A Little About the Reformation
The Reformation formally began with Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in the town of Wittenburg, Germany in the year 1517. Luther was an Augustinian monk and had become angered about the Pope’s selling of indulgences to raise funds for the Church.
An indulgence involved a parishioner giving the Church a large sum of money and the Church getting one’s family members out of purgatory and moved onto heaven. The center of Luther’s angst was one Johann Tetzel, a clergyman who was dispensing God’s forgiveness for pledged indulgences.
Luther was also concerned that bibles were chained to the walls of Churches and written in Latin rather than the languages of the congregants. He taught that the bible is the authoritative Word of God and that Faith Alone in Jesus Christ leads to Salvation.
Luther had hoped to force the Catholic Church to make reforms under wide spread public pressure but it became apparent when he was called to defend his teaching at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518 that the Catholic Church felt no urgency to reform. Three years later Pope Leo X issued a papal bull giving Luther 120 days to recant after which he was summarily excommunicated.
Although Luther had no great desire to leave the Catholic Church he had to concede that having been excommunicated, in 1521, he had no real choice. Thus began the Protestant Church under the guidance Martin Luther and his contemporaries Calvin, Zwingli and Knox. All of whom strongly opposed the the Pope and the Catholic Church on the basis that the Roman Catholic Church had moved away from the tenants of Christianity and that there was a need to reform the Church and to move back toward the centrality of the gospel as it is outlined in the Holy Bible. The Reformation had begun.
Martin Luther
Born in November 1483. Martin was the son of middle class peasant laborers, Hans and Margarethe Luther, who lived in the town of Eisleben near Berlin. His father was a miner and worked hard to provide an education for his son. By the age of 21 the younger Luther had obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Erfurt following his father’s wish that he become a lawyer.
However, nearly struck by lightening in a rainstorm Martin had an epiphany and promised God that if he spared his life he would become a monk. Holding true to his word he joined the monastic community at Erfurt and became an Augustinian monk in 1505.
Luther was troubled by insecurities relating to his salvation and he was also disillusioned at the moral depravity amongst the Roman Catholic Priesthood that he had witnessed first hand on a trip to Rome. Even ordination in 1507 didn’t seem to help him and in order to deal with his fears he moved to Wittenburg, in 1511, to earn his Doctorate of Theology. Luther began to deeply study the bible, in particular the epistles of Paul. He came to understand that he was ‘saved by grace through faith alone.’ He changed the focus of his preaching and began to preach Christ Jesus as our only mediator and that men are saved by grace and not the works that they perform.
Luther became a priest at the Castle Church in Wittenburg and congregants gathered in numbers to hear the gospel preached honestly and with the authority of God’s word. Luther came to hear of the Pope selling indulgences to cover the building of St Peters Basilica and was incensed that the corruption of the Church was such that it would mislead the people that their loved ones could be passed through purgatory and into heaven immediately the indulgence was issued. He felt this practice was a clear abuse of the Churches power.
This led Martin Luther to post his Ninety Five Theses on the Castle Church’s door. So began the Reformation and the fulfillment of John Huss’s prophecy that God would raise a man that the Roman Catholic Church would not be able to stop. He was excommunicated and his writings banned at the Diet of Worms but this did not slow him at all.
Luther continued to preach at Wittenburg. He managed to stay out of Catholic clutches and even arranged Christian school’s, and wrote the larger and smaller catechisms, and published a book of hymns. He also found time for marriage to Katherine von Borra an ex-nun and the two raised six children in the abandoned Augustinian Monastery.
He suffered from arthritis and a heart condition as he aged. He assisted in writing the Augsburg Confession in 1530 which became the Lutheran Churches main confession. He was on a mission to settle a matter of inheritance for the Princes of Mansfield at Eisleben when he died in February 1546. Two of his sons were with him and his body was returned to Wittenburg for the funeral. He was buried in front of the pulpit in Castle Church and can be visited to this day.
John Calvin
Considered to be the successor to Martin Luther and the most influential Protestant theologian in the development of the Reformation. He was born in France in 1509 in Noydon, Picady and as a youth became a student of Theology in Paris. His father felt he would do better at law and he spent the 1520’s studying a subject that he did not like at the University of Orleans. During this time he studied the classics in particular Plato, and Aristotle, and learned Greek.
At about this time the teachings of Luther reached France and Calvin was much affected by the Godliness of Luther’s teaching. Despite being much hardened by what he termed as papal superstition and his flirtation with renaissance humanism God reached his heart and drew him close to the Savior.
Calvin joined the Reformation when he converted to the evangelical faith and was marked out as a Lutheran and a wanted man. He fled France to travel to Free Strasborg in 1536. This was shortly after having penned the work ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’ in an attempt to frame the main precepts of Protestantism. He was a great scholar and prolific writer
Calvin, his sister and two friends put up for the night at an inn in the city of Geneva. William Farrel, the minister of the local Protestant Church, heard the Calvin was in town and hurried to visit him. He accosted Calvin trying to encourage him to preach in his church. Calvin told him that he was a scholar not a preacher to which Farrel replied with a curse on Calvin before God should he not stay in Geneva. John Calvin felt the hand of God’s calling and could not bring himself to continue his travels.
He was briefly forced to move away from Geneva when anti-Protestant factions moved to clamp down on the Reformers. He fled with Farrel and headed once more to Strasburg where he was a pastor for three years and married and Anabaptist widow. Idellete de Bure, who came with two children. He returned in 1641 and became a political leader as well a preeminent theologian for the Protestant movement in Geneva.
He believed that the Church should mirror the principles laid out in the Holy Scripture and drove himself mercilessly preaching twice on Sundays and every day of alternate weeks. As he aged he became steadily more authoritarian and worked so hard that his body began to fail. He passed away in 1564.
He is of course the father of Calvinism. A very great legacy along with his being credited with the establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland, the Puritan Movement in England and the Reformed Church in the Netherlands.
Ulrich Zwingli
Zwingli was a Swiss contemporary of Germany’s Martin Luther. Born, in Wildhaus Switzerland, to farming parents in 1484. He attended university at Universities of Vienna, Berne, and Basel. He achieved a B.A. in 1504 and an M.A. in 1506. He was ordained a priest in 1506 and became a follower of Erasmus of Rotterdam. He obtained a copy of Erasmus’ translation of the New Testament in Latin and was soon preaching on it.
He married widow Anna Reinhard in 1524. There was controversy that he had secretly married her in 1522. It was rumored that he had been living with her out of wedlock. In any case, Anna had three children and the couple soon added a fourth.
Zwingli is, surprisingly, the lesser known reformer given that he opposed the Catholic Churches selling of indulgences, in Switzerland, before Luther and also opposed clerical celibacy and fasting during Lent. His followers famously eating sausages in public to break their fast. Zwingli was City Chaplain of Zurich at the time (1523), and he presided over the removal of statutes and paintings of Mary, Jesus and the Saints from churches.
Philip of Hess attempted to unify Germany and Switzerland under one religious system. Unfortunately Luther and Zwingli disagreed about the communion sacrament with Luther believing that the wine and bread were the literal blood and flesh of the Savior and Zwingli believing that the wine and bread were symbolic of blood and flesh of the Savior.
Zwingli believed that the Catholic Church was guilty of much abuse and corruption and that there was a need of reform. He believed that the bible should form the center of Church theology and doctrine. His reforms were well received at the time when several countries were moving to extricate themselves from Papal oppression.
Sadly, this lead to conflict within Switzerland and Zurich was attacked (1531). Zwingli enjoined the fray as chaplain of the forces defending the city. The city fell to the Roman Catholic forces and Zwingli’s body was found burned and quartered and, desecrated after the battle. One of many who died for the Christian freedoms that we have enjoyed up until the current era.
John Knox
John Knox was born in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland between November 1513 and November 1514. He was a preeminent theologian scholar and religious leader and a leader of the Scottish reformation in the sixteenth century. He was a contemporary of John Calvin.
Knox was born to a middle class farming family and received his education at University of Glasgow and the University of St Andrews studying theology under John Major, a leading Scottish scholar, who was a proponent of conciliar church government as opposed to the abuses common to the Roman Catholic Church at the time.
He started his working life as a body guard to George Wishart in the 1540’s. Reformation propaganda continued to arrive in Scotland from Europe. Wishart was a leading Reformer at the time and Knox formed an attachment to his preaching. Wishart was arrested and burned the stake as a heretic. He sent Knox back to care for his students.
Knox began preaching at St Andrews and spoke aggressively against the Catholic Church. Knox railed against indulgences, pilgrimages, enforced pilgrimages and celibacy as being in conflict with the doctrine of Salvation by Faith Alone. He also declared that the Pope was the Antichrist. Apart from being narrow minded in the extreme he became one of the most influential preachers of the Reformation.
In 1547 St Andrews castle was attacked by the French and Knox was arrested and made to row in French galley’s for two years. After his release he went to England and became minister at the protestant congregation in Berwick and then moved on to a congregation in Newcastle.
While at Berwick he met his first wife, Marjorie Bowes a fellow protestant and avid reader of the bible. She would later become the mother of two son’s with Knox. In 1551 Knox became a Royal Chaplain, preaching before King Edward IV and helped to revise the second edition of the Book of Common Prayer.
Knox was fervently against the practice of Kneeling for Holy Communion and had a note added to the Second Book of Common Prayer stating that kneeling to receive Holy Communion did not imply acceptance of the doctrine of Transubstantiation (That the bread and wine were the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ). This reflected Thomas Cranmer’s position on the sacraments and not Knox’s. Thus he refused to kneel to receive the sacraments himself.
Edward VI died in 1553 and Mary Tudor took the throne. A devout Catholic. Thus the Reformation came upon stony ground during her reign. Knox not wishing to become a martyr at the time fled to France and then Geneva in 1554. Where he studied under John Calvin and wrote his book ‘Trumpet Blasts of Women…” This was largely pitched against the rule of Mary Tudor and made more than a few enemies for Knox including Elizabeth I of England.
After Twelve years abroad Knox was finally able to return to Scotland in 1559 to assume his role as leader of the Reformation and became minister of St Giles Church. He wrote a dissertation on Predestination in 1560 and his wife Marjorie died that year. He was also able to negotiate a treaty with England and France which saw both countries armed forces withdraw from Scotland. The Scottish Parliament abolished the Papal Authority and outlawed the Catholic Mass.
In 1564 Knox married teenager, Margaret Stewart, who bore him three daughters. His Book of Common Order became the official book of Church Worship in Scotland. Knox’s enmity toward the Queen deepened as she continued to oppose Protestantism. It brought civil war and strife in Scotland and this took it’s toll on Knox’s health. He gave his last sermon at St Giles on November 9 1572 and died five days later. He was buried at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.
Needless to say these four leaders of the Reformation although hugely influential in the process of the Reformation were by no means the only people who can be said to have brought the Reformation into being. Martyrs like John Huss, William Tyndal and many others gave their lives to bring about the chance of Reformation that enabled God to use the foundation of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Knox to build upon. Below is a link to a Wikipedia page listing the martyrs in the English Reformation alone. On assumes many more gave their lives in Europe. As Tertullian said of the Martyrs of Rome. “The blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church.”
Please note that this article is as always just my opinion and therefore only an opinion piece. It is by no means exhaustive as there are many well written biographies of the four gentlemen mentioned above. There are many well written and exhaustive narratives of the Reformation era as well. No this is just a brief article to rouse the interest of the reader to look into the the amazing events that God used to free the Church and spread the gospel abroad. It could be said that the Reformation laid the groundwork for a period of religious freedom and Christian expansion that has lasted five hundred years. No small achievement or wonder.
Reference List
Biography.com Editors Martin Luther Biography (1483–1546) https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/martin-luther
Fairchild, Mary. "Biography of John Knox, Scottish Theologian, Founder of Presbyterianism." Learn Religions, Aug. 28, 2020, learnreligions.com/biography-of-john-knox-4775110.
Fairchild, Mary. "Martin Luther Biography." Learn Religions, Aug. 25, 2020, learnreligions.com/martin-luther-biography-700828.
John Calvin: Father of the Reformed Faith https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/theologians/john-calvin.html
Jack Zavada Biography of Ulrich Zwingli, Religious Reformer in Switzerland
https://www.learnreligions.com/ulrich-zwingli-biography-699999
List of Protestant martyrs of the English Reformation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Protestant_martyrs_of_the_English_Reformation
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