Reformation, the

Reformation, the. Movements for reform in the Christian Church in the West, in the early 16th cent. This was arguably the greatest crisis in Christendom before the challenges of the present time. Modern scholarship no longer seeks to spell out the causes of a reformation movement in simplistic terms, and it is very important to think of reformations in the plural. In some quarters critiques of Roman papal orthodoxy and the Catholic status quo were referred to as the search for ‘a new divinity’; and when the original protestors gained a following, they were known eventually as ‘protestants’. Orthodoxy in the late medieval parish was dominated by what has aptly been described as ‘the mechanics of ritualised religion’, which put faith into non-verbal language. This was deeply affected and called in question by the invention of the printing press.

Prominent in the critical appraisal of the debate, with its distance from pastoral involvement, was Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466–1536). He sought a textual basis for faith. His Colloquies popularized the need for Church reform ‘in head and members’. In his aim to secure religious, moral, and social reform, he anticipated much of the programme later adopted by Luther (1483–1546), and by the Swiss and other ‘protestant’ theologians. His influence was also felt throughout the Catholic Church, not least in his work on the New Testament, writing a critical exposition of the received text. He wanted lay people to read the Bible. In this he was helped by the invention of printing. But it was for others to work out what the pastoral and theological consequences would be of accurate, widely available Bibles, especially when translated into the vernacular.

The lead from university to parish was made by Luther. He is usually remembered for his outburst against the selling of indulgences, and for his challenge to Johann Tetzel (c.1465–1519), Luther's understanding of justification by faith alone (justificatio sola fide) he held out as a ‘re-discovery’ of the gospel. Moving away from Augustine, he understood justification as the instantaneous realization that sinners are forgiven and made righteous by the work of the crucified Christ. By imputation, fallen humanity had been reconciled in Christ to God the Creator. The unmerited grace of the Almighty is conveyed to sinners because of the atoning work of Christ on the Cross (Sermon of the Threefold Righteousness, 1518). Luther's stand as a reformer is far clearer in the Christocentric emphasis of the Heidelberg Disputation (Apr. 1518), with its theology of the Cross, its contrast of ‘law’ and ‘gospel’, and its departure from scholasticism, than in the notoriety he gained by circulating Ninety-Five Theses (Oct. 1517) in order to debate the indulgence controversy.

Nothing in W. Christendom was quite the same again. Already threatened with excommunication (Exsurge Domine gave Luther sixty days to recant), the Edict of Worms (May 1521) outlawed him and placed him under ban for seeking to ‘disseminate errors and depart from the Christian way’. He was saved by another of the key factors in the reformations: the lay ruler of his country, Friedrich, Elector of Ernestine Saxony (from 1486 to 1525), smuggled him into exile. Kidnapped, he was taken to Wartburg, and there, in a seclusion which he called ‘my Patmos’, he worked out the full implications of his stand, with profound consequences. In two tracts of 1520, he had already sought to recruit both secular authority and sympathetic clergy. A third, the celebrated Treatise of the Liberty of a Christian Man (1520), commended the new faith to those who would know Christ. With the aid of Melanchthon (1497–1560), he masterminded a visitation of Saxon churches, and by his Catechisms (1529) he sought to instruct ‘common people’. Embattled in controversy with both radicals and ‘holy Rome’, he proved a natural leader and pastor.

Luther was protected in his ‘reformation’ by a prince. Another reformer, Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), addressed himself to a very different task in his Swiss City State, with different results: Zwingli in Zurich illustrates the way a people's priest (Leutpriester) might work with the civic authorities and, by public disputation, defeat the bishop and his representative in debate. The argument that popular demand could legitimately accomplish the will of God (vox populi being accounted vox Dei) enabled Zwingli to abolish the Mass in Zurich (1525) and to secularize convents and monasteries to fund the common chest.

Again distinct but of huge consequence for the W. Church was the work and ministry of John Calvin (1509–64), who promoted John Knox (the reformer in Scotland, c.1505–72) to proclaim Geneva ‘the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in earth since the days of the apostles’. Calvin, just after he had published The Institutes (Christianae Religionis Institutae, 1536), was diverted to Geneva because of troop movements in the Italian Wars. Recognized by the fiery Farel (1489–1565), he was prevailed on to help those who had only ‘a little while before expelled the papacy’ from their midst. By 1538, when the authorities reacted again and repudiated the reform party, he reached Strasburg, enjoying an influential three-year stay with Martin Bucer (1491–1551). The pause was not to last. In 1541 the Magistracy of Geneva invited him to fill a preaching role at the Cathedral of St Pierre. For the next twenty-five years he became a prophet of Christian order, denouncing the religion of Rome as a legal tyranny and as entirely false by the standards of The Acts of the Apostles and of the organization of the primitive Church. His Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1514) repudiated the role of bishops and priests, arguing instead for the oversight of ordained ‘pastors’ and ‘doctors’ (teachers), and the new lay offices of ‘elder’ and ‘deacon’. The influence of Calvin was direct through his College of Geneva, founded in 1559 to prepare pastors to promote biblical theology throughout Europe (and later, via England, Scotland, and Holland, to evangelize the New World). The definitive edition of The Institutes was published in that year and adopted as a training text. Calvin succeeded in reaching a measure of agreement with Zwingli in 1549 (Consensus Tigurinus) and thus did something to correct the divisive effects of the number of different Protestant reformations.

Unlike the Protestant reformation in Europe, the reformation in England focused first on the needs of the ruler and only secondly on a desire to change theological formulae and lay piety. The earlier protests of John Wycliffe and of the Lollards, and the movement toward vernacular Scripture, tended to be confined to an area and to be successfully persecuted as ‘heresy’. The desire of Henry VIII (1491–1547, r. 1509–47) to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon obliged him to repudiate the restrictions of Roman canon law and ultimately the papacy itself. He used the Parliament of England to help him, and he put in positions of strategic importance Thomas Cromwell (c.1485–1540) and Thomas Cranmer, the former as Secretary and Vicegerent, the latter as Archbishop of Canterbury. They steered a largely reluctant king toward the dissolution of the monasteries, a number of restatements of doctrine, and (most importantly) the order that a Bible in English should be put in every church (1539).

By the time Henry died a Litany in English had been produced, but under his son, Edward VI, liturgical reform began in earnest, with the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, revised in 1552. Had the boy-king lived, reformation in England would have been different: his death in 1553 illustrates the crucial importance of supportive secular authority.

Edward was succeeded by the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Mary. She reinstated the power of the papacy and a medieval liturgy in Latin. Cranmer was burned, and the stage was set for the restoration of Catholicism. It was not to be. In 1558 Mary was succeeded in England by Elizabeth (1533–1603, r. 1558–1603). Elizabeth owed her birth to her father's repudiation of Rome, and she knew the pain that religious upheaval caused. Under her, with the help of Parliament and of Matthew Parker, her able Archbishop of Canterbury, a Protestant settlement of religion was established by law. The Book of Common Prayer of 1552 was adopted with emendations; the Church was to be episcopally governed under the Queen and Parliament. The theological enquiry and defence of the settlement resumed, notably at the hands of John Jewel (1522–71) and Richard Hooker (1553–1600). Gradually parishes in England came into step.

Throughout the 16th cent., the Catholic Church also underwent reformation. This spontaneous movement to reform the religious life, to re-evangelize Protestant countries, and to convert the newly discovered peoples of America and of the East, was associated with the emergence of the new religious Order of Jesuits, under Ignatius of Loyola. Other Orders were reformed, especially in Spain with St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, with an influence still felt today. The attempts by the Council of Trent (1545–7, 1551–2, 1562) to heal the rifts in Christian unity were a failure, but the Council achieved new definitions of justification and a revised liturgy. Papal sovereignty became more firmly entrenched, with permanent status being given to Congregations (committees of cardinals) such as those which formed the Inquisition (1542) and Index (1566) to safeguard Catholic faith and practice.

The resulting transformation of Europe at the hands of different reformers was the rending of the seamless robe. This was the price paid for a Catholic Church no longer as corrupt in its head and members as it had been when Erasmus surveyed it. All the reformations, Protestant or Catholic, needed to use education to their own advantage: schools were founded and refounded, and the advance of literacy meant that reason ultimately replaced indoctrination. The Reformation also did much to awaken social conscience, although not with immediate effect. Philanthropy was on both sides of a great divide—no mean harvest yielded by those whose new-found commitment resulted in lives of thank-offering after the assurance of salvation.

Cultural achievement is more difficult to estimate. There were advances in portraiture and music, as with Cranach (1472–1533) and the Bach family. Above all else, the revolution in printing, a process updated with moveable type and new paper, promoted a quite different spirituality, to give heart and transforming faith that must ultimately symbolize the magnitude of this significant crisis in Christendom.

See also RADICAL REFORMATION.