How the Renaissance Led to the Reformation (Part I)

ChicoER Gate ^ | 6/9/10 | Chuck Wolk

[OneVike]

(This is the first installment of a five part series on the Protestant Reformation)

I am presenting you the first part in a series of five articles about the great Protestant Reformation. In this series I will present various historical aspects I believe worked together to create the atmosphere needed for the Reformation to take place. I do not mean to diminish the contributions of any of the many individuals or events that will be left out of my series, but in order to be as concise as possible I will inevitably fail to give proper credit to some. I believe the six areas I have settled upon cover most of what is needed to make my point.

• Part I ------ An Introduction and Overview of the Renaissance
• Part II ----- Political and Social Changes
• Part III ---- Literature
• Part IV ---- Art, Inventions & Explorations
• Part V ----- Conclusion

An introduction and Overview of the Renaissance

Never in history has one man's thesis so rattled the powers that be, than did Martin Luther's when he nailed his ninety-five grievances to the Church door at Wittenberg. It was an act of defiance that would eventually topple a church state organization that held sway over kings and paupers alike for a thousand years. And while every history class that covers the reformation will tell you that it was Johann Tetzel's selling of indulgences that pushed Luther into action that day, Tetzel's action was only the final straw, not the cause of the revolution. At the time the Reformation began, there were many factors that enabled and emboldened the common man into action but none was more profound in it's influence then was the Renaissance.

Encyclopedias and history books all seem to point out that the word Renaissance is French for "rebirth". However, the Italian painter Giorgio Vasari was probably the first person to describe this era as the "Renaissance" when he used the word rinascità in a book he authored in 1568. The book was titled, "Le vita de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, ed scultori italiani" ("The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors") the more commonly used title is, "Lives of the Artists". Vasari applied this concept specifically to a "revival", or "rebirth", in the chapter titled "Andrea di Cione, Spinello, Dello, and Paolo Uccello" where he wrote;

"In the year 1350 was formed the Company and Fraternity of the Painters in Florence, for the masters were there in great numbers, and they considered that the arts of design had been born again in Tuscany, and indeed in Florence itself."

The Renaissance started in southern Europe or the Italian city-states while the Reformation started in northern Europe or Germany. There is a debate as to whether the Renaissance ended when the Reformation started, or continued up to the Age of Enlightenment. To make things even more interesting the Renaissance started at different times in various parts of Europe. There are also numerous dates given as to when the Renaissance took place, and depending on your source it started anywhere from.....

(Excerpt) continue reading this article at ChicoER/Gate...

[OneVike]

It's my hope that someone will enjoy my take on the events leading up to the Protestant Reformation, and what I consider to be the leading factors leading to Martin Luther nailing his thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Church.

I am posting my series in several posts today, because I will be out of town and away from a PC this weekend.

[cardinal4]

There certainly were reasons for Luther to do his thing. The Church had gotten corrupt and lazy. But like elections, Reforms have consequences and now we have Christian Churches with gay women in the pulpit.

The Reformation was not a good thing in my opinion..

[OneVike]

Article Ping!

I offer you a five part series I wrote on the Protestant Reformation. I am posting all five parts today, but I am pinging my list but this one time. You can follow any of these 5 Roman numbers to read my series of,
“How the Renaissance Led to the Reformation”
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V .......

• Send FReep Mail to OneVike to get [ON] or [OFF] article and video Ping List •

Article Ping!

[OneVike]

Under your reasoning, God should not have given us free will. After all, look at all the evil we did.

Fear of bad results should never be the reason for limiting anyone’s freedom of Religion, or their right to read the Scriptures.

For hundreds of years that was the guideline the Catholic church used. From history we learn it was a very bad thing to do.

[cardinal4]

I took what was perceived as an Anti-Catholic stance in a blog post that I posted here. I was attacked by some because I had fallen (they claimed) for the negative stories and legends about the Church. It cannot be denied that indulgences, concubines and paternity by Bishops and Clergy was off message. Nor can it be denied that these corruptions led to the Reformation. And that is my biggest beef with the Church-(and I am a Catholic)that they allowed the Church to fractured..

[jroneil]

Loss 200-300 million Catholics in Europe
Gain 500 million in America’s because Our Lady of Guadalupe
True Reform in the Catholic Church
St John of the Cross
Saint Theresa of Avalon
Francis de Sales
Ignatius of Loyola
Council of Trent
The Catholic Church grew and reformed as it will again after the present crisis has run it course

[OneVike]

As you said, the church itself allowed the reformation, by not cleaning house when they should have.

If a man does not do that which God wants him to do, then God will get the job done with others.

The Catholic Church was given enough rope by God, and the church leaders used that rope to hang themselves instead of fixing and reforming the church as He demanded.

[muawiyah]

Frankly, I like to start the Protestant Reformation with Rene of Anjou's rug trade with the Turks.

He had boats that sailed to Iceland for wool. it was taken to France, carded, cleaned and turned into twine.

He then shipped it to the Ottoman Empire where they farmed it out to be turned into rugs which were then sold back to Rene who sold them to European nobles all up and down the Loire and the Rhone (where he, himself, had magnificent estates).

Ideas flowed from East to West, and West to East along that trade route for wool and rugs, and Rene wasn't alone. In the meantime the Turks completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire, and Christopher Columbus learned how to sail on Rene's boats while his brother figured out how to replicate John of Portugual's work with maps. Chris even married one of the Braganza family's various princesses (Jao's cousins).

Rene added three permanent concubines to his apartments hither and yon, and was made a Cardinal. He also married the grand-daughter of the last French Capetian King, and was a cousin to the first FrenchBourbon King.

His best friends in his youth were the Two Johns who escorted Jeanne d'Arc through France. He, himself, represented her and her interests at the French court! He was once held prisoner by the Duc du Boulogne, but was bailed out by a neighbor who appears to have owned most of the gold in Europe ~ Rene allowed him to purchase land after his release ~ and in a society where land was never sold, only conquered or inherited, that was a marvelous gift. Frankly, it was revolutionary, and France would never be the same again.

The thought here is that a single man whose only talent was hobnobbing with the most famous and important people of his time also became the most educated man of his day as the Renaissance came into being.

As such he fought a war with Padua to free Leonardo d'Vinci to come to France to preside at a new university that he, Rene, had talked the French king into building for him.

This one man's grand children and grand children were inspired as few people have ever been and went on to create the Huguenot movement in France as well as the d'Guise movement in opposition to the Huguenots. In other venues English Protestantism found a sponsor in Henry VIII, his grandson who ruled England, and Spanish adventure and conquest began with Ferdinand and Isabella ~ the first one of his grandsons, and the other one of his closer cousins.

Others disabled the Duc d'Boulogne, asserted dominance in Italy, neutralized the Portuguese (which led to Portugal's absorption by Spain in the early 1500s).

Honest to goodness, I've been studying this man's life for the last 30 years in as much detail as is possible, and for the life of me I cannot find one thing he himself did that was terribly important, but he knew how to find important people and advance their interests.

It was like he was the major lobbyist of his time ~ someone we'd imprison these days (which happened in his time too).

Oh, yes, he encouraged the construction of some novel castles with toilets that drained into flowing streams, not just moats!

[GOP Poet]

Thanks for the posts. I will read all later.

[jroneil]

If you read the history of the reformation most of the Catholics could not believe what the reformers believed and just thought they were crazy and they would come to there senses. The Catholic Church would not even discuss the issue because they felt it was wrong and there point had been laid out for 1500 years and you should just know it

[OneVike]

While I do not deny that Rene of Anjou's rug trade with the Turks, had an important roll, he was not the only trader to deal with the east.

Fact is the Crusades opened up the trade routes to the east and that is what i write about when I cover the merchants like the Medici family that played a huge part in both the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Many factors involved, and as I said in the beginning,

In this series I will present various historical aspects I believe worked together to create the atmosphere needed for the Reformation to take place. I do not mean to diminish the contributions of any of the many individuals.or events that will be left out of my series, but in order to be as concise as possible I will inevitably fail to give proper credit to some.

So I do not discard what you added, I just deny that he alone was the spark that set it all off.

[muawiyah]

I didn't argue that he set it all off, but he seems to have been exceedingly meaningful in bringing France into play.

We might also note that the Medici in Italy were newcomers (mid 1400s) when it came to Rene's family (Bourbon). He was also the titular King of Sicily. However, he definitely rang some chimes when he stole da Vinci right from underneath the Medici!

BTW, his rug trade with the Turks occurred simultaneously with the 1453 loss of Constantinople to the Turks ~ which he and other Renaissance folks simply ignored (much to the eternal pique of the Greeks).

I encourage you to always make sure that you note Rene since he was definitely a wild hair, as were his immediate descendants, and they played both parts ~ that of the Protestants and of the Catholics ~ in the Reformation. Without knowing about Rene most folks would be totally unaware that the Reformation started at the TOP ~

[D-fendr]

To sum up:

Reform good; heresy bad.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Alex Murphy]

Thanks for the ping, OV!

....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it.

The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.

History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....

....In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”
-- from the thread John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty

Related threads:
John Calvin, Calvinism, and the founding of America
Calvin's 500th Birthday Celebrated: Critics and Supporters Agree He was America's Founding Father
AMERICA AND JOHN CALVIN
America's debt to John Calvin
Lessons to be learned from Reformation
Theocracy: the Origin of American Democracy
American Government and Christianity - America's Christian Roots
The Faith of the Founders, How Christian Were They
John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty
The Man Who Founded America
The Puritans and the founding of America
Perhaps Puritans weren't all that bad
Who were the Puritans?
Bible Battles: King James vs. the Puritans
The Heirs of Puritanism: That's Us!
The real Puritan legacy
In Praise of a Puritan America
Are new 'Puritans' gaining?
Foundations of Faith [Harvard's "Memorial Church" and the university's Puritan roots]
Bounty of Freedom [Puritans, Yankees, the Constitution, and Libertarianism]
The Pilgrims and the founding of America
Thanking the Puritans on Thanksgiving: Pilgrims' politics and American virtue
New World, New Ideas: What the Pilgrims and Puritans believed, about God and man and giving thanks
Pilgrims in Providence
A time for thanks
Judge reminds: Faith ‘permeated our culture’ since the Pilgrims
In its 400th year, Jamestown aspires to Plymouth's prominence [huzzah for the Pilgrims!]
Rock of Ages and the rebel pilgrims [understanding the times re Augustus Toplady's famous hymn]
The Protestant Reformation and the Founding of America
Reformation Faith & Representative Democracy
A Moral Vision [Oliver Cromwell, the American Revolution, and Pluralism]

[OneVike]

I encourage you to always make sure that you note Rene since he was definitely a wild hair, as were his immediate descendants, and they played both parts ~ that of the Protestants and of the Catholics ~ in the Reformation. Without knowing about Rene most folks would be totally unaware that the Reformation started at the TOP

Oh IO will, and when I re-edit my thesis, (as I do often) I promise to investigate him more thoroughly and add the necessary information so that he get credit where it is due.

Thanks for the heads up. One day I plan on using this and writing a book about my take and so the more information I am offered the better my book will eventually be.

So if I failed to thank you for the information, I apologize and thank you now. ,

[OneVike]

Yes

[muawiyah]

Quite alright. I use Rene's life as a touchstone for going backward and forward in European history ~ Barbara Tuchman used the Black Plague for that ~ problem is so many people died record keeping suffered, and even the French royal family's genealogical resources are cr*p as a consequence.

Edward could tell you all about it.

By the time Rene came along the French were keeping great records compared to what went on during the Black Death ~ they are still far from perfect. In recent times many tons of those records have been digitized and dumped on the internet!

I love it!

BTW, check out Barthélemy d'Eyck. This guy was one of Rene's "followers". Most of the material about Rene when found in relationship to Barthelemy IS ERRONEOUS ~ wrong genealogies, wrong ownerships, wrong locations ~ but that in itself gives every researcher into the mid 1400s a good understanding of just how nasty record keeping had been earlier.

Just checking the Wicki to see what they had to say and they've confounded Rene with a fellow who was Jeanne de Laval's Uncle ~ and not a brother to a king at all ~ just an inlaw to a daughter. The way that happened was that guy had obtained control (and titles) to several of Rene's castles! Typical Medieval records problem ~ confounding the tenant with the landlord!

[D-fendr]

Yes

Now if we could only agree on who's the heretic.

:)

[OneVike]

Thanks Alex.

I’ll bookmark the links and look into them.

As you know I am always open to learning more.