To understand the issue with indulgences, it is also important to know something about the sacrament of penance, which was the way in which the church promised people absolution of their sins. It involved three actions: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Priests used books called penitentials which listed the appropriate action that would give satisfaction for any given sin.
Because acts of penance were often inconvenient, it became increasingly common to buy an indulgence rather than perform an act of penance. Penitential practices evolved slowly over several centuries. Indulgences were first used during the crusades and promised remission of sins to those who fought in the Holy Land.
Popes then began to issue them to those who made pilgrimages to Rome. By the fourteenth century, funds raised from indulgences were being used to repair and build churches. In , Pope Clement VI began to speak of the treasury of merits, the concept that the church possessed surplus merits that could be purchased.
In , Sixtus IV said that indulgences could be used to help souls in purgatory; in other words, indulgences became transferable from one person to another.
With these developments, penitental practices also began to sound quite financial. In fact, scholastic theologians borrowed metaphors from the expanding money economy and the new science of bookkeeping. It was as though individuals had their own bank accounts with debits sins and credits merits. Each sin committed depleted the account; fortunately, the Church possessed an inexhaustible reserve of surplus measured.
Whatever we may think of this system, it did possess a sort of logical coherence. And it was accepted as valid for many centuries. In summary, by the late Middle Ages, a picture emerges of tight-knit village communities, held together by festivals, by rituals, and processions, and more or less assured that the sacraments of the Church, including the sacrament of penance, would enable them to go to heaven.
However, long before the Reformation began, it was clear that there were cracks appearing in the edifice of the institutional church. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Christian Church was not only the most important religious institution at the centre of European culture, society, and political life.
Over many centuries, the Church had also become thoroughly wedded to the hierarchical class structure of Western Europe. In other words, the Church hierarchy mirrored the social hierarchy, with some bishoprics remaining in the hands of the same noble family over generations. The office of the pope was a hugely important political position, and medieval popes repeatedly claimed authority over kings and emperors. Papal power reached its peak during the twelfth century, but then slowly began to erode.
By , political instability in Rome and political manoeuvering by Philip IV of France resulted in the pope leaving Rome for southern France, where his successors would remain for the next seventy years. The Avignonese popes tended to serve the interests of the French kings. Efforts to return to Rome resulted in the Great Schism in when two rival popes claimed precedence; efforts to resolve the Schism in turn led to a period where three men claimed to be pope.
This institutional chaos ended only in Beginning in the fourteenth century, there was general recognition that the Church needed reform at many levels. In fact, nearly two hundred years before Luther was born, Oxford Professor John Wycliffe — was outspoken in his criticism of the wealth of the church, the immorality of the clergy, and practices such as the veneration of saints. In the s, he began translating the Bible into English and saw the need to make it available in the vernacular languages.
At the Council of Constance of —, one agenda item was the ending the Schism. Another item was the investigation of the ideas of Wycliffe and Hus. Nevertheless, the Church would be increasingly criticized and ridiculed — and the new generation of popes just added to the problems.
By the fifteenth century, the Italian city states were embroiled in endless warfare amongst themselves, yet produced some of the most stunning art and architecture in Western history. The Renaissance popes were men of their time and waged war, plotted against their neighbours, hired Michelangelo and Raphael to decorate their homes, and began rebuilding St.
They did not heed the growing calls for reform. By the fifteenth century, there was a clear cultural and religious disconnect between northern Europe and Italy. Northern Europeans in the Low Countries and the German states had slowly invented their own religious practices, known as the devotia moderna or Modern Devotion.
Groups such as the Beguines emerged, women who wanted to live communally without taking the restrictive vows of the nuns. Schools were founded by the Brothers of the Common Life who taught a new form of introspective Christianity that had more to do with meditating on one's sins, and less with processing around the church with a consecrated host.
One of the classic works of Christian devotion, The Imitation of Christ, was written during this time. Moreover, humanist scholars were beginning to question scholastic theology, considering it too narrow. Italian humanists had rediscovered their own Roman heritage in the works of Cicero, but Northern humanists turned their attention to studying the Bible in the original languages. As he studied the original Greek text of the New Testament, the Dutch scholar Erasmus realized that in some places the Vulgate the Latin translation of the Bible was inaccurate.
Among other things, he noticed that in Matthew and the Greek term metanoeite was used. During this period, there was a significant increase in anticlerical sentiment, expressed in pamphlets and satires that ridiculed the clergy for their greed, lack of morals and lack of education.
The most important development that undergirded this shifting cultural climate in Northern Europe was the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg around It ushered in a technological revolution matched only by the computer revolution of our day.
For the first time in Western history, mass communication was possible. Within fifty years of the invention of movable type, print shops appeared all over Europe in towns and cities, producing books, broadsheets, pamphlets, and images. Also for the first time in Western history, a literate middle class began to emerge; it would become the engine of the Reformation.
Because reading is a solitary pursuit, that literate middle class was necessarily more individualistic, and it is obvious that by the early sixteenth century, people were beginning to worry about their salvation. For both scholars and the new literate middle class, the traditional answers that the Church provided began to sound empty and unsatisfying.
The fact that many of the priests, especially those in rural areas, could not read also led to dissatisfaction. In summary, criticism of the Church increased in the early sixteenth century — not so much because it was more corrupt than it had been, but because the expectations of the laity were higher than they had been, and by all accounts, the Church was not responding to those shifting expectations.
I see that unless by this council or some other means we place a limit on our morals, unless we force our greedy desire for human things … to yield to the love of divine things, it is all over with Christendom. Martin Luther, son of a Saxon miner, was born in Eisleben in He was one of that generation of devout Germans who began worrying about his salvation.
He had attended a school run by the Brothers of the Common Life. He became a monk and was scrupulous about confessing his sins and performing all the acts of penance required — so much so that his fellow monks ridiculed him. In , Luther received his doctorate and became a professor of New Testament at the University of Wittenberg. He encouraged scholars and artists, especially those interested in the new humanistic learning, to come to his territory, and Luther thrived in this atmosphere.
In Wittenberg, in the person of Luther, the issue of the sale of indulgences as an example of a corrupt and outdated Church practice came to a head. To understand what happened, it is important to know the political context. The German-speaking lands were not a unified country, but a conglomeration of small principalities united under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. Needless to say, holding one of the elector positions was politically desirable, especially when elections became imminent.
In , the current emperor, Maximilian I, was rather old. One of the elector positions — that of the Archbishop of Mainz the highest ecclesiastical office in the Empire — was vacant in The Hohenstaufen family was eager to place one of their own in the position. However, their candidate, Albrecht, was underage, and not an ordained priest.
There were ways around this, however, if one could get a dispensation from the pope, and popes were in the habit of granting such dispensations, at a cost. The Pope in question was Leo X, a member of the wealthy and powerful Medici family. Among other activities, he was continuing the building of St. Peter's in Rome. Leo X agreed to sell the office of archbishop to Albrecht for a large sum of money. The family negotiated a loan to pay for it. In order to pay back the loan, they struck a deal with the Pope.
They agreed to allow access to the papal indulgence sellers to their territory, with the understanding that the profits of the sale would be shared.
Albrecht of Mainz would use his share to pay off the family debt, and the Pope could carry on his building programme. Indulgence sellers such as Johann Tetzel — were hired, and the sale was conducted among the German peasantry. Luther was certainly aware of indulgences before this time, but it was sales techniques used by Tetzel that brought the matter to his attention.
Luther began to question the practice of selling indulgences and in response wrote the Ninety-Five Theses. The first two of the Ninety-Five Theses state:. In subsequent theses, Luther questioned the ethics of encouraging peasants to buy indulgences rather than give alms or buy food for their family. He also questioned the authority of the Church to forgive sins, a right that surely belonged to God alone. It is also important to recognize that Luther, a priest and a monk, was raising these issues as an insider.
Scholars have been debating this issue for the last four decades. I understand that was a radical position at the time, given that the Church ruled essentially everything and dissenters were punished, but there is a wide margin between saying greed is bad and breaking away from the Catholic Church and beginning a new denomination. The 95 Theses e do not only address indulgence and indulgences!
First of all, to avoid a possible confusion, the word indulgences, is a difficult word to understand correctly here.
In terms of the Roman-Catholic religion it is not "enjoyment", "pleasure" associated with luxury and greed. In this cases indulgences are letters of absolution, that were on sale at the time. That means whereas before, you had to go to a priest, confess your sins, repent, and then got an absolution from the priest. Now you could just spend some money and be done with it.
No more sins on your register and a clean bill of health for your entry ticket into heaven. Luther was very strongly against this practice. But not because this was a sign of greed of the church. It was a sign of that, to be sure. But it is also and more importantly against core principles of the Christian faith as he came to understand it, and felt that it was seen and practised before.
It is therefor a corruption of the one true faith, only coincidentally enriching the church. That is the core principle here: the church asserted its authority about the faith, claimed to be the only source of salvation and the only source of correct doctrine. Every single statement in these theses are an attack on that with examples given. So your initial reading of "which is heresy in protestantism" already supports exactly that.
He does not say that these indulgences are really and totally bad. They are helpful not least for the church itself , but no one should put any trust and faith into them. Luther developed three principles that for him were the key to understand the Christian faith correctly and achieve salvation: sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura through faith alone, through God's mercy alone, and through the bible alone.
Contrast this against the examples given in the theses: it is not possible to by absolution, since you cannot buy God's mercy. It is not possible to give the pope special powers over the rest of Christianity, since he can neither really dictate the faith of the church members nor is his office mentioned in the bible.
Even the pope cannot grant you absolution and spare you from hell, etc… That means also the sale of letters of indulgence was the starting point, he argued that not even anyone in the church was able to give out dispensation or absolution at all. That is only God's prerogative or ability.
Being an attack on current practices was not meant as the founding document of a new sect. It was firmly rooted within the church to renew and reform the church, to restore it and bring it back onto the true track.
It is important to know that he did not go to a church door with a hammer in his hand, as so often portrayed. He wrote these theses in Latin and s ent them to his superiors. Luther wrote this letter by hand at first, but then he himself ordered a small printing run for the Latin text.
But when a translated version got into press things really sped up. His critique was widely rejected by his authorities, but found his audience anyway. The printing press is key here. One of the arguments in the these is more or less: think for yourself. When people did that, they often found the rest of the arguments quite convincing. Laypersons found the greed and power aspects, theological counterparts the ideological foundation for divergence from the true faith.
Earlier attempts to criticise the recent developments of the church were indeed often centred on finances, when coming from laypeople and centered on some doctrinal teachings when coming from clergyman. But both were confined to oral spheres of influence. Like priests preaching against the church or princes arguing against bishops on in meetings. Now you had a foundational critique on the most glaring misgivings, widely disseminated thanks to the printing press, the discussion also held in the people's language, and all that on a solid foundation of deduction from the highest authority against the pope: the bible.
The resistance of the higher church authorities to anything he mentioned was one key, popular support for a now widely informed, understanding and empowered public was the other factor.
Martin Luther wasn't against "Indulgences. It was not "expressed," only "implied," that if "the Bible is the central religious authority and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds," the church should not be "selling indulgences.
If so, by selling "indulgences" the Catholic Church was selling something it had no title to, in order to trick people into donating money. Then the Catholic Church was a seriously corrupted organization that needed to be replaced by something better. There is another story behind this, which demonstrated in what most might think is a modern phenomenom. The 95 theses were written in Supposedly, Luther didn't nail them to the church door, he posted them on a bulletin board outside of the church, and sent copies to the church leaders.
As the resident theologian, Luther's original intent appears to have been to generate a scholarly discussion amongst church elders for what he saw was the commercialization of faith. Indeed, looking forwards, Alister McGrath argued that we cannot underestimate the impact of the development of print culture on the Reformation.
Within two weeks, the 95 Theses had spread throughout the German Lands; within a matter of months, they were a talking point among much of Western Christendom. Without the printing press, this is a phenomenon whi ch most likely would not have occurred.
The translation of the Latin text into German also helped make the document significant. This therefore meant that they would be able to read the article for themselves and realise just how many of the arguments they identified with or did not identify with, for that matter. The translation also meant that these literate folk could read the Theses aloud to a large audience; Bob Scribner argued that we should not forget the oral nature of the Reformation, beginning with one of the most divisive documents in history.
Finally, the 95 Theses can be considered significant because they were expressing sentiments that many ordinary folk felt themselves at the time.
There had been a disillusionment with the Church and corruption within it for a great deal of time; the Reformatio Sigismundi of is a prime early example of a series of lists detailing the concerns of the people about the state of the Church.
Many of the issues Luther highlighted were shared among the populace; it was due to the contextual factors of the printing press and the use of the German language that made this expression so significant. It would not be surprising if, when posting his 95 Theses on the door of the chapel on the 31 st October , Luther did not expect a great deal to change.
At the time, he did not know what such an act would lead to. The events which occurred due to the Theses led to Luther clarifying his doctrinal position in a manner which led to his eventual repudiation of the decadence and corruption within the Catholic Church and his excommunication. Yet we must remember that whilst the 95 Theses can be considered to constitute an extraordinary shift in the mentality of a disillusioned Christian, they are very unlikely to have achieved the same significance without the printing press.
If the 95 Theses had been posted on the 31 st October , would the result have been the same? Written by Victoria Bettney. Dixon, Scott C ed. Oxford: Blackwell, Lau, Franz and Bizer, Ernst. A History of the Reformation in Germany To Translated by Brian Hardy. London: Adam and Charles Black, Scribner, Robert. Interesting article! That makes you think; should we really be celebrating 31 October as the th anniversary of the Reformation, or should we be remembering a different date?
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