attempts to reform the church before Martin Luther => John Wycliffe (England)
     Jan Huss (Bohemia)
- they prepared the ground for the Reformation

Luther => emphasis on personal relationship
                (the Church did not hold the keys to the kingdom of Christ; the faith was the important element)

- people => resented the worldliness and lack of piety of the clergy
- the German townsmen => objected the money flowing to Rome
- nobility => interested in the church lands + sought to resist the centralizing efforts of the Holy Roman emperors
- peasants => mistakenly viewed Luther as a champion of social reform

Luther's confrontation with the church => violent conflict between Catholic and Protestant rulers => which was settled in a piecemeal fashion by the Peace of Augsburg (1955)
Lutheranism => precipitated a rebellion of the peasants against their lords => the rebellion was crushed by princes with Luther's support

Outside Germany => the success of the Reformation => derived from John Calvin

John Calvin => stressed a legal (not a personal) relationship between the individual and God
Calvin: God's laws must be rigorously obeyed; social and moral righteousness must be eagerly pursued, and that political life must be carefully regulated
Calvin - fostered stern men and women willing to suppress vice in themselves and others
=> it produced revolutionaries willing to defy temporal authority

France: Catholicism - victorious; after a brutal civil war (BUT: toleration for Huguenots (Protestants) was decreed by the Edict of Nantes - 1598)

Spain: Protestantism - no success

Italy: many sects (Protestant) emerged; Catholicism still remained the dominant religion

England: Reformation - initiated not by religious reformers but by King Henry VIII

For the religious reformers - freedom => was a spiritual, not a social, concept
BUT: the Reformation did trigger revolts among poor and oppressed artisans and peasants

- the Catholic Church - responded to the challenge of international Protestantism in a number of ways
    - the Jesuits - a new monastic order founded to combat heresy
    - the Inquisition - was expanded
    - books that were considered dangerous - censored and burned
    - the Council of Trent modified and unified church doctrines and fought corrupt practices

- the Reformation - contributed to the modern age => weakened the power of the Church; shattered the religious unity (from the Middle Ages); supporting resistance to monarchical authority => which they believed defied God's law => Protestant reformers contributed to the growth of political liberty

Max Weber: Protestantism fostered the spirit of capitalism

BUT: capitalism existed already in Italy - a Catholic country