Question

Martin Luther launched a movement called the Reformation, which led to a new form of Christanity called Protestantism. Write two paragrahs explaining what caused this Reformation.

Answer 1

Answer:

The Reformation, or Protestant Reformation, is a movement launched by a German monk called Martin Luther, this Reformation was caused by several events at the beginning of the 16th century. These causes include:

• monetizing religious activities
• excesses on the part of the Catholic Clergy
• using Latin as the primary language for printing the Bible.

Explanation:

There was a rift between the Catholic Church clergy and the peasants caused by the fact that the clergy led extravagant lives indulging in greed and excesses, and ignoring the needs of the populace in the process. Added to this is the fact that the clergy often do not speak the local languages which led to a loss of their prestige with the locals. The people then started criticising the Church.  The grievances the peasants had against the Church were: that the Bible was only printed in Latin, and this was under the control of the church by a system of censorship; the Catholic Mass was also in Latin, which prevented the people from checking whether the priest was actually saying the correct things; the church monetized religious acts and sold tickets of forgiveness from sins for money, which suggested that the rich could buy their way into Heaven while the poor peasants could not.; and most of the priests did not know enough about Christianity, because religious posts were often sold to the highest bidder, consequently they told the people many different things that had little to do with what was written in the Bible.

Also, in 1515, the Pope tried to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica through a campaign where preachers sold indulgences to people, promising that money could release souls from purgatory. Whereupon Martin Luther, a German Catholic monk decided that enough was enough, and he sent his 95 theses to the local archbishop in protest in 1517. The theses were points that Martin Luther wanted to debate, most of them relating to the problems caused by the sale of the indulgences. He said that selling forgiveness for money urged people to commit more sin and made them give less money to the poor. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were translated into German and sent to many places, garnering the people’s support, which the Catholic Church tried to stop in vain, Luther was then considered an enemy of the Pope and was expelled from the Church when he refused to surrender his ideas. This was not part of Luther’s plan in the beginning, he merely wanted to reform the Catholic Church and not separate from it or create a new religion; but his sending the 95 theses to the Church sparked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.