Reformation Essay Essay, Research Paper
Decades past and present have been plagued by corruption all the way
from the time of Moses to the Nixon presidency. Out of all the corruption
that has occurred it seems that one of the most fraudulent is that of
the Catholic Church. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries the dominating factor that motivated thousands of Catholic clergy,
from the lowest friars to the pope, was money. It started out with the
occasional small sin but escalated until it was out of control. Bishops
were committing the sin of pluralism; cheating the people by not having
ample time to travel and minister to individual towns. Simony became a
stench in the noses of reformists because clergy were selling positions
in the church to anybody regardless of the person’s knowledge of the
church. Luther, as well as other Protestants, strongly disputed the use
of indulgences to fund for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Cathedral
saying, “Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and
passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the
indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.? While the secular and
political leaders strongly opposed Luther and his teachings saying,
“…like a madman plotting the manifest destruction of the holy Church, He
(Luther) daily scatters abroad much worse fruit and effect of his
depraved heart and mind…”, the church was very corrupt and guilty of the
sins of pluralism, simony, and the selling of indulgences.
The first reason for the protests against the Catholic Church was the
practice of pluralism. This form of corruption was made manifest in
Albert of Brandenburg who at an early age acquired the bishoprics of
Halberstadt and Magdeburg and aspired to be the archbishop of Mainz. When he
asked his people to fork over the money to pay for his induction fee
they flatly refused having paid the fees for his previous two titles.
Albert then went to the pope to talk things over and made a deal with him
stating that Albert would pay 10,000 ducats to the pope on top of the
regular induction fee. Then the pope sanctioned the inductions to enable
Albert to reimburse himself and to fund for the St. Peter’s Cathedral.
Pluralism brought protests because it showed the greed of the bishop in
that he would get more money from the sacraments while the people
suffered because they would have to travel great distances to see their top
religious leader.
The second reason that the Protestants revolted against the rule of the
Catholic Church was the practice of simony. The clergy were selling
positions in the church to anybody who had enough money regardless of the
persons knowledge, or lack of it about the church and/or being a
minister. Dietrich Vrie, a German, describes simony stating, “The once
accepted proverb, ‘ Freely give for freely ye have received,’ is now most
vilely perverted: ‘Freely I have not received, nor will I freely give,
for I have bought my bishopric for a great price and must (repay)
myself’…” In this satirical dialogue Vrie speaks the truth about the
corruption within the church. An example of simony in the church is found in
the person of pope Leo the tenth. J. McCabe, the author of Rationalists
Encyclopedia, wrote, “…he bribed his way to the Papal chair through
friends and settled down to a life of vulgar display and sens
enjoyment.” Leo the tenth played an immense part in bringing about the
Protestant reformation, not only through his way of living and his
unawareness of church protocol, but through his corrupt methods of earning
capital namely through the St. Peter’s Indulgences.
The Indulgences for St. Peter’s basilica represented the third reason
for the Reformation. To fund the work being done to the church, Leo the
tenth approved the selling of indulgences to the surrounding
population. The official appointed to conduct the sale of indulgences in Germany,
Johann Tetzel, would march into a city with a cross bearing the papal
arms and would have messengers going before him, announcing, “The grace
of God and of the holy father is at your gates.” He would then preach a
sermon in the city square saying, “Listen to the voices of your dear
dead relatives and friends beseeching you saying, ‘Pity us , pity us. We
are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.’ Hear
the father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter,
‘We bore you, nourished you … Will you let us lie here in flames?
Will you delay our promised glory?’” He would end with his ever famous:
“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings
The soul from purgatory springs.”
When some of Luther’s followers bought indulgences from Tetzel and
asked Luther why he wouldn’t accept them he told the people to repent from
their former lives. Perplexed, they went back to Tetzel and openly
demanded their money back. Tetzel was enraged and declared that he “had
received an order from the pope to burn all heretics who presumed to
oppose his most holy indulgences.” Luther’s attack on the indulgences came
in the form of the 95 Theses stating that the Catholic Church should
abolish the selling of the indulgences saying, “Every Christian who truly
repents has full forgiveness, even without letters of pardon.”
Whereas the powerful leaders in society disagreed with Luther’s ideas
and teachings, writing, “Since…the authority of the Popes is
disregarded, and doubtful, or rather erroneous opinions are alone received, it
is bound to occur that those…(who follow Luther) should be lead
astray…”, the church was responsible for most of the things Luther said
about them and guilty of simony, pluralism, and condoning indulgences.
Corruptness has played a part in history in the secular and religious
world especially as seen in the Catholic church at the time of the
Protestant Reformation. This can be distinguished clearly from a letter
written by Luther in 1535 saying, “A German, making his confession to a
priest at Rome, promised, on oath, to keep secret whatsoever the priest
should impart unto him, until he reached home; whereupon the priest gave
him a leg of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem, very neatly
bound up in silk, and said: This is the holy relic on which the Lord
Christ corporally did sit, with his sacred legs touching this ass’s leg.
Then was the German wondrous glad, and carried the said holy relic with
him into Germany. When he got to the borders, he bragged of his holy
relic in the presence of four others, his comrades, when, lo! it turned out
that each of them had likewise received from the same priest a leg,
after promising the same secrecy. Thereupon, all exclaimed, with great
wonder: Lord! had that ass five legs?”
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