://www.presscom.co.uk/halliwell/baldwin/baldwin_cat.html">Beware the Cat</a>, an ecclesiastical satire about talking cats, is a prime candidate and is now thought to be the earliest example of the novel form in the English language.</p>
<p>Baldwin is barely known outside the circles of Renaissance literature, but he was highly celebrated and widely read in Tudor England. In the mid-16th century, he was earning an inky-fingered living as a printer’s assistant in and around the central London bookmaking and bookselling area of St Paul’s Cathedral. As well as writing fiction, he produced <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-mirror-for-magistrates-1574">A Mirror for Magistrates</a>, the co-written collection of gruesome historical poetry that was highly influential on Shakespeare’s history plays. He also compiled a bestselling handbook of philosophy, and translated the controversial <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A15987.0001.001?view=toc">Song of Songs</a>, the sexy book of the Bible.</p>
<p>Beware the Cat tells the tale of a talkative priest, Gregory Streamer, who determines to understand the language of cats after he is kept awake by a feline rabble on the rooftops. Turning for guidance to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/albert-great/">Albertus Magnus</a>, a medieval alchemist and natural scientist roundly mocked in the Renaissance for his quackery, Streamer finds the spell he needs. Then, using various stomach-churning ingredients, including hedgehog’s fat and cat excrement, he cooks up the right potion.</p>
<p>And it turns out that cats don’t merely talk – they have a social hierarchy, a judicial system and carefully regulated laws governing sexual relations. With his witty beast fable, Baldwin is analysing an ancient question, and one in which the philosophical field of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-philip-k-dick-redefined-what-it-means-to-be-in-human-92085">posthumanism</a> still shows a keen interest: do birds and beasts have reason?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236865/original/file-20180918-158225-1hutkpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woodcut from William Griffith’s 1570 edition of William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Turbulent times</h2>
<p>But rights and wrongs of a different order coloured Baldwin’s book release. He self-censored for several years before making the work public. Beware the Cat was written in 1553, months before the untimely death of the young Protestant king, Edward VI. Next on the throne (if you disregard the turbulent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8154">nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey</a>) was the first Tudor queen, Mary I. Her Catholicism was fervent and these were terrifying days. By the mid-1550s, <a href="https://www.johnfoxe.org/freeman-marion.pdf">Mary was burning Protestant martyrs</a>. One of her less alarming, but still consequential, decisions was to reverse the freedoms accorded the press under her brother Edward. </p>
<p>At the height of his power during the 1540s, the Lord Protector during the young Edward’s reign, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, had relied on particular printers to spread the regime’s reformist message. Men such as John Day (printer of <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126927.html">Foxe’s Book of Martyrs</a>) and Edward Whitchurch – Baldwin’s employer – printed and circulated anti-Catholic polemic on behalf of the state. Not content to persecute these men by denying them the pardon she accorded other Protestant printers, Mary I banned the discussion of religion in print unless it was <a href="http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/mirror-magistrates-and-politics-english-reformation">specifically authorised</a> by her officials.</p>
<h2>Radical press</h2>
<p>As a print trade insider, Baldwin was intimately connected with the close community of this <a href="http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1349182/1/450513_vol1.pdf">radical Protestant printing milieu</a> – and Beware the Cat is deliberately set at John Day’s printing shop. Having written a book that parodies the Mass, depicts priests in some very undignified positions and points the finger at Catholic idolatry, Baldwin thought better of releasing it in the oppressive religious climate of Mary’s reign. But by 1561, Elizabeth I was on the throne and constraints on the press were less severe – despite the infamous case of John Stubbs, the writer who in 1579 <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/TUDstubbsJ.htm">lost his hand</a> for criticising her marriage plans. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237088/original/file-20180919-158225-16itc2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sermon being preached at St Paul’s Cross, 1614.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Gipkyn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Baldwin, now in his 30s, had become a church deacon. He was still active as a writer and public figure, working on his second edition of A Mirror for Magistrates and preaching at Paul’s Cross in London, a venue that could attract a 6,000-strong congregation.</p>
<p>Once it was released, Beware the Cat went through several editions. It was not recognised for the comic gem that it is until scholars <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3713829">such as Evelyn Feasey</a> started studying Baldwin in the early 20th century and the novel was later championed by American scholars <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780873281546/Beware-Cat-First-English-Novel-0873281543/plp">William A. Ringler and Michael Flachmann</a>. </p>
<p>Now, it has been adapted for performance for the first time and is being presented as part of the <a href="http://festivalofthemind.group.shef.ac.uk/">University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind</a>. This stage version of Beware the Cat has been created by the authors with Terry O'Connor (member of renowned performance ensemble <a href="https://www.forcedentertainment.com/">Forced Entertainment</a>) and the <a href="http://pennymccarthy.com/">artist Penny McCarthy</a>. </p>
<p>Baldwin’s techniques of embedded storytelling, argument and satirical marginalia are all features that have been incorporated into this interpretation of the text. The production also includes an array of original drawings (which the cast of four display by using an onstage camera connected to a projector), but none of the cast pretends to be a cat. Instead, it is left to the audience to imagine the world Baldwin’s novel describes, in which cats can talk and – even if just for one night – humans can understand them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103381/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Stenner and Frances Babbage received funding for this project from Sheffield University Festival of the Mind.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Stenner and Frances Babbage received funding for this project from Sheffield University, Festival of the Mind.</span></em></p>In the mid-16th century, William Baldwin wrote a satire on Catholicism but waited a decade before publishing it. Sensible man.Rachel Stenner, Teaching Associate in Renaissance Literature, University of SheffieldFrances Babbage, Professor of English Literature, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976702018-07-19T10:40:57Z2018-07-19T10:40:57ZWhat is heaven?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228255/original/file-20180718-142411-frvoey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Illustration of Dante's Paradiso.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dante_Pd10_BL_Yates_Thompson_36_f147.jpg">Giovanni di Paolo </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a family member or a friend passes away, we often find ourselves reflecting on the question “where are they now?” As mortal beings, it is a question of ultimate significance to each of us. </p>
<p>Different cultural groups, and different individuals within them, respond with numerous, often conflicting, answers to questions about life after death. For many, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/">these questions are rooted </a> in the idea of reward for the good (a heaven) and punishment for the wicked (a hell), where earthly injustices are finally righted.</p>
<p>However, these common roots do not guarantee contemporary agreement on the nature, or even the existence, of hell and heaven. Pope Francis himself has raised Catholic eyebrows over some of his <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/pope-francis-hugs-comforts-little-boy-who-asked-atheist-dad-was-heaven-891113">comments on heaven</a>, recently telling a young boy that his deceased father, an atheist, was with God in heaven because, by his careful parenting, “he had a good heart.” </p>
<p>So, what is the Christian idea of “heaven”? </p>
<h2>Beliefs about what happens at death</h2>
<p>The earliest Christians believed that Jesus Christ, risen from the dead after his crucifixion, would soon return, to complete what he had begun by his preaching: the establishment of the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1L.HTM">Kingdom of God</a>. This Second Coming of Christ would bring an end to the effort of unification of all humanity in Christ and result in a final resurrection of the dead and moral judgment of all human beings.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228257/original/file-20180718-142428-1b4d1pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christians believe, when Christ returns, the dead too will rise in renewed bodies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/waitingfortheword/5589922997">Waiting For The Word</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the middle of the first century A.D., Christians became concerned about the fate of members of their churches who had already died before this Second Coming. </p>
<p>Some of the earliest documents in the Christian New Testament, <a href="http://andrewjacobs.org/newtest/paulparts.htm">epistles</a> or letters written by the apostle Paul, offered an answer. The dead have simply fallen <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/15-20.htm">asleep</a>, they explained. When Christ <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_thessalonians/4-16.htm">returns</a>, the dead, too, would rise in renewed bodies, and be judged by Christ himself. Afterwards, they would be united with him forever.</p>
<p>A few <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/athenagoras-resurrection.html">theologians</a> in the early centuries of Christianity agreed. But a growing consensus developed that the souls of the dead were held in a kind of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103531.htm">waiting state</a> until the end of the world, when they would be once again reunited with their bodies, resurrected in a more perfected form.</p>
<h2>Promise of eternal life</h2>
<p>After <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Constantine_I/">Roman Emperor Constantine</a> legalized Christianity in the early fourth century, the number of Christians grew enormously. Millions converted across the Empire, and by the century’s end, the old Roman state religion was prohibited. </p>
<p>Based on the <a href="http://biblehub.com/john/3-5.htm">Gospels</a>, bishops and theologians emphasized that the promise of eternal life in heaven was open only to the baptized – that is, those who had undergone the ritual immersion in water which cleansed the soul from sin and marked one’s entrance into the church. All others were damned to eternal separation from God and punishment for sin.</p>
<p>In this new Christian empire, baptism was increasingly administered to infants. Some theologians challenged this practice, since infants could not yet commit sins. But in the Christian west, the belief in “<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm">original sin</a>” – the sin of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God’s command in the Garden of Eden (the “Fall”) – predominated.</p>
<p>Following the teachings of the fourth century saint <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/theologians/augustine-of-hippo.html">Augustine</a>, Western theologians in the fifth century A.D. believed that even infants were born with the sin of Adam and Eve marring their spirit and will. </p>
<p>But this doctrine raised a troubling question: What of those infants who died before baptism could be administered? </p>
<p>At first, theologians taught that their souls went to Hell, but suffered very little if at all. </p>
<p>The concept of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09256a.htm">Limbo</a> developed from this idea. Popes and <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/6001.htm">theologians</a> in the 13th century taught that the souls of unbaptized babies or young children enjoyed a state of natural happiness on the “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DL%3Aentry+group%3D24%3Aentry%3Dlimbus">edge</a>” of Hell, but, like those punished more severely in Hell itself, were denied the bliss of the presence of God.</p>
<h2>Time of judgment</h2>
<p>During times of war or plague in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Western Christians often interpreted the social chaos as a sign of the end of the world. However, as the centuries passed, the Second Coming of Christ generally became a more remote event for most Christians, still awaited but relegated to an indeterminate future. Instead, Christian theology focused more on the moment of individual death. </p>
<p>Judgment, the evaluation of the moral state of each human being, was no longer postponed until the end of the world. Each soul was first judged individually by Christ immediately after death (the “Particular” Judgment), as well as at the Second Coming (the Final or General Judgment). </p>
<p>Deathbed rituals or “Last Rites” developed from earlier rites for the sick and penitent, and most had the opportunity to confess their sins to a priest, be anointed, and receive a “final” communion before breathing their last.</p>
<p>Medieval Christians prayed to be protected from a sudden or unexpected death, because they feared baptism alone was not enough to enter heaven directly without these Last Rites. </p>
<p>Another doctrine had developed. Some died still guilty of lesser or <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P6C.HTM">venial sins</a>, like common gossip, petty theft, or minor lies that did not completely deplete one’s soul of God’s grace. After death, these souls would first be “purged” of any remaining sin or guilt in a spiritual state called Purgatory. After this spiritual cleansing, usually visualized as fire, they would be pure enough to enter heaven. </p>
<p>Only those who were extraordinarily virtuous, such as the saints, or those who had received the Last Rites, could enter directly into heaven and the presence of God.</p>
<h2>Images of heaven</h2>
<p>In antiquity, the first centuries of the Common Era, Christian heaven shared certain characteristics with both Judaism and Hellenistic religious thought on the afterlife of the virtuous. One was that of an almost physical rest and refreshment as after a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ltZBUW_F9ogC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=new+testament+damned+thirst&source=bl&ots=4CRCLTnLiz&sig=X0xkGiLY935HTFsVOKOIWtA53u4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwid8bPi9JXcAhUvc98KHbwdADsQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=new%20testament%20damned%20thirst&f=false">desert</a> journey, often accompanied by descriptions of banquets, fountains or rivers. In the Bible’s <a href="http://biblehub.com/revelation/22-1.htm">Book of Revelation</a>, a symbolic description of the end of the world, the river running through God’s New Jerusalem was called the river “of the water of life.” However, in the <a href="http://biblehub.com/luke/16-24.htm">Gospel of Luke</a>, the damned were tormented by thirst. </p>
<p>Another was the image of light. Romans and Jews thought of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-hell-94560">abode of the wicked</a> as a place of darkness and shadows, but the divine dwelling place was filled with bright light. Heaven was also charged with positive emotions: peace, joy, love, and the bliss of spiritual fulfillment that Christians came to refer to as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=o1AnBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT467&lpg=PT467&dq=new+catholic+encyclopedia+heaven&source=bl&ots=4_H8BPDrB3&sig=R5SXCaIMWkh3WGYXMvKvj3wTaac&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB1b-g_srbAhWi44MKHXO-ASo4ChDoAQgoMAA#v=snippet&q=medieval&f=false">Beatific Vision</a>, the presence of God. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228263/original/file-20180718-142417-1ee1rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beato_angelico,_predella_della_pala_di_fiesole_01.jpg">Fra Angelico</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Visionaries and poets used a variety of additional images: flowering meadows, colors beyond description, trees filled with fruit, company and <a href="http://www.italianrenaissance.org/bellinis-san-zaccaria-altarpiece/">conversation</a> with family or <a href="http://www.italianrenaissance.org/bellinis-san-zaccaria-altarpiece/">white-robed others among the blessed</a>. Bright angels stood behind the dazzling throne of God and sang praise in exquisite melodies.</p>
<p>The Protestant Reformation, begun in 1517, would break sharply with the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe in the 16th century. While both sides would argue about the existence of Purgatory, or whether only some were predestined by God to enter heaven, the existence and general nature of heaven itself was not an issue. </p>
<h2>Heaven as the place of God</h2>
<p>Today, theologians offer a variety of opinions about the nature of heaven. The Anglican C. S. Lewis wrote that even one’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vMI2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA116&dq=lewis+animals+heaven&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIu4n-65XcAhWjTd8KHYPIBjsQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=lewis%20animals%20immortality&f=false">pets</a> might be admitted, united in love with their owners as the owners are united in Christ through baptism. </p>
<p>Following the nineteenth-century <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm">Pope Pius IX</a>, Jesuit Karl Rahner taught that even <a href="http://www.philosopherkings.co.uk/Rahner.html">non-Christians</a> and non-believers could still be saved through Christ if they lived according to similar values, an idea now found in the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3M.HTM">Catholic Catechism</a>. </p>
<p>The Catholic Church itself has dropped the idea of Limbo, leaving the fate of unbaptized infants to “<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3M.HTM">the mercy of God</a>.” One theme remains constant, however: Heaven is the presence of God, in the company of others who have responded to God’s call in their own lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne M. Pierce is a Roman Catholic member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the USA, a national ecumenical dialogue group sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and The Episcopal Church.</span></em></p>Different cultural groups respond with numerous, often conflicting, answers to questions about life after death. An expert explains the Christian idea of heaven.Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/864492017-11-08T11:16:53Z2017-11-08T11:16:53ZWhen Americans tried – and failed – to reunite Christianity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193655/original/file-20171107-6742-tg5m8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/holy-bible-cross-401248822?src=nKWWEhRSGtTrN7MmThvzkQ-1-12">LeventeGyori/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Five centuries ago, Martin Luther, a German monk, initiated a split in Christianity that came to be known as the Protestant Reformation. After the Reformation, deep divisions between Protestants and Catholics contributed to <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674062313">wars</a>, <a href="http://elections.harpweek.com/1876/cartoon-1876-large.asp?UniqueID=7">hostility</a> and <a href="https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/chaos-in-the-streets-the-philadelphia-riots-of-1844/">violence</a> in Europe and America. For centuries, each side denounced the other and sought to convert its followers.</p>
<p>Then, in the early 1900s, ambitious Protestants in the U.S. attempted the unthinkable. Building on ideas circulating in Europe, they took charge of an effort to negotiate the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1JgwAQAAIAAJ&dq=approaches%20toward%20church%20unity&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false">reunion of Christianity</a>.
They failed, of course. Strange as it might now seem, their effort is nevertheless informative. Here’s why.</p>
<h2>How it started</h2>
<p>By 1900, atheists and agnostics <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10820.html">were becoming more prominent</a> in the U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-distrust-of-unbelievers-runs-deep-in-american-history-71776">Anxious Protestant religious leaders</a> started to argue in favor of a united Christianity to stop the spread of these ideas.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QB5WAAAAMAAJ&dq=passing%20protestantism&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q&f=false">Noted</a> theologian and fellow at Yale <a href="http://drs.library.yale.edu/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=mssa:ms.0623&query=&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=over#did">Newman Smyth</a> complained at the time about religion’s “lost authority” in family, community and intellectual life. He <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QB5WAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=smyth+passing+protestantism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwju0oSx45jXAhVM9YMKHcmaDvIQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">declared</a>, “a Christianity divided in its own house against itself” could not survive. </p>
<p>In response, in 1910, a very small but highly influential group comprising theologians including Smyth, as well as ministers of prestigious churches and noted business professionals, committed themselves to “Christian unity.” </p>
<p>For this group, unity <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100411860">meant more than</a> cooperation or mutual understanding. It meant the actual reunion of Protestantism and Catholicism. </p>
<h2>The influential WWI chaplain</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193648/original/file-20171107-6718-1jup5kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Monument to Charles Henry Brent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMonument_to_Charles_Henry_Brent.jpg">AndreoBongco (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their most significant member was <a href="http://www.bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/a-c/brent-charles-henry-1862-1929">Charles Brent</a>, an Episcopalian bishop. </p>
<p>In the early 1900s, Brent had been a missionary to the Philippines. While there, he became friends with John Pershing, the <a href="http://www.anb.org/articles/06/06-00517.html">army officer</a> overseeing much of the territory acquired by the U.S. This friendship would propel the bishop to greater prominence. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193656/original/file-20171107-6718-1pmxgi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">General John Joseph Pershing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGeneral_John_Joseph_Pershing_head_on_shoulders.jpg">Bain News Service, publisher, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Pershing took command of U.S. forces in Europe. He persuaded Brent to organize and lead the newly established <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972155">corps of army chaplains</a>. As he built up the ranks of chaplains, Brent showed his own commitment to Christian unity. Though a Protestant, he made a Catholic priest his second in command and encouraged recruitment of Catholic chaplains.</p>
<p>When Brent returned to the United States in 1919, he was <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1JgwAQAAIAAJ&dq=approaches%20toward%20church%20unity&pg=PA111#v=onepage&q&f=false">even more convinced</a> that “a divided Church” was a “fundamental disloyalty to Christ.” He lent his name to publications and events to build support for the cause. </p>
<h2>Failure to unite</h2>
<p>Proponents of unity recognized the need to proceed slowly with this difficult task. Smyth, for example, insisted that they not rush to put forward “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1JgwAQAAIAAJ&dq=approaches%20toward%20church%20unity&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false">particular plans or measures</a>.” Rather, the group should simply arrange meetings and conferences where Catholics and Protestants could discuss their differences. Smyth hoped that the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1JgwAQAAIAAJ&dq=approaches%20toward%20church%20unity&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false">“sentiment for unity”</a> would emerge from dialogue.</p>
<p>But years of discussion brought no progress toward actual unity. The biggest obstacle was that, despite repeated invitations, Catholics took no part in the effort beyond sending unofficial observers to occasional meetings.</p>
<p>There were other issues as well. Protestants expected concessions from both sides. They also expected Catholics to limit the power of the papacy. One Protestant theologian, Charles Briggs, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rRk3AAAAMAAJ&dq=editions%3AVyN5zMBJnSYC&pg=PA212#v=onepage&q&f=false">had anticipated</a> that the Vatican would place a system of checks and balances on the pope. In exchange, Protestants said they might accept the papacy, abandoning a critique that dated back to the Reformation. </p>
<p>Catholics found such expectations to be absurd. They rejected any demand for changes to their church.</p>
<h2>Global peace through Christian unity?</h2>
<p>Despite these difficulties, motives beyond religion gave the movement’s leaders new inspiration in the 1920s. They thought Christian unity offered a path to global peace.</p>
<p>It was a time when America’s role in global affairs seemed uncertain. While American intervention had helped allies win the war, the U.S. had <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Feature_Homepage_TreatyVersailles.htm">rejected</a> the Treaty of Versailles, the agreement which ended the war. The U.S. also refused to join League of Nations, brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson, formed to resolve international disputes. The possibility of another war loomed large. </p>
<p>To this group, Christian unity <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100144530">offered an alternative means</a> to achieve peace. It was a way of preventing more bloodshed. In correspondence with a friend, Charles Brent worried that only “new unity among the churches” would prevent “hideous waves of terror” from striking “people of the next generation.” </p>
<p>Another supporter, peace activist Peter Ainslie, predicted that fights between Catholics and Protestants would continue to spark global conflicts. Only the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=g78XAAAAYAAJ&dq=peter%20ainslie&pg=PA78#v=onepage&q=unity&f=false">union of Christian forces</a>” would bring an end to militarism and lead to global peace, he noted.</p>
<h2>Not enough support</h2>
<p>Statements like these highlight how some Americans connected religion to international politics after World War I. But they also reveal why the unity effort failed to win broad support.</p>
<p>The American people had as little interest in global Christian unity as they did in the League of Nations. After the turmoil of the war years, many wanted a focus on domestic issues. They had no wish to remake familiar institutions like the church. This became clear in the 1920 presidential campaign, when Warren Harding won a landslide victory after running an isolationist campaign. His slogan, “<a href="https://millercenter.org/president/harding/campaigns-and-elections">Return to normalcy</a>,” signaled an end to the previous decade’s lofty efforts to transform the world.</p>
<p>Furthermore, most Protestants had as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=naGlCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP5&dq=saving%20faith%20mislin&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false">little enthusiasm</a> for these efforts as Catholics. They argued that institutional reunion of Protestantism and Catholicism was not needed. “Outlook,” a nationally read Protestant periodical, for example, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=dto6AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA636&dq=outlook+%22distinctive+denominational+peculiarities%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiv5f7h4pjXAhVF5IMKHc9HCUMQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">ran an editoral</a> stating that both sides already agreed on the “essential elements of Christianity” and whatever differences remained were merely “distinctive denominational peculiarities.” </p>
<h2>Living with differences</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193645/original/file-20171107-6722-awcl7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-praying-bible-cross-on-table-522242725?src=bMumc43GvAMXN9QdXNBFDg-1-0">Tiko Aramyan/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The effort for unity was not a complete failure, though. It helped advance unity through dialogue. Its greatest success was a <a href="https://archive.org/details/wccfops1.064">1927 conference</a> in Lausanne, Switzerland. Organized largely by Americans and presided over by Charles Brent, the gathering prompted new dialogue among Protestants, both in the United States and in Europe.</p>
<p>In fact, the main unintended consequence of the unity campaign was that it caused people to realize that they did not want actual unity. It was possible, in other words, to accept the post-Reformation division of Christianity. The differences separating the Protestants and Catholics could be <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=naGlCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP5&dq=saving%20faith%20mislin&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false">shrugged off</a> as “peculiariaties” rather than intolerable divisions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Mislin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the early 1900s, a group of Protestants in the US attempted a reunion of Christianity. They failed, of course, but they prompted a new dialogue.David Mislin, Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage, Temple UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/863302017-10-31T14:30:50Z2017-10-31T14:30:50ZBrexit to Bonfire Night: why the Reformation still matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192617/original/file-20171031-18689-1l7wkg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Monument of Martin Luther in Eisleben, Germany, the town of his birth. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/monument-martin-luther-on-town-square-586275236?src=xuKu_SmTjTS_ksq1zEi2_Q-1-10">Shutterstock/dugdax</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Five hundred years ago <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-martin-luthers-reformation-tells-us-about-history-and-memory-85058">Martin Luther</a>, a German monk, attacked the Catholic Church in a move that sparked the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/english_reformation_01.shtml">Protestant Reformation</a>. The effects are still being felt in Britain today – from the celebrations of Bonfire Night to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/law-expert-where-the-brexit-battles-over-the-repeal-bill-will-be-fought-in-parliament-80980">powers that parliament</a> have to deal with Brexit. </p>
<p>In parts of Europe Reformation Day commemorates the moment Martin Luther produced his <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/martin-luther-and-the-95-theses">95 Theses</a> that criticising the Catholic Church. As Luther and his followers developed their ideas, they created Protestant churches independent of the Pope in Rome. </p>
<p>Although almost 60% of people identified themselves as <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/articles/religioninenglandandwales2011/2012-12-11">Christians in the 2011 census</a> in Britain only 5% of the population regularly <a href="https://faithsurvey.co.uk/download/gb-church-attendance-1980-2015.pdf">attend church</a>. But the Reformation affected more than people’s religious lives. When Henry VIII used some of Luther’s ideas to break away from Rome, he created <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-henry-viiis-break-with-rome-tells-us-about-parliaments-role-in-brexit-70078">new powers</a> that are still relevant today.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192619/original/file-20171031-18686-1x6ksv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry VIII engraved by W.T.Fry and published in Lodge’s British Portraits encyclopedia, United Kingdom, 1823.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/henry-viii-14911547-engraved-by-wt-81842377?src=jN8kZi_uloq9Es5C2Un0MQ-1-1">Shutterstock/GeorgiosKollidas</a></span>
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<p>Henry VIII became interested in creating an independent church in England when the Pope refused Henry a divorce to allow him to marry <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/anne_boleyn/">Anne Boleyn</a>. In 1529, Henry VIII and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zttdjxs">Thomas Cromwell</a> called parliament to pass legislation that transferred all the powers and wealth of the Pope and the Catholic Church into the hands of the King. </p>
<h2>Henry’s power-grab</h2>
<p>Over the next few years, as Henry dismantled the power of Catholicism, a new rhetoric of English independence emerged. In 1533, parliament argued that “this realm of England is an empire”, with no political or legal obligations to the European Church. Taxes that went to Rome now stayed in England, and Henry declared himself Supreme Head of the Church. His successors, Edward VI and Elizabeth I used many of those powers to make that church Protestant. </p>
<p>The process of breaking with Rome also granted Henry VIII huge powers. In 1539 Henry effectively transferred these to himself with an act that allowed the King – without parliament – to amend or make new laws. This is the basis of the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/henry-viii-clauses/">“Henry VIII powers” in the Brexit Repeal Act</a>, which allow ministers to adopt European laws without parliamentary scrutiny. </p>
<p>The ripples of that power-grab from 1539 were felt in Westminster in August when Ministers were urged to put extra checks in place to limit “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40868285">sweeping powers</a>” included in the EU Withdrawal Bill. The bill aims to repeal the European Communities Act and convert EU law into UK law. It also enables the government to make changes further down the line without presenting new legislation to Parliament – known as “delegated powers”. Labour’s Hilary Benn, chairman of the Brexit select committee, suggested this could amount to “a blank legislative cheque”.</p>
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<p>The Reformation did more than change our relationship with Europe and the Catholic Church – it changed how the English viewed themselves. In the conflicts of 16th-century Europe, religious identities were politically charged. Protestantism became part of the national identity, contrasted with Catholicism that the Elizabethans portrayed as dangerous and foreign. </p>
<p>When the Spanish Armada <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/adams_armada_01.shtml">failed to invade</a> in 1588, the English claimed they were saved by a Protestant wind. When Robert Catesby (played by Kit Harrington in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-bloody-truth-why-bbcs-gunpowder-had-to-be-so-violent-86264">Gunpowder</a>) and Guy Fawkes failed to blow up parliament, once again it was argued that God was looking after the English. Celebrations on November 5 over the following decades celebrated God’s protection from foreign and treacherous Catholicism. As Gunpowder shows, the truth was far from this simple. But Bonfire Night became an indelible part of the national calendar. </p>
<p>Events are being held throughout Europe in 2017 to mark the 500-year anniversary. It is a national holiday in Germany, with <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/">concerts, pageants</a> and church services planned. At Westminster Abbey, the Church of England is celebrating “the start of the Reformation” <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2017/09/2017/10/archbishop-to-mark-agreement-with-catholic-and-lutheran-churches-on-500th-anniversary-of-the-reformation.aspx">in a service</a> that includes an act of reconciliation between Lutheran and Catholic Churches. The BBC is showing a range of programmes, including a documentary by David Starkey and a drama about Catholic plotters in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05j1bc9">Gunpowder</a>. </p>
<p>Not only did the Reformation change English politics it changed the perception that the English had of themselves. While church attendance may have <a href="https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html">declined</a>, we can see the legacy of the Reformation in many areas of our lives in 2017.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosamund Oates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Martin Luther’s Reformation resulted in Henry VIII making law changes which are still having an effect on today’s Brexit negotiations.Rosamund Oates, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/851972017-10-31T09:52:23Z2017-10-31T09:52:23ZLuther’s musical legacy is the Reformation’s unsung achievement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191443/original/file-20171023-1717-134stdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=64%2C5%2C3819%2C2276&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-view-organist-playing-pipe-organ-735416491?src=8ww7MugciSpY9-Sc_uq2Dg-1-24">JohnKruger/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Five hundred years ago this month, Martin Luther triggered what would become the Protestant Reformation with a document protesting corruption in the Catholic Church. At its heart, his Reformation was a movement about the nature of sin and the means of salvation; about the power of the church versus the authority of scripture. But it also helped to shape modern religion in other, more unexpected ways: one of these was through the birth of congregational song.</p>
<p>By the 15th century, music had become one of the most prominent features of religious worship. Most parish churches had <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hrBZ9npRAHEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q&f=false">at least one organ and a small semi-professional choir</a>; these modest resources were dwarfed by the great cathedrals and monasteries. The singing of <a href="https://youtu.be/bI2WazTO0iw">complex polyphonic music</a>, where the voices of singers weaved elaborately together, had become an important means of praising and serving God. </p>
<p>Even within the medieval church, this elaborate music had had its critics. In 1325, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=H8e78zaI8YoC&lpg=PA195&ots=r9oENLIMx4&dq=pope%20john%20xxii%20edict%20music&pg=PA193#v=onepage&q&f=false">Pope John XXII issued a decree</a> criticising musicians who “intoxicate the ear without satisfying it”. </p>
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<p><a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/aeh6713.0001.001/257:AEH6713.0001.001:12?page=root;size=100;view=image">Writing later</a> in the 14th century, the Oxford theologian whose writings inspired the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/lollards_01.shtml">English “Lollard” heresy</a>, John Wycliffe, wrote that the more time men spent singing, the less they observed God’s law. On the eve of the Reformation, the humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus complained that the people were <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hrBZ9npRAHEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false">three times removed</a> from the music of the church, by dint of its use of Latin, complicated musical style, and non-participation.</p>
<h2>Waxing lyrical</h2>
<p>In large part, the Reformation sought to banish what it saw as the ritual excess of the late-medieval church. The Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli, a talented musician, had <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hrBZ9npRAHEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=false">the organs of Zurich dismantled</a> and its choirs disbanded. The Frenchman Jean Calvin restricted religious music in his adopted home of Geneva to the unaccompanied singing of the biblical Book of Psalms. This <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hrBZ9npRAHEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false">“metrical psalmody”</a> was also popular in England, although in cathedrals there, organs and choirs continued to prosper with the support of Elizabeth I. </p>
<p>Even the Catholic Church sought to <a href="https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct22.html">regulate music to some degree at the Council of Trent</a>. A (likely false) story persists that it was only the beauty of <a href="https://youtu.be/BRfF7W4El60">Palestrina’s <em>Missa Papae Marcelli</em></a> that stopped the council banning polyphony from the church altogether.</p>
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<p>In the midst of this challenging environment, Luther’s love of music rings loud, clear and true. In the <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/tabletalk.v.xxxix.html"><em>Tischreden</em></a>, the record of his mealtime conversations, Luther proclaimed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always loved music; whoso has skill in this art, is of a good temperament, fitted for all things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He argued that schoolmasters and preachers ought to be skilled in music, “or I would not regard him”. The Reformation was in part born out of Luther’s struggles with his own conscience and sense of sin. There is a ring of personal truth about his claim that music was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The best solace for a sad and sorrowful mind; by it the heart is refreshed and settled again at peace.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Luther waxed most lyrical about the power of music in the <a href="https://sites.duke.edu/conversions/files/2014/09/Luther-Preface-to-Symphoniae-iucundae.pdf">foreword to Georg Rhau’s <em>Symphoniae iucundae</em></a> (“Delightful Symphonies”, 1538), addressed “to the devotees of music”. In it, he praised music as “the excellent gift of God”, “instilled and implanted” in all creatures “from the beginning of the world”. Any man or woman not touched by the power of music, he wrote with characteristic earthiness, deserved to hear nothing else but “the music of the pigs”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191715/original/file-20171024-30577-1kfmu4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All together now…</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/glasgowamateur/8329857232/in/photolist-dG5Gm9-iihLN1-34Ydj3-rqWKtN-niGeJF-ndYEBf-c5YU9m-e8m1E6-niGgHG-pyjFuM-fpY2dM-4uXAQV-6vTK22-8niUXH-j185VM-niGgFN-rt7Zvt-afF579-9kSLBv-62p2Qa-7njY4J-jDmLmz-pyTn6C-qUFDDk-SeVcZY-mD34rB-e8m1CT-ny986J-mD4caG-niGfx7-boLVrB-a6ncMu-niGh4y-nAbMd8-niGexw-nzTQQt-nzTQyB-acZ7Pm-fvtPwA-niG6AD-ny98Eu-nAbMA2-nAc4c1-nAc5jb-ny98r3-niGf5y-2KtnK-ceKuML-nBXPhR-dbvHUG">Charles Clegg/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Praise be to hymn</h2>
<p>Luther’s reformation therefore integrated the simple unison plainchant and complex polyphony of the Catholic Church into his new Protestant liturgy almost wholesale. However, Luther also brought significant change, through the introduction of the congregational singing of vernacular psalms and hymns. People had sung religious music before of course – many Christmas carols have medieval origins. But never before had the people played an active, musical role in church services. </p>
<p>This was a democratisation of one of the most popular and emotive dimensions of religious worship, and a powerful weapon in the Reformation’s battle for hearts and minds.</p>
<p>By allowing composers to write original lyrics, rather than just setting the words of scripture, Lutheran hymns could also communicate new religious doctrines. The most famous hymn of Luther’s own composition was <a href="https://youtu.be/uI7QMtXBLgY"><em>Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott</em></a> (A Mighty Fortress is our God). The second verse reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing…</em></p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uI7QMtXBLgY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The message was clear: mankind could not rely on their own good works; salvation came from God alone.</p>
<p>In 1620, the German Jesuit Adam Contzen remarked that Luther had converted more souls with his hymns than with all his books and sermons. Whatever else we make of Luther’s Reformation, it is clear that he gave the world a musical gift which continues to resound in the present day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Willis works for University of Birmingham and has received funding from the ARHB (2005-6), ARHC (2006-9) and the Leverhulme Trust (2010-13).</span></em></p>In the great reformer’s eyes, if you didn’t love a rousing tune you deserved only “the music of the pigs”.Jonathan Willis, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/860482017-10-30T19:03:01Z2017-10-30T19:03:01ZRevisiting the Reformation: how passions sparked a religious revolution 500 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192384/original/file-20171030-17693-vz0b83.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Luther's act quickly came to be seen as the foundation of the Reformation, as shown in this centenary broadside, Göttlicher Schrifftmessiger, 1617.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jfhutson, Wikipedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>October 31 2017 marks 500 years to the day when Martin Luther famously sent his Ninety-Five Theses to Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz, criticising what he saw as corruption in the Roman Catholic Church. This moment is usually seen as the beginning of the Reformation, and the birth of Protestant Christianity, whose denominations together claim close to a billion members today.</p>
<p>But simplifying the story of the Reformation to this one act obscures the many individuals and factors that were essential to this movement becoming a spiritual revolution. </p>
<p>As with all movements, the Reformation was generated and sustained by strong passions about powerful ideas and emotional attachment to figureheads. Scholars are increasingly recognising their significance.</p>
<p>For Luther was not the first or the only person of his age to hold views critical of the contemporary church but, in 1517, these ideas were projected through a sophisticated media package of emotional rhetoric and images that intensified their potency. </p>
<p>Contemporary fears about sin and anxieties about greed were at the heart of the concerns that Luther voiced. In 1515, the Pope, Leo X, had sought funding to complete the re-building of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome through an indulgence campaign. Indulgences were certificates that Christians could purchase in order to reduce the time they would have to spend in penance for their sins. Over time, the institution of indulgences had become hugely popular and profitable, and was increasingly criticised for its abuses. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191141/original/file-20171020-1048-f7jzu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indulgence selling in a church, Augsburg, 1521.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jfhutson/Jeanjung212, Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, in 1517 in Mainz, a German city then part of the Holy Roman Empire, half of the funds raised from the indulgences were instead diverted to the Cardinal. On October 31, Luther – a monk and lecturer in theology at the University of Wittenberg – wrote to the Cardinal to complain. </p>
<p>He included a Latin essay, with 95 different points, questioning the practice of indulgences. This work hit a nerve not just with the Cardinal; a significant number of people wanted to read Luther’s concerns. Within weeks, the Ninety-Five Theses were widely published in Germany, in Latin and then German, and were soon available all across Europe. </p>
<h2>Voicing anger and passion</h2>
<p>Luther was emboldened and his criticisms grew stronger. In the provocatively entitled treatise The Babylonian Captivity of the Church of 1521, his previously nuanced critique of indulgences was reduced to one proposition: they were “a swindler’s trick”, and many other church teachings and practices had become “wicked and despotic”. </p>
<p>Luther’s increasingly vocal denouncements of church institutions drew strong emotional reactions, even among those who supported reforming the church. The scholar <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus">Erasmus of Rotterdam</a> was one of them. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191142/original/file-20171020-1086-50y9dr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Holbein, portrait of Erasmus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Erasmus, who was accused of “laying the egg that Luther hatched” for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Instrumentum_omne">bringing humanistic studies to bear on the Bible</a>, described the dissent that Luther was fomenting as a tragedy, fearing “the evils surrounding that wretched Luther” would lead to increased attacks on the humanities by monks and conservative theologians. These fears were exacerbated by what Erasmus perceived as overly passionate language of Luther’s followers, the Lutherans.</p>
<p>Even those who ultimately would come to support these ideas disliked Luther’s approach to stirring up support for the movement. Wolfgang Capito, a future Protestant, wrote to Erasmus in 1521: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Lutherans are crazier, excessive, and more arrogant than ever; they fix their teeth on anybody, and reproach everyone to their face with shameless barbarity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1534, Erasmus found himself under attack from Luther as “the devil incarnate”. Erasmus responded that Luther was “harsh, violent, and Procrustean, always spewing tragedy”. </p>
<p>Erasmus proposed that Luther should instead:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>teach through arguments, then, if the situation demands, agitate the emotions; but one should not casually stir up the more violent feelings known as passions. Truly to never stop being vehement, to never stop crying out vehemently with tragic words, is madness rather than eloquence. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the Dutch humanist’s calls for moderation would fall on deaf ears, and the movement surrounding Luther grew stronger, dividing European Christianity forever.</p>
<h2>The emotional power of images</h2>
<p>The movement’s power did not just stem from passionate words though. The painter and printmaker Lucas Cranach the Elder played a crucial role in creating Luther’s public image ahead of the Diet of Worms, a political assembly, where, in April 1521, Luther was expected - but eventually refused - to retract his criticisms.</p>
<p>Cranach employed two visual strategies to justify Luther’s positions. In one engraving, he portrayed the reformer as a scholar whose critical views on the church’s practice were valid because he had closely scrutinised the word of God. In a second print, Cranach showed Luther as an ascetic monk in devout communion with his faith, standing in a niche similar to those in which sculptures of saints were commonly displayed in Catholic churches.</p>
<p>While Cranach had only subtly hinted at Luther’s saint-like status, other artists soon underlined this association by depicting Luther surrounded by a halo or inspired by the spirit of the Holy Dove.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191144/original/file-20171020-1045-s403dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Baldung, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1521.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikiart</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The emotional power of such prints stemmed partly from the fact that soon after the Diet, Luther had disappeared from public view. Having been excommunicated and declared an outlaw by the Pope and the Emperor, he remained hidden in great secrecy at Wartburg castle until the spring of 1522. Luther’s disappearance, and presumed death as a martyr to his faith, only helped to enhance his popularity, and that of his printed image.</p>
<p>For Catholic viewers, Luther prints caused great concerns. Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro was horrified not only about the inappropriate depictions of a convicted heretic as a saint, but also about the reverence paid to such images by the masses: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are recent pictures of Luther with the symbol of the Holy Ghost above his head, or with the cross. And there is another print in which he is shown in glory. And people buy these things and they kiss them! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These portraits were thus not only successful at creating a visual defence of Luther’s positions, but their reception highlights the emotional engagement of the masses with this public persona.</p>
<p>Movements often create origin stories and figureheads, but the success of the Reformation was forged not by any one man, but by emotions that the many who aided the spread of these ideas, engaged and galvanised in word, in print, and in image.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Broomhall receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirk Essary receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susanne Meurer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Greed, guilt, fear, anger and love gave power to a spiritual movement that was catalysed 500 years ago this week.Susan Broomhall, Director, Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, The University of Western AustraliaKirk Essary, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, The University of Western AustraliaSusanne Meurer, Lecturer, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/850582017-10-30T09:24:58Z2017-10-30T09:24:58ZWhat Martin Luther’s Reformation tells us about history and memory<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192062/original/file-20171026-13355-8447yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luther95theses.jpg">Ferdinand Willem Pauwels/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story we tell of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago is a window on how the past speaks to the present, and how the present imposes itself on the past.</p>
<p>It is a story everyone, more or less, is familiar with. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, a member of an obscure house of Augustinian friars in Wittenberg, went to the door of the town’s Castle Church and nailed to it a sheet containing 95 Theses. This <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html">revolutionary document</a>, attacking corrupt teaching on indulgences and the papal authority lying behind it, was the foundational text of Protestantism. Luther’s bold action in publicising it was the starting pistol for a revolt that threw Germany into turmoil, and which soon <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09b4ylt">permanently divided Europe as a whole</a>.</p>
<p>To this day, Luther’s action has inspired both admiration and emulation. Perhaps the most powerful moment came on July 10 1966, when <a href="https://archive.org/stream/mylifewithmartin00kingrich#page/n313/mode/2up/search/magnificent+symbolic+gesture">Martin Luther King Jr. marched to the door</a> of Mayor Daley’s City Hall in Chicago and nailed up a set of demands for social and racial justice. His wife, Coretta King called it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A magnificent, symbolic gesture that rang down the centuries from his namesake.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192068/original/file-20171026-13367-ihd6ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Legacy. An event that echoes down the centuries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/summer1978/16125056543/in/photolist-qyV8wg-5Ta5k6-75PMmL-9DzZLH-5TepPU-qEsKmA-ahKWZ3-DNeFys-dPNmgg-eMyo21-SdEXcQ-98anXK-pLoPkv-ahKXLW-SsG9oQ-ahH9Gt-cvSBes-J7ftik-98dJAb-662jzm-r2rKns-xJhnJ-ahHak2-dzqow8-98dJA7-8XvS2g-9HWd6M-9HW66M-98anXH-d6u4RW-9HYXr1-gwY7YH-e2VnYB-xJhow-aghVTJ-dQej58-77cNUB-2fNeEr-9HYZQ9-WN6w2t-qMhQV2-aFe4sq-e2VnKv-bdzPNB-e3245d-dehuuY-daPnMK-Dttppx-exumbL-qSdRk2">RV1864/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Myth and the man</h2>
<p>The posting of the 95 Theses is a key moment in the popular historical consciousness. It is an irresistible meme celebrating liberty of conscience and righteous protest against the abuse of power. It is the symbolic heart of commemorations to mark “the start” of the Reformation, taking place in Germany and across the world this year.</p>
<p>In truth, it probably never happened. The <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/martin-luther/history-stories/on-the-doors-of-the-wittenberg-churches/">posting of the theses was first recorded</a> in the mid-1540s, by associates of Luther not in Wittenberg in 1517. Luther himself, in a voluminous body of often autobiographical writing, never mentioned it. </p>
<p>We know he sent (“posted” in the alternative sense) the Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz on October 31, 1517. But <a href="http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/mainz_letter.html">in that letter</a> – and various others sent over subsequent months – Luther insisted the wide distribution of the Theses was none of his doing. In fact, he said that he had deliberately held back from initiating a public debate to give the authorities a chance to reform the practice of selling indulgences.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192065/original/file-20171026-13315-y7mptd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mainz cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mainz-cathedral-83432284?src=em3J3Il4S5bIpu0ZSMfjxw-1-29">Scirocco340/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite possibly, later commentators assumed the Theses were posted because this was the normal procedure for initiating a disputation. It was a <a href="http://www.lutheranquarterly.com/uploads/7/4/0/1/7401289/lq-95theses-leppin_wengert.pdf">regular part of scholarly life</a>, laid down in the Wittenberg University statutes of 1508. Faculty deans were to ensure that theses (discussion points) were placed in advance on the doors of all city churches. The actual posting was a chore undertaken, not by senior professors like Luther, but by low-ranking officials – most likely using wax or glue rather than nails. </p>
<p>It is conceivable the 95 Theses were posted, perhaps in mid-November – but if so, it was an unremarkable administrative task unlikely to have been undertaken by Luther himself. In effect, it was the 16th-century equivalent of updating a university faculty webpage.</p>
<h2>Centenary story</h2>
<p>It took a long time for the image of Luther hammering at the door to capture the imagination of Europeans. It first came to the fore in 1617, when beleaguered Protestants in Germany fixed on the idea of a Reformation centenary to defy a resurgent Roman Church. </p>
<p>But interest remained patchy: there was no attempt at a realistic visual depiction of the scene before 1697. Only in the 19th century, after the third Reformation centenary of 1817, did the event which Germans called the <em>Thesenanschlag</em> become <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/nailing-the-myth">a regular theme of painting, poetry and novels</a>. It resonated perfectly with “great man” theories of history – and the prevalent notion that the Reformation was more about liberation and enlightenment than doctrinal niceties (few could remember what the 95 Theses actually said).</p>
<p>Historical memory in the 20th century took a darker turn. For patriotic Germans in 1917, the hammer-wielding Luther became a token of wartime struggle and defiance, and in the subsequent generation Nazis appropriated the <em>Thesenanschlag</em> as symbolic of the <a href="https://sojo.net/articles/nazis-exploited-martin-luther-s-legacy-berlin-exhibit-highlights-how">overthrow of a corrupt old order</a>. A more wholesome, liberal version of the myth has since reasserted itself, though one still sometimes tinged with anti-Catholic stereotypes (as in the commercially successful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYyP5a_BD90">Luther movie of 2003</a>). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GYyP5a_BD90?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Low on memory</h2>
<p>All this matters because the image of Luther at the door has so much shaped our view not only of when the Reformation started but of what the Reformation was. Of course, we need “events”, periods and concepts (including “the Reformation” itself) to organise our knowledge and understanding of the past. But all too easily they become timetabled stops along the fixed tramlines of historical development.</p>
<p>Luther in 1517 was no “Protestant”. He was a reformist Catholic friar. His theses on indulgences are in some ways surprisingly <em>unradical</em>, articulating the unease many thoughtful churchmen felt about the practice. Only later, through a combination of political circumstances and Luther’s own theological radicalisation, did a breach with Rome become irreparable. At no stage can it be considered “inevitable”.</p>
<p>Anniversaries are by definition commemorative and retrospective occasions. But we should use them to ask searching questions and interrogate old verities, not just to remind ourselves of what we think we already know.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Marshall receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Just what are we celebrating when we imagine an Augustinian friar nailing a document to a church door?Peter Marshall, Professor of History, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/862552017-10-26T10:42:53Z2017-10-26T10:42:53ZThe university must be the site of the next Reformation – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191812/original/file-20171025-25518-1go77ut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Piotr Wawrzyniuk / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Legend has it that Martin Luther nailed his <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-posts-95-theses">95 theses</a> to the church door at Wittenberg Castle on October 31 1517, sparking the Protestant Reformation. Regardless of <a href="http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/10/reformation_day_did_martin_lut.html">whether the event itself actually happened</a>, the target was clear: the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. As we commemorate the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/reformation-500-45049">500th anniversary</a> of Luther’s protest, there is a comparable institution whose practices might be targeted by a latter-day Luther: the university. But first we need to examine what bothered Luther and his followers back then – and then ask what might cause a similar bother today.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191815/original/file-20171025-25565-11cz396.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther, 1529.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1529MartinLuther.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the outset, it is worth recalling that Luther was committed to the religion against which he protested. He was Professor of Moral Theology at a university under Roman Catholic authority when he came to the conclusion that the Church’s own institutions had abandoned the spirit that had led him to join it in the first place.</p>
<p>Luther’s protest focused on the practice of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/indulgence">indulgences</a>, which provided a means by which Christians could increase their chances of salvation by confessing their sins and paying some money to a priest. It would be tantamount to cancelling a debt, which was often how sin was portrayed to believers at the time. But Luther believed that this practice corrupted not only the Church to which he had dedicated his life – but also people’s relationship to God.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191817/original/file-20171025-25502-1ed08gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Pope as the Antichrist, signing and selling indulgences, 1521.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antichrist1.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Church was obviously corrupted by indulgences because the money usually did not go to relieve the material conditions of the believers <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/indulgence">but to improve those of the Church officials</a>. The believers themselves were perhaps more insidiously corrupted because they were left with the impression that they could simply buy their way to Heaven.</p>
<p>I would like to suggest that the dispensation of academic credentials performs the same function in 2017 as the dispensation of indulgences did in 1517. </p>
<h2>Credentials as corruption</h2>
<p>Credentials are a form of payment and ritual that students are told they must undergo at university in order to be absolved of their ignorance and be permitted to enter a world of lifetime employment – the proverbial “Heaven on Earth”. I use the word “proverbial” deliberately: it is by no means clear that universities can, or should, promise any such thing.</p>
<p>Credentials come in the form of degree certifications, which students receive once they have paid tuition fees and have submitted themselves to a set of examinations. Traditionally students have also had to attend lectures and seminars, though these have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-all-university-lectures-be-automatically-recorded-39158">increasingly made optional</a> thanks to reliance on information technology. Just as attendance in church came to be seen as optional once believers acquired access to the Bible in their native languages, the same applies to students nowadays who turn to online sources to replicate what might otherwise be of value in live performances.</p>
<p>Here’s a way to assess the value of credentials. Suppose you hire someone with a good degree in physics. Are they capable of constructively contributing to an engineering project, let alone to the solution of a longstanding problem within physics itself? The answer is bound to be mixed because physics degrees are in the first instance what economists call “virtue signalling” devices. The employer is invited to trust a candidate’s competence because they have somehow managed to pay enough money (perhaps with the help of sponsors) and passed enough tests (presumably <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-stop-cheating-in-universities-85407">by their own efforts</a>) to be in a position where a potential employer can take them seriously.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191819/original/file-20171025-25497-15eqwxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are degrees less meaningful than we believe?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is missing from this blaze of credentials – aside from the potential mismatch to the job at hand – is any sense that the candidate understands either the limits of the applicability of her field’s knowledge or how the very basis of her field’s knowledge might be constructively extended. After all, students are not formally examined on either. Rather, they are tested on “state of the art”, of the moment knowledge, which, inevitably, changes over time as the field and its examiners change.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, both students and their potential employers are led to believe that academic credentials confer on students that what they have learned at university constitutes knowledge that is more durable than it really is. And all of this is made possible simply because self-certifying “knowledgeable” people – in other words, academics – have said so.</p>
<h2>Hints of a second Reformation?</h2>
<p>The financial interest of academics in continuing to promote this idea – from the beleaguered lecturer to the over-remunerated vice chancellor – should be obvious. Perhaps only slightly less obvious is why students continue to believe it. After all, no sound theory of knowledge, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-know-that-what-you-know-is-true-thats-epistemology-63884">epistemology</a>, backs this modus operandi, which reeks of a mindless deference to authority. This is especially apparent in societies where people are presumed to be literate, have been given the right to vote for generations and for the past generation have been given free access to the internet. </p>
<p>To be sure, the tide has begun to turn. One of the world’s leading accountancy firms, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/01/07/ernst-and-young-removes-degree-classification-entry-criteria_n_7932590.html">Ernst & Young</a>, and the UK’s leading right-leaning intellectual magazine, the <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/the-spectators-48-year-old-intern-shows-why-its-time-to-dispense-with-cvs/">Spectator</a>, have begun to administer their own in-house examinations, which are open to anyone who wishes to apply. More aggressively, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel launched his “<a href="http://thielfellowship.org/">Thiel Fellowship</a>” in 2011, whereby top-flight high school graduates are lured from elite universities to spend time developing innovations to bring to market. In all these cases, the employer or funder takes full responsibility for certifying candidates, without any formal academic mediation.</p>
<p>So: a new Reformation is slowly happening. But how should universities respond? Luther’s anniversary should remind us that we are living in an increasingly competitive environment for the providers and consumers of knowledge. Universities cannot presume to hold an institutional monopoly over it. This may require academics to engage in a more direct appeal – both in terms of curricular offerings being justified more explicitly and academics presenting themselves in person and print less formally – to demonstrate that a university-based education can provide some added value that cannot be provided elsewhere. </p>
<p>In Luther’s day, this was called “evangelism”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Fuller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>University degrees perform the same function in 2017 as indulgences did in 1517.Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/852372017-10-25T09:51:21Z2017-10-25T09:51:21ZGermany commemorates the birth of the Reformation in art, song and Playmobil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190903/original/file-20171018-32378-1l8yftz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C6%2C1943%2C1315&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/33421022256/in/photolist-SVitxE-QDjEvm-LF1XxJ-MMCrF1">Nick Thompson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Germany will shortly enjoy a national holiday to celebrate a moment that tore Europe apart. In Wittenberg, <a href="https://lutherstadt-wittenberg.de/en/">a small town in Saxony-Anhalt</a>, politicians and church leaders will gather to take part in a commemorative service at the Castle Church. There, 500 years ago, Martin Luther supposedly nailed up his 95 theses against indulgences, challenging the pope’s authority to grant remission from punishment for sin.</p>
<p>Whether or not Luther actually nailed anything to the church door remains <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/martin-luther-and-the-95-theses">a matter of debate</a>. But his list of objections to the practices of the Roman Church, alongside his subsequent writings, without doubt set in train a series of events that led to the splintering of western Christendom.</p>
<p>Luther’s Reformation has always played a prominent part in German commemorative culture. Already in 1617, the anniversary of the 95 theses was marked with great solemnity in Lutheran areas of the Holy Roman Empire, against a backdrop of religious and political tensions that led, less than a year later, to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Thirty-Years-War">the outbreak of the Thirty Years War</a>. Each subsequent centenary has been given a particular flavour by its immediate historical context. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191175/original/file-20171020-22940-1upwhmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A commemorative medal from 1617.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.museum-digital.de/bawue/singleimage.php?objektnum=2916&imagenr=13243">Landesmuseum Württemberg</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Through the centuries</h2>
<p>In 1817, Luther provided a focal point for the aspirations of a German nation in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1917, during World War I, numerous festivities and a flood of images and texts celebrated Luther as the embodiment of the German spirit. He was paired with Bismarck, and held up as an inspiration for every German during the nation’s ongoing <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/wiki/anniversary/from-the-reformation-until-today-politics-on-luthers-back/">struggle for honour and power</a>.</p>
<p>Commemorations of Luther’s birthday augmented these Reformation centenaries. In 1983, for example, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) celebrated Luther as a socialist champion, a progressive force who contributed, in the words of the East German leader, Erich Honecker: “To progress, to the development of world culture.”</p>
<p>In 2017, October 31 will mark the culmination of a whole decade of <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/2017/luther-decade/">quincentenary festivities</a>. There have been around 10,000 individual events, ranging from <a href="https://www.3xhammer.de/de/">three major national exhibitions</a> in Berlin, Wittenberg and Eisenach to numerous smaller commemorations organised by individual states, towns and local communities. </p>
<p>These have provided an opportunity to attract tourists, in particular to Luther sites such as Wittenberg and Eisleben (where the reformer was born and died) that languished in obscurity under the GDR. They have also offered an important chance to explain to a broad public not only the Reformation’s historical outlines but also its contemporary relevance. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190896/original/file-20171018-32382-vyiw0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luther’s statue dominates the main square in Wittenberg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wittenberg-germany-nov-4-main-square-205855486?src=BKAymTSoSQCfmX0Q2r2laQ-1-58">gary yim/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the 2017 anniversary has attracted its fair share of criticism. Sceptics have spoken of <a href="http://www.mdr.de/tv/programm/sendung760202.html">“Luther veneration” and of “Luther hype”</a>. Federal and state subsidies – taxpayers’ euros – have flowed into a commemoration in which the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has played a central role. That has seemed, to some, inappropriate. The co-financing of the EKD’s 2017 ecumenical Kirchentag (Church Assembly) has proved <a href="http://www.mz-web.de/wittenberg/finanzierung-so-teuer-ist-der-evangelische-kirchentag---und-so-wird-er-bezahlt-26975524">particularly controversial</a>.</p>
<p>From a historian’s perspective, much of the anniversary rhetoric has <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21713843-500th-anniversary-95-theses-finds-country-moralistic-ever-how-martin-luther-has?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/nailedithowmartinlutherhasshapedgermanyforhalfamillennium">reanimated outdated narratives</a> about how “one great man transformed the world” and about the Reformation as the birthplace of modernity. In the US, for example, the public broadcaster PBS <a href="http://www.pbs.org/program/martin-luther-idea-changed-world/">anachronistically attributed to Luther’s Reformation</a> a drive towards freedom of religion and women’s rights. </p>
<p>In 2017, the “dark side” of the Reformation, in particular Luther’s anti-Semitism, has been discussed more thoroughly than ever before, but still, a primary focus on Luther as the harbinger of individual freedom has left relatively little space for public discussion of his social conservatism.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190897/original/file-20171018-32348-emm0e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berlin: a cardboard sculpture of a naked Martin Luther challenged his anti-semitism in May 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/FELIPE TRUEBA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Immortalised in plastic</h2>
<p>What, then, will remain from the 2017 centenary? The best answer is probably the rejuvenation of Wittenberg, and the costly but necessary renovation and restoration of Reformation sites throughout eastern Germany. </p>
<p>The EKD’s extensive programme of outreach, its determination to facilitate reflection and discussion though workshops, exhibitions and less formal events, will certainly have touched many individuals, both Christian and non-Christian.</p>
<p>For public consumption, Luther’s relatively uncontroversial role as a translator of scripture has been highlighted: the first thing to greet the visitor to Wittenberg is a <a href="https://r2017.org/neuigkeiten/beitrag/einzeleintritt-fuer-buchturm/">27-meter tower in the form of a bible</a>. Luther <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/18/the-reformation-classical-musics-punk-moment?CMP=share_btn_tw">was himself a gifted musician</a>, and the hymns that he wrote played an important part in spreading the evangelical message. The musical heritage of the Reformation, with Johann Sebastian Bach as its apogee, <a href="http://www.wittenberg.de/magazin/artikel.php?artikel=1079&menuid=1">has proved to have particular appeal</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190901/original/file-20171018-32345-19bfijn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Getting their hands on the best selling Playmobil figure of all time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwf_eleventh_assembly/27512614673/in/photolist-HVckPp">The Lutheran World Federation/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Reformation historians, the catalogues from the three national exhibitions alone comprise 1,500 pages of excellent images and analysis. There are numerous new Luther biographies, the best of which neither idolise nor vilify the reformer, but give a rounded picture of him as a thinker and as an individual: an exceptional figure, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/gerhis/ghx045">but also a product of his time</a>. </p>
<p>With a little distance, we will have another Reformation anniversary to analyse, another milestone of German commemorative culture to mine for what it tells us about Protestant identity. And perhaps best of all, thanks to Playmobil, many of us who study the period now have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/feb/18/martin-luther-playmobil-figure-sold-34000-in-72-hours">at least one little plastic Luther</a>, complete with quill pen and Bible, on our desks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bridget Heal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Martin Luther has always given the country a chance to examine itself. Half a millennium on, the picture is more complex than ever.Bridget Heal, Director of the Reformation Studies Institute, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/833402017-10-25T00:17:07Z2017-10-25T00:17:07ZMartin Luther’s spiritual practice was key to the success of the Reformation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191701/original/file-20171024-30558-51qqjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Luther's 95 Theses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Luther95theses.jpg">Ferdinand Pauwels, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html">95 Theses</a> to the door of Germany’s Wittenberg Castle Church and inadvertently ushered in what came to be known as the Reformation. </p>
<p>In his theses, Luther explicitly attacked the Catholic Church’s lucrative practice of <a href="http://martinluther.ccws.org/indulgence/index.html">selling papal indulgences</a> that promised individuals they could purchase absolution from their sins and hasten their way into heaven. </p>
<p>This was far more than a simple critique of the indulgence trade. Luther <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-34/dr-luthers-theology.html">challenged</a> the Church’s overall authority. Over the next century, Luther’s ideas <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2016.07.007">seeded upheavals</a> and transformed the Western world by diminishing the Church’s power and introducing new spiritual possibilities for everyone.</p>
<p>In researching our book, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-spiritual-virtuoso-9781474292429/">“The Spiritual Virtuoso,”</a> we found Luther’s personal life and spiritual practice played a key role in shaping his message and drawing enthusiastic support from ordinary people.</p>
<h2>How Luther’s message spread</h2>
<p>Luther had once been a friar in the strict monastic <a href="http://www.augustinian.org/order/">Order of St. Augustine</a>. The head of the order, Johann von Staupitz, however, believed that Luther could serve God better if he were no longer isolated from the larger society. </p>
<p>Staupitz arranged for Luther to pursue doctoral studies and join the University of Wittenberg as a professor of biblical theology. When Luther posted his theses, he was both an ordained priest and a professor. </p>
<p>Luther’s students were among the first to respond enthusiastically to his message that all Christians were equal in God’s eyes and could reach heaven based on their own faith. His students also believed that they had the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1262373">moral obligation</a> to share their new understanding, so that more people could benefit from it.</p>
<p>They spoke of reforming the church to members of the growing urban middle classes. They reached out to townspeople by <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122411435905">translating the Latin Bible</a> into vernacular German and encouraging education for men and women alike. </p>
<p>As the movement built up, guildsmen, merchants and aristocrats came to share Luther’s vision of an authentic, incorruptible Church grounded in spiritual equality. Prince Fredrick the Wise, the University of Wittenberg’s founder, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2012.01680.x">became one of Luther’s early advocates</a> and other princes provided him with political protection and financial help.</p>
<h2>Life as a monk</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191704/original/file-20171024-30587-1wrppy7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/1533_Cranach_d.%C3%84._Martin_Luther_im_50._Lebensjahr_anagoria.JPG">Lucas Cranach the Elder, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, it was not just Luther’s ideals that contributed to his success. We found that it was also his personal story of spiritual renewal that added to his extraordinary appeal. </p>
<p>As the German states became more urban, more commercial and more affluent, the old social order was disrupted and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1262373">Church increasingly removed</a> itself from its members’ daily dilemmas. </p>
<p>At the time, Luther, following the wishes of his father, was pursuing law. However, <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/leben/moench.html">dismayed by</a> an increasingly materialistic society, he abandoned his legal studies to enter the friary of the Augustinian hermits.</p>
<p>Luther remained a monk for nearly 20 years. During his early years in the monastery, Luther obsessed about his personal failings and sins and worked hard to excel as a monk. Beginning his day at 3 a.m., Luther tried to purify himself through practices like fasting, confession, reading scriptures late into the night and silently praying at almost every moment. </p>
<p>For penance, he fasted to the point of emaciation and would even strike himself with a whip. </p>
<h2>The spiritual virtuoso</h2>
<p>We call Luther a “spiritual virtuoso” because he completely devoted his life to religious study and practice. His intense commitment to spiritual perfection resembled the perseverance of outstanding virtuosi in fields like music, athletics or dance.</p>
<p>During his career, Luther wrote thousands of sermons and pamphlets, composed hymns, preached every week and <a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/martin-luther-lessons-from-his-life-and-labor">engaged in tireless work</a> on behalf of the emerging Protestant churches. </p>
<p>Over a century ago, the German sociologist Max Weber thought about hermits’ and monks’ isolation, self-denial and intense dedication and defined their absolute commitment <a href="http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Virtuoso.htm">as a kind of virtuosity</a>.</p>
<p>Spiritual virtuosi devote themselves to comprehending and <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814798041/">enacting a higher spiritual purpose</a>. They are willing to sacrifice their earthly comforts and pleasures in order to reach unity with God or another higher power.</p>
<p>The essence of spiritual virtuosity is personal humility. To that end, virtuosi tend to be reluctant leaders. Because of their unease with worldly power, they are wary of having themselves confused with the message. Luther was not interested in leading a social movement or reaping material rewards. What he wanted to do was to serve God and bring God’s word to others. </p>
<p>It was the students in Luther’s movement, and the clergy who supported them, who became the key activists and organized widespread support in Wittenberg, Basel and other university towns. We call them “virtuosi activists.” Luther himself preached, lectured and debated, but he was not much troubled with strategy or organizational tactics of organizing a movement.</p>
<p>In 1530, when the emerging Protestant movement presented its <a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.iii.ii.html">profession of faith</a> to the German emperor in Augsburg, Luther played a minor role and did not even attend the conference. Luther’s central goal was to show people how to reach toward God through personal faith. </p>
<h2>Luther’s impact</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191705/original/file-20171024-30577-1b9knov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Side of collection box of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that served as a collection box for contributions to the Abolitionist cause.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARemember_Your_Weekly_Pledge_Massachusetts_Anti-Slavey_Society_collection_box.jpg">Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Protestant Reformation was the first significant social movement in modern history that was organized by activist spiritual virtuosi. Since then, other social movements have built upon Luther’s ideals of spiritual equality.</p>
<p>In the 19th century, the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051029170656/http://americanabolitionist.liberalarts.iupui.edu/">American anti-slavery movement</a>, for example, emphasized spiritual equality of everyone before God, not just white Christians. The 20th-century human potential movement, building on the earlier work of spiritual equality, focused on the immense potential in each person and the <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814732878/">importance of communicating directly</a> with a higher power in many different ways. </p>
<p>Today, smaller contemporary virtuosi activists continue to enact and expand the ideas. We believe groups like the <a href="https://sojo.net">Sojourners’</a> community and the <a href="http://www.sanctuarynotdeportation.org/">Sanctuary movement</a> are examples of such work, for they spread faith in spiritual equality. </p>
<p>The rebellion against the Roman Church was wholly unanticipated and succeeded against all odds. In showing new spiritual possibilities, Luther also showed us one way to bring about social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, two scholars explain how Luther’s personal and spiritual life contributed to his success.Marion Goldman, Professor Emeritus, University of OregonSteve Pfaff, Professor, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/851962017-10-24T08:43:06Z2017-10-24T08:43:06ZThe man who gave us the Reformation – and it wasn’t Martin Luther<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191588/original/file-20171024-30605-1aoyrf0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>When Martin Luther <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-posts-95-theses">published his 95 theses</a> 500 years ago this month, so the story goes, his general target was the corruption of the church. But he also had a very particular organisation in his sights. By October 1517, the extraordinary reach and power of the Fugger banking family was threatening not only the integrity of religion, but the very foundations of European society. </p>
<p>If Luther’s words provided the spark for the Reformation, it was the Fuggers who provided much of the fuel.</p>
<p>Originally cloth merchants based in Augsburg, Germany, the Fuggers moved on from dressing aristocratic weddings to lining aristocratic pockets. It was a move that brought a corresponding rise to power and notoriety. The family’s success during the latter years of the 15th century brought them lucrative business with the Hapsburgs, the Austro-Hungarian family whose lands extended across Europe and who supplied a succession of Holy Roman Emperors for four centuries.</p>
<p>The man responsible for this diversification of the family business was Jakob Fugger and the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vuAE8CC7JOAC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=siegmund+fugger+loan+23,627&source=bl&ots=BWN5zRMep2&sig=yCnegTh6HbkK2U0jsHSMj7G845g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNgpaJvPrWAhVrLMAKHUiACrEQ6AEIPjAD#v=onepage&q=siegmund%20fugger%20loan%2023%2C627&f=false">first transaction was a loan</a> of 23,627 florins to Siegmund, Archduke of Tyrol, in 1487. The loan was significant in establishing a binding relationship with powerful people. More practically, the loan was secured with a mortgage on the archduke’s prize Schwaz silver mines. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191172/original/file-20171020-23000-h9qzfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Collateral damage?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/silver-bullion-on-red-wood-selective-714019189?src=W7P_oFnr9-85m8_zh5zz0A-1-69">VladKK/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Power games</h2>
<p>This arrangement meant that if Siegmund was unable to meet his repayments, the Fuggers would simply get paid in bullion. The highly profitable and risk-free nature of this arrangement led the Fuggers to quickly develop it elsewhere. <a href="http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4162">By the turn of the 16th century</a> they controlled the <a href="https://www.tyrol.com/things-to-do/attractions/all-attractions/a-schwaz-silver-mine">whole of the Schwaz production</a>, owned their own silver mines in Tyrol and Carinthia and were quickly muscling in on Hungarian copper production. </p>
<p>The Fuggers developed close personal as well as business connections with the aristocracy. They married themselves into some of the most powerful families in Europe – particularly the Thurzo of Austria – and loaned heavily to the rest. Clients included Henry VIII of England, Charles V of Spain and the German Emperor Maximillian I. The latter proved particularly lucrative, helpfully combining overweening (and therefore expensive) military and political ambitions with what the economist Richard Ehrenberg claimed was a reputation as “the worst manager of all the Hapsburgs”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191173/original/file-20171020-22945-144l75q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stamp of authority.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DBP_1959_307_Jakob_Fugger.jpg">NobbiP/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So much money was gained through their various businesses that by the turn of the 16th century Jakob <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21660074-not-nothing-was-jacob-fugger-known-jacob-rich-goldenballs">was known simply as “The Rich”</a>.</p>
<p>Having spent his early years in and around the silver mines of the Harz Mountains where his father was a master smelter, Luther would have been acutely aware of the Fugger’s interests in metal. But it was their mining of religion that incurred his wrath in 1517. </p>
<h2>‘Indulge me’</h2>
<p>The Roman Curia – the central administrative body of the Catholic Church – demanded high fees from those achieving high office. The intersection of ecclesiastical, family, and financial structures in the Holy Roman Empire allowed those with the means to hold multiple positions of power, all of them lucrative. So while it was important that the Princes of the Church be good and pious men, they also needed a lot of ready cash. </p>
<p>When Albrecht of Brandenburg was appointed Elector of Mainz in 1514, he had to raise 21,000 ducats to pay the Curia. Albrecht was already a powerful man: he held several other ecclesiastical offices. But even he did not have the means for such high fees. So he borrowed it from the Fuggers at interest – the latter described by convention at the time as a fee for “trouble, danger and, expense”.</p>
<p>To provide himself with an income to repay all this, Albrecht paid an additional 10,000 ducats to secure from Pope Leo X the right to administer the recently announced “Jubilee Indulgences” designed to pay for work on St Paul’s Basilica in Rome.</p>
<p>Indulgences claimed to offer the purchaser reductions in the time spent by loved ones in Purgatory. They had been a controversial church practice for centuries. Luther was not the first to condemn indulgences – many regarded them as heretical – but the audacity of Albrecht’s corruption as he sought to pay back Jakob Fugger gave his words greater force. </p>
<p>Albrecht’s appointed Pardoner – <a href="https://reformation500.csl.edu/bio/johannes-tetzel/">Johann Tetzel</a> – was accompanied at all times by an agent of the Fugger. The agent held the key to the Indulgence chest and when it was full, it was the agent that took the contents. Half went to the Fugger agent in Rome to pay off the Curia, half to Augsburg to pay off Albrecht’s loans. Luther’s comparison of such antics to the biblical story of Christ driving the moneychangers from the Temple, was too obviously legitimate to ignore. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191174/original/file-20171020-22976-1hbprvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luca Giordano: Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=moneychangers+temple&title=Special:Search&go=Go&searchToken=ca7rys2wcn7o8ay49d3641sy6#/media/File:Luca_Giordano_-_Expulsion_of_the_Moneychangers_from_the_Temple_-_WGA9007.jpg">Luca Giordano/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Anti-capitalist</h2>
<p>In short, it was the abuse of money and power that gave us the reformation. And debt was at the very heart of it. It is a familiar tale. The Fugger family’s fortunes eventually waned from these extraordinary heights, but they set the tone for a distinctly “capitalist” form of banking – one that endured. </p>
<p>The rapid spread of modern accounting practices, the rock-solid security of their metal-backed loan business, and their ruthless manipulation of markets made the Fuggers a formidable mercantile power. Later banking dynasties used similar techniques – <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/updates/history-rothschild-family/">particularly the Rothschilds</a> – but none have equalled their power or notoriety. Jakob “The Rich” is still reckoned to be the single wealthiest person ever to have lived. Just how wealthy we will never know. According to <a href="http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4162">Fugger historian Mark Häberlein</a>, Jakob anticipated the practices of modern day plutocrats by striking a deal with the Augsburg tax authorities in 1516. In exchange for an annual lump sum, the family’s true wealth would not be disclosed. </p>
<p>Luther’s intervention was a response to the corrosive effects of greed and corruption. It may have provoked an epochal schism in society and centuries of associated religious warfare, but it barely dented the rise of capital. The Fuggers and their successors thrived in the chaos of the Reformation. It is entirely feasible to position Luther, as much as anything, as an early anti-capitalist. It is not without irony then that a few centuries later, the historian Max Weber would associate the “Protestant Ethic” with the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/protestantethics00webe/protestantethics00webe_djvu.txt">“Spirit of Capital”</a>. That would leave Luther spinning in his grave.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angus Cameron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Meet Jakob Fugger, the man who underwrote the ambition of power-hungry medieval Princes.Angus Cameron, Associate Professor, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/775402017-05-16T00:53:47Z2017-05-16T00:53:47ZOn the Reformation’s 500th anniversary, remembering Martin Luther’s contribution to literacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169392/original/file-20170515-7005-58odc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An exhibition for the Luther monument in Worms.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jens Meyer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s famous <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html">95 Theses</a>, which helped spark the founding of the Reformation and the division of Christianity into Protestantism and Catholicism. </p>
<p>The 95 Theses critiqued the church’s sale of indulgences, which Luther regarded as a <a href="http://www.lutherdansk.dk/Web-babylonian%20Captivitate/Martin%20Luther.htm">form of corruption</a>. By Luther’s time, indulgences had evolved into payments that were said to reduce punishment for sins. Luther believed that such practices only interfered with genuine repentance and discouraged people from giving to the poor. One of Luther’s most important theological contributions was the “<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/10/the-priesthood-of-all-believers">priesthood of all believers</a>,” which implied that clerics possessed no more dignity than ordinary people. </p>
<p>Less known is the crucial role Luther played in making the case for ordinary people to read often and well. Unlike the papacy and its defenders, who were producing their writings in Latin, Luther reached out to Germans in their mother tongue, substantially enhancing the accessibility of his written ideas.</p>
<p>In my teaching of philanthropy, Luther’s promotion of literacy is one of the historic events I often discuss with my students.</p>
<h2>Early years</h2>
<p>Born in Germany in 1483, Luther followed the wishes of his <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236142/martin-luther-by-lyndal-roper/9780812996197/">father</a> to study law. Once, while caught in a terrible thunderstorm, he vowed that if he were saved, he would become a monk.</p>
<p>Indeed, Luther later joined the austere <a href="http://augustinians.net/">Augustinian</a> order, and became both a priest and a doctor of theology. Later he developed objections to many church practices. He <a href="http://martinluther.ccws.org/treatises/index.html">protested</a> the promotion of indulgences, the buying and selling of clerical privileges, and the accumulation of substantial wealth by the church while peasants barely survived. Legend has it that on Oct. 31, 1517, Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, the <a href="http://www.visit-luther.com/luthercities/lutherstadt-wittenberg/the-luther-connection/">town</a> where he was based.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169394/original/file-20170515-7005-fdxaq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luther’s 95 Theses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/keren/2989215726/in/photolist-5y9vGb-ij6QZ2-947VLg-97Fvbp-4xpjR8-98p6jJ-5rNEt8-auJkMV-dmkNTG-aCsCfD-dwGi3a-9ooLyE-gVREC-qb33n-6YYCrn-apkkuE-drPTNL-fz65JT-8VFNaz-98kWei-98kVGH-8nqFTX-8pgH81-8RzGw-dwKbnL-dwDFCF-4JYgaw-dmkLjP-ayjny6-AwmGsB-dwG5PM-5zZGoA-6qoSrP-8nqFZ8-947Vvk-bnbw3B-8nqFEx-6Z3SRf-8U8PF3-9dHQGR-8nqG6T-98p5MU-6Z3SR3-9a6RRV-97FvBV-6YYCs6-6YYCre-6gthVc-8ntPJs-4xtw4h">Keren Tan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He was branded an outlaw for refusing to recant his teachings. In 1521, Pope Leo X <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/l10decet.htm">excommunicated</a> Luther from the Roman Church. His patron, <a href="http://reformation500.csl.edu/bio/frederick-the-wise/">Frederick of Saxony</a>, saved Luther from further reprisal and had him taken in secret to a castle, where he remained for two years. </p>
<p>It was during that time that Luther produced an immensely influential translation of the New Testament into German. </p>
<h2>Impact of Luther’s writing</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/johann/">Gutenberg’s</a> earlier introduction of the printing press in 1439 made possible the rapid dissemination of Luther’s works throughout much of Europe, and their impact was staggering. </p>
<p>Luther’s collected works run to <a href="http://fortresspress.com/product/luthers-works-volume-55-index">55 volumes</a>. It is <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21541719">estimated</a> that between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 editions of Luther’s works were printed. Of the six to seven million pamphlets printed during this time, more than a quarter were Luther’s works, many of which played a vital role in propelling the reformation forward.</p>
<p>Thanks to Luther’s translation of the Bible, it became possible for German-speaking people to stop relying on church authorities and instead read the Bible for themselves. </p>
<p>Luther argued that ordinary people were not only capable of interpreting the scriptures for themselves, but that in doing so they stood the best chance of hearing God’s word. He <a href="https://www.cph.org/p-667-What-Luther-Says.aspx">wrote,</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Let the man who would hear God speak read Holy Scripture.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Luther’s Bible helped form a common German dialect. Prior to Luther, people from different regions of present-day Germany often experienced great difficulty understanding one another. Luther’s Bible translation promoted a single <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-02/martin-luther-didnt-just-reform-church-he-reformed-german-language">German vernacular</a>, helping to bring people together around a common tongue.</p>
<h2>Expanding literacy</h2>
<p>This view, combined with the wide availability of scripture, shifted responsibility for scriptural interpretation from clerics to the laity. Luther wanted ordinary people to assume more responsibility for <a href="http://www.bible.ca/history/philip-schaff/7_ch04.htm">reading</a> the Bible.</p>
<p>In promoting his point of view, Luther helped to provide one of the most effective arguments for universal literacy in the history of Western civilization. </p>
<p>At a time when most people worked in farming, reading was not necessary to maintain a livelihood. But Luther wanted to remove the language barrier so that everyone could read the Bible “<a href="https://www.cph.org/p-667-What-Luther-Says.aspx">without hindrance</a>.” His rationale for wanting people both to learn to read and to read regularly was, from his point of view, among the most powerful imaginable – that reading it for themselves would bring them closer to God.</p>
<p>For much of Luther’s life, his remarkable output in theological treatises was exceeded only by his <a href="http://fortresspress.com/product/luthers-works-volume-55-index">Bible commentaries</a>. He believed that nothing could substitute for direct and ongoing encounters with scripture, which he both advocated for and helped to shape through his detailed commentaries. </p>
<h2>Reading to interpret truth</h2>
<p>Luther had <a href="https://www.luther2017.de/en/news/universitaet-und-reformation/">many reasons</a> to favor the dissemination of learning. He was a university professor. His 95 Theses were intended as an academic disputation. His teaching and scholarship played a crucial role in the development of his theology. Finally, he recognized the crucial role students would play in carrying his movement forward. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169395/original/file-20170515-7009-18dzhqn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr., namesake of the German reformer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanophile/358943676/in/photolist-xHFs5-89WNBx-9rFRF6-PTQmb-fXXLTi-dehuuY-5Z1m4V-98anXx-6bRV3E-ndXHEJ-RRkZqw-98anXB-8xZpaN-dS2tZF-d7KkyY-ahKWSm-ahHaBZ-e324eh-b7US9c-dxqbkx-9btSq7-bcZHc2-FQvNN4-8w8ngR-a5Y8Wm-dNFm7h-jj366Z-7gzbUw-nQMZ7S-3JANq-4mQKbd-RbxqoW-qFFNcC-4ZuKCQ-9ipZfF-fbZCVX-nR6VJZ-89Euxq-4EX6zK-asU1VW-8ateDG-qzEsvQ-dQjVGs-pQF1vn-qSdRk2-68kz5-RwqMJh-RbwjJ1-nvxtr-ahH9Gt">the.urbanophile</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So powerfully did Luther’s influence reverberate down through the ages that, during a visit to Germany in 1934, Rev. Michael King Sr. chose to change both his and his son’s <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_king_martin_luther_michael_sr_1897_1984/">name</a> to Martin Luther King. MLK Jr., namesake of the great German reformer, would make full use of the power of <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">free speech</a> in catalyzing the American civil rights movement.</p>
<p>In posting his 95 Theses, Luther was encouraging a vigorous exchange of ideas. The best community is not the one that suppresses dissent but one that challenges ideas it finds objectionable through rigorous argumentation. It is largely for this reason that the founders of the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-i">United States</a> took so seriously freedom of religion, free association and the protection of a free press.</p>
<p>Luther trusted ordinary people to discern the truth. All they needed was the opportunity to interpret what they read for themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Luther translated the Greek New Testament into a common German dialect that ordinary people could read, without help from clergy.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/768282017-04-28T20:46:22Z2017-04-28T20:46:22ZTwo key takeaways from the pope’s TED talk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167201/original/file-20170428-12984-63ak08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Francis giving a TED talk.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedconference/34119185532/in/photolist-UdYYGH-TD4v9L-UaiMyh-TYZKfS-TYZKaw-TCY2es-UaiLZb-ikQndv">TED Conference</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pope Francis <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2017/04/25/pope-francis-calls-for-a-revolution-in-surprise-ted-talk/?utm_term=.bde73e1ed7a3">gave a talk</a> at the <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks">TED</a> international conference, which brings in influential speakers, in Vancouver on the evening of Tuesday, April 25. </p>
<p>The talk – a surprise for all in the audience – recapitulated the key themes of the Argentinian pope’s view of the human person: We are all related and interconnected; scientific and technological progress must not be disconnected from social justice and care for the neighbor; and that the world needs tenderness.</p>
<p>I am a scholar of modern Catholicism and its relations with the world of today. From my perspective, there are two essential elements of this talk that are important to understand: the message of the pope and his use of the media.</p>
<h2>Emphasizing Catholic social teaching</h2>
<p>The message of the pope delivered in nontheological language for a larger audience comes at a time of extreme individualization of our lives. What the pope focused on is the <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/catholic-social-teaching-vs-cult-individualism">Catholic social teaching of the “common good.”</a></p>
<p>The principle of common good, as <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html">described by the Vatican</a>, indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.” This principle proposes a society “that wishes and intends to remain at the service of the human being at every level,” to have its primary goal in the “good of all people and of the whole person.” For the human person cannot find fulfillment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists “with” others and “for” others.“ </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/36zrJfAFcuc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Francis’ TED talk.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, there is nothing new about what the pope is teaching, except that he is talking among others to Catholics who have lost the sense of the common good and its importance. The <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/03/10/what-does-catholic-social-teaching-say-about-gop-health-care-plan">recent debates among Catholic politicians</a> about the repeal of health care reform is an example of this. The plan to repeal "Obamacare” included the undermining of the Affordable Care Act’s essential benefits, requirements and protections for people with preexisting conditions: a proposal of the Republican Party under the leadership of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a politician who has <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/paul-ryan-on-the-way-forward-and-the-catholic-faith">never hidden his Catholic faith</a>. </p>
<p>But the pope is not delivering a partisan message, distinguishing between liberal and conservative Catholics. In fact, he is not even distinguishing between Catholics and the others. </p>
<p>The erosion of the idea of “common good” is arguably one of the effects of citizens having been reduced to consumers. This has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-should-we-care-about-pope-francis-visit-to-the-us-47799">caused many divisions</a> between Catholics in the Western world – and particularly in the U.S.: a rift not just around “life issues” (particularly the politics of abortion), but also around the relations between government and the economy. </p>
<p>In recent times, many Catholic politicians, economists and businessmen have embraced a view of the economy that is dogmatic about the sovereignty of the free market. But this is <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html">not the Catholic view of the economy</a> as it was articulated by all popes, at least from Leo XIII’s <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html">encyclical “Rerum Novarum” (1891)</a> until today. </p>
<p>What Pope Francis said in his TED talk is very different from the temptations to turn Catholicism into another version of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/death-the-prosperity-gospel-and-me.html">“prosperity Gospel,”</a> the belief that God grants health and wealth to those with the right kind of faith. This is a <a href="http://catholicnews.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10807:pontiff-warns-against-prosperity-gospel&catid=505&Itemid=473">temptation among many Catholics</a>. He <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript?language=en">said</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“As I meet or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: ‘Why them and not me?’.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Placing the message in context through media</h2>
<p>The second element worth highlighting is Pope Francis’ use of modern communication media. There is no doubt that the internet and social media have changed the way many Catholics interact with the world. If the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century succeeded, it was also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-of-luthers-printing-press/2015/12/18/a74da424-743c-11e5-8d93-0af317ed58c9_story.html?utm_term=.6e1ca86a3955">thanks</a> to the new invention of the printing press. </p>
<p>Religion in the 21st-century global world has changed also thanks to the internet and social media. It has made believers <a href="http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html">more connected</a> between themselves and at the same time more isolated.</p>
<p>All this takes the religious message out of context. What we say and write online tends to be made for a virtual, impersonal sphere: It does not consider the impact on real people. This happens often also for religious messages, especially in light of the <a href="https://cruxnow.com/cns/2016/05/17/vatican-pr-aide-warns-catholic-blogs-create-cesspool-of-hatred/">success of religious and Catholic blogs</a>. A self-proclaimed Catholic blog like <a href="http://www.churchmilitant.com/">“Church Militant”</a> is an example of vitriol projected on other believers.</p>
<p>The pope’s novelty, therefore, is not just about the social and existential world he comes from: <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/buenos-aires-slums-have-shaped-papacy">Buenos Aires of the slums</a>, a capital of the Southern Hemisphere where devotional religion and secularism coexist, instead of <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/11/john-paul-iis-beloved-krakow">Catholic Poland (John Paul II)</a> or <a href="http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/04/18/benedict_xvi_thanks_god_for_native_bavaria_on_90th_birthday/1306503">Bavaria (Benedict XVI)</a>.</p>
<p>It is also about recontextualizing the whole social message of Catholicism in a world where religion is often perceived more about abstract values than about everyday concerns of our fellow human beings.</p>
<p>Pope Francis’ emphasis on the importance to consider the real lives of real people has many implications for the Catholic Church at many levels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Massimo Faggioli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What Pope Francis did in his surprise TED talk was to relate the social message of Catholicism to people’s real lives.Massimo Faggioli, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, Villanova UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.