Origins of the Reformation

WYH2003HS Spring 2003—January 7

Links

Petrarch's story about climbing Mount Ventoux in 1536, sometimes seen as the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance

Resources for medieval England

This website from Paul Halsall at the University of North Florida links to several documents as well as several representations of death (and other themes) in late medieval art

Here's a long bibliography on death in the late middle ages.

An informative, illustrated site discussing death in late medieval art.

 

 

Long-term issues that needed resolution

  • The pope's temporal power (and the princes' spiritual power)
  • Tensions between the authority of Scripture, the authority of the hierarchy, and the authority of reason
  • Popular religion and local religious customs

Late medieval problems

  • Anxiety about death (the painting below by Giovanni di Paolo, 1443, is characteristic)

  • Abuses and failures of the Church ; disappointments with conciliarism
  • Heresy; superstition
  • Growth of nationalism
  • Social and economic changes

Interpretations of the Reformation

  • Mainline Protestant: The late medieval Church was trapped by financial needs and the sacramental system; Luther and other Reformers rediscovered the message of Scripture
  • Mainline Catholic: The late medieval Church recognized its abuses and was working to correct them, but Luther and other Reformers, impatient and not always emotionally balanced, embraced schism
  • Liberal Catholic: The Reformation WAS a late medieval event, and represented an exaggeration of the acknowledged defects of the late medieval Church
  • Whiggish /Enlightenment: The Reformation represented a decisive step towards political freedom, individual conscience, the authority of reason, and the validation of experience
  • Marxist: The Reformation represents a symptom of the bourgeois revolution against feudalism, with signs of the coming revolution of the proletariat
  • Humanist: The Reformation represents the religious side of the Renaissance (ad fontes "back to the sources"; individualism; this-worldliness)
  • Nietzsche: The Reformation represents a revolt against the Renaissance (tribalism against internationalism; other-worldliness against the appreciation of this world)

 

 
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