The Reformations – A study in Church History
St. Francis is offering a six-week course on “The Reformations.” You will notice that the plural was used – and its use was intentional. Although popularly known as THE Protestant Reformation, in fact there was no single, coherent, or cohesive movement that marked the end of a united Christianity in the West. The reform movement in Germany differed from those in Switzerland, France, England, and the Low Countries. The six-week course will be but a glimpse into the forces and factors that preceded the reforms, as well as those that followed. Come understand the popes, people, persecutions, and potpourri of life in Europe emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, from monkish manuscripts to the printing press, from “father knows best” to individuals enlivened by the Word of God. Individual weekly course descriptions are below. Come join us!
Wednesday, May 10th – June 21st
7:00 pm – Br. Juniper Room
Sign up here
Session 1: May 10th – The March of Folly
With the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Church found itself increasingly needed in secular affairs and seduced by them. By the Renaissance period of the 15th century, this had led to the formation of the Papal States, the rise of a courtly Roman Curia comprised mainly of lay nobility, a complex means of funding the increasing “empire” of the Church, a culture of corruption, moral laxity, and an obscuring of the lines between the holy and the secular. By the late 15th-century, the Church was unknowingly on what the historian Barbara Tuchman would famously call “the march of folly.” The march reached its zenith in the last six popes before the Protestant Reformation(s). The folly of the papacy and the Roman Curia, pursuing secular goals at the expense of its spiritual mission, bewilderingly ignored the growing outrage and distrust of common people seeking some assurance of salvation and gave birth to the Reformation(s). How did all this happen?
Session 2: May 17th – The Augustinian Monk
The calls for clerical and ecclesial reform were not new in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his call for debate on reform in the typical academic manner: post the topics on the chapel doors inviting everyone to hear the remarks. Martin Luther was but the heir of reform flames that were as far-flung as John Wycliffe in England 150-years prior and Jan Huss in the Czech lands 100-years before. By the time Martin Luther began to proclaim his reformed doctrines, parts of Bohemia were already 90% “protestant.” Why did Martin Luther become the spark that set the flame that divided Western Christian unity?
Session 3: May 24th – The Swiss Reformers
The early Swiss reform under the leadership of men such as Huldrych Zwingli was a very different reform, not only theologically, but also politically. The Swiss Confederation was very different than the German areas that were part of the Holy Roman Empire. Where Martin Luther’s call for open theological debate was the spark in Germany, Zwingli instigated the Swiss spark via “the affair of the sausages.” (1522) With seemingly very different beginnings, how did the Swiss Reform differ from the one in Germany? And what does John Calvin have to do with all of this?
Session 4: May 31st – An English King and Struggle for Power
Most people are well aware of King Henry VIII of England and his marriages, divorces, and affairs, all in search of a male heir to his throne. But did you know that Henry was given the title Fidei defensor (Defender of the Faith, 1521) by Pope Leo X in recognition of Henry’s book Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (Defense of the Seven Sacraments), which defended the sacraments as well as the supremacy of the Pope. And yet nine years later, Henry declared himself to be the head of the Catholic Church in England and its territories, essentially establishing the Church of England. How did all this give new life to the Lollards? What instigated the “Dissolution of the Monasteries?” Why was Queen Mary called “Bloody Mary?” How did all this give rise to the Puritans, Presbyterians, the Methodists, Anglo-Catholics, and Congregationalists?
Break – no class the week of June 4th
Session 5: June 14th – Reformation in the Low Countries
The Reformation in the “low countries” is by far
the most complex. Especially in the city of Antwerp, there were waves of refugees and reformations; first there was a Lutheran, followed by a militant Anabaptist, then a Mennonite, and finally a Calvinistic movement. But who are the Anabaptists? And why did the Calvinists start a religious civil war among themselves?
Session 6: June 21st – The Counter Reformation
And how did the Roman Catholic Church react to all the reforming movements within and outside the Church? That is the story of the Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent, the beginnings of the Jesuits, and the Church in need of reform – but western Christianity divided.