Hi I’m John Green, this is Crash Course
European History. And today it’s time to find out what else
besides money was behind the competition between Spain and England as they fought it out on
the seas and across the globe after 1550. That’s right, today we get to talk about
religion. As you may know, the Internet is terrible
at engaging in nuanced and thoughtful conversations about religion. But if you think like our contemporary religious
discourse is bad, just wait until you get a load of 16th century Europe. INTRO
Okay, so over the centuries the Catholic church had developed a powerful structure under the
papal monarchy. Its courts, religious law, local priests,
and a huge bureaucracy of religious officials enforced its domination. And Catholic ideas of the time backed up social
and political inequality: for example, Church teachings described monarchs and noble people
as closer to God than ordinary people. It also had ideas about how the universe worked
and sought to repress those whose ideas were different, as we’ll discuss further when
we turn our attention to the Scientific Revolution. But in general, Catholic domination of so
many aspects of life produced so much resistance beginning in the early 16th century that European
Christianity eventually split into two, and then split into like 17,000 competing subgroups. It all starts with Martin Luther—a bright
young German man whose father wanted him to become a lawyer, as so many fathers do. So Martin Luther went to law school. But his real concern, even after getting his
law degree, was salvation, so he became a devout monk. Still though, he was agitated, worried about
salvation generally and specifically about Church teachings that faith and good works
were needed to achieve salvation. For Luther, doing good works seemed a bit
like bribery; like wasn’t full faith in God the important thing? This kind of thinking meant that Luther was
on his way to heresy—that is, beliefs that went against the principles of the Catholic
faith. And the heresy of-for instance-denying the
pope’s authority could get you burned at the stake, as John Hus was in 1415. Now many of Luther’s objections to Church
teachings were highly theological, concerning beliefs about, say, whether the word repent
in the Bible can be said to refer to the sacrament of penance. But one of Luther’s objections was not nearly
that obscure, and was much more relevant to ordinary people. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. Okay so in Catholic doctrine there was a state
after death called Purgatory, a kind of holding place
for souls that are not pure enough to ascend to heaven but not bad enough to go to hell. Souls in purgatory can be purified by prayers
from the living, and also purified by tortuous afterlife punishment. And in 1517, the pope issued a special indulgence
to raise money to continue building the splendid St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Purchasing one of these indulgences was said
to release a soul from purgatory--so if you had a deceased friend or family member whose
sins might not have been totally cleansed through their faith and good works,
you could buy an indulgence and get them a ticket to heaven. Now this may sound to you like a naked attempt
to use people’s worry and grief as a cash grab. And Luther agreed. Like, one monk who sold indulgences literally
said, quote “Don’t you hear the voices of your dead parents and other relatives crying
out, ‘Have mercy on us, for we suffer great punishment
and pain. From this, you could release us with a few
alms. … Why do you treat us so cruelly and leave
us to suffer in the flames, when it only takes so little to save us?” I’m not here to criticize any particular
religion but that is a smidge manipulative It wasn’t only Luther who took offense to
this practice. Merchants and artisans also noted that it
seemed a lot like blackmail. Many citydwellers objected to their hard-earned
money going to support the aristocratic children of the wealthy who held high positions in
the clergy and lived in luxury without ever having to, you know, earn money. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So for Luther, salvation wasn’t something
you bought, either by good works or by purchasing indulgences. Instead he believed in salvation by faith
alone and so one should seek to fortify one’s faith. In 1517, Luther, then in his early thirties,
composed “Ninety-Five Theses” expressing questions and differing opinions on these
and many other theological issues, perhaps posting them to the door of the chapel of
Wittenberg. But in whatever form, his ideas spread. Soon, papal documents and books of canon law
were being burned by students during protests as earnest young Christian humanists vented
their anger. And Luther’s initial questioning of the
Church rapidly became rejection: “For we claim the papacy not to be the holy Church,”
Luther stated, “nor any part of it, and we are unable to cooperate with it.” This rejection of the Church as it operated
in the early sixteenth century came to be called the Reformation. Luther began to take on the entire Church
establishment. In European Catholicism at the time, priests
were the authority; THEY read the Bible and then told you what it said. But Luther argued that priests like all people
were themselves sinners, and that the only true authority was the Bible; it was, he argued,
the word of God that provided the relationship with God, not the word of priests. He believed that the hierarchy of priests,
and bishops, and cardinals, and the Pope was inherently corrupt, and that such corrupt
individuals could hardly serve as intermediaries with the divine. Sola scriptura, only the Bible or scripture,
was his motto alongside the keys to salvation: sola gratia and sola fide, only grace and
only faith. The idea of sola scriptura led to a wide-ranging
revolution, especially by boosting reading and individual study. Because suddenly, it was important not just
for scholars to learn to read, but for everyone, because the written word of God was the way
to God. Now at first, authorities didn’t see cause
for alarm, although early in 1521 the Pope did excommunicate Luther. Several months later, Luther was summoned
before representatives of the Holy Roman Empire at the Diet of Worms, which is overwhelmingly
the easiest history term to remember because they literally called it the diet of worms. Leading the assembly in the town of Worms,
Germany was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Oh! Did the globe open? Weird. I don’t get it? I don’t get it, it’s just a can of mixed
nuts what does this have to do with the diet of worms? Oh! Stan. Gah. Very frightening. I have a diet...of worms. That’s good stuff, Stan. Right but back to Charles V. At the time, Charles was nineteen and ruler
of Spain, the Low Countries and Duchy of Burgundy. Also, the entire Habsburg Empire, Italy, and
all the Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere and Southeast Asia, which--if you’ve
ever met or been a 19-year-old, you’ll know is a lot of responsibility for someone who
can’t legally drink wine in America. Although on the otherhand he does look like
he is 50 in this stained glass window of the Diet of Worms. Charles’ rulership of the Holy Roman Empire
was gained- through the votes of electors, who had selected him from other royal or noble
contenders. Among them was the elector of Saxony, Frederick
the Wise, whom Charles had bribed for his vote. Frederick was religious, but not a fan of
the papacy. And many aristocrats saw Charles as threatening
world domination because, you know, he was dominating a lot of the world. So when called to account by such a massively
powerful ruler, everyone expected that an insignificant monk like Martin Luther would
completely fold and admit his errors. But he did not: “I can do no other” he
supposedly said of maintaining his new beliefs. The Holy Roman Emperor declared him an outlaw
to be captured. But German princes took his side, and Frederick
the Wise hid and protected Luther. Why? Well that remains one of the unanswered questions
of history--maybe it was because Frederick was concerned about papal abuses, maybe because
Frederick felt Luther couldn’t get a fair trial, and maybe because he felt that Luther
and the reform movements he was leading would limit Charles’s power. Regardless, after Frederick’s death, his
brother and successor continued to protect Luther and his followers, helping in 1530
to organize the Schmalkaldic League of Protestant Princes to protect the Lutherans, which, I
mean, as names go is no Diet of Worms. On the other hand, if Marvel is looking for
a new superhero franchise how bout the Schmalkaldic League of Protestant Princes? Early in the 1520s, Luther wrote tracts outlining
his beliefs in greater detail. He also translated the New Testament of the
Bible into German--that is, the local language or vernacular instead of elite Latin. And thanks to the printing press, two hundred
thousand copies were printed in the 1520s and early 1530s and many more of his other
writings went into print. The Reformation went from being local to being
German to being a European-wide movement in large part thanks to the printing press. Meanwhile, many German princes took up the
“Lutheran” challenge to the Holy Roman Emperor. If Charles was against reform, many princes
would be for it as a way of restraining the Holy Roman Emperor’s power. Luther summoned them to defend German values
against the corruption found in Rome. And because of that, Luther is sometimes called
the source or father of German nationalism. And then, in 1525, peasants and other village
folk across southern Germany began protesting--eventually including an estimated 100,000 rioters who
sacked castles as well as religious centers. The princes and nobility crushed them--they
could get behind religious reform, but not mass soci al change. And Luther agreed, slamming the rioters in
Against the Rioting Peasants, soon reprinted with the new sensationalist title-- Against
the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants. So, you know, Luther favored some reform,
but not, like, equal rights for peasants reform. All the while, the reform movement spread—and
as it did, it developed offspring. Already in 1519, Ulrich Zwingli, a Swiss priest,
began preaching reform in Zurich. He supported Luther’s main criticisms of
the papacy, but he disagreed on the Eucharist, or communion, a ritual in which worshipers
eat bread and drink wine. Or don’t. Depending on your perspective. Catholic doctrine held that through the miracle
of transubstantiation, the bread and wine literally became the body and blood of Jesus
Christ; Luther argued for something called consubstantiation, in which the bread and
wine are still bread and wine, yet also the body and blood of Christ. And Zwingli believed Communion only to be
a symbolic ritual, in which the bread and wine were just bread and wine. I know this will seem to many of you like
an extremely obscure theological argument that can’t possibly have been important,
but it was--these theological questions were not just a matter of life and death; they
were a matter of eternal life and death. Zwingli’s preachings eventually turned some
of his followers to a more radical interpretation of Christianity. These people were called Anabaptists, they
held that faith was a matter of individual thought and free will. So only a thinking adult could knowingly participate
in Christian faith enough to accept Jesus as lord and savior. Sp they argued that baptism, a cleansing ritual
that had long been performed on infants, should only be available to adults who’ve chosen
to accept Jesus as savior. [[TV: Luther Married]] And as reformers increased
in number and variety, Luther did something else that was really shocking: in 1525, he
got married, even though Catholic clergy were supposed to be celibate. Luther preached that God made two sexes to
procreate and that the clergy’s celibacy was against the divine plan. So he married Katharina von Bora, a literate
young woman who had been in a convent since the age of five, and this was controversial
even among his supporters. One of Luther’s best friends and admirers
lamented that by marrying, Luther “revels and compromises his good reputation precisely
at a time when Germany stands in need of his spirit and authority.” But Luther wrote a lot about marriage, and
sermonized about it too for the princes, nobility, and his growing number of followers. One of these “lectures” refers to the
story of Adam and Eve as written about in the book of Genesis in the Bible: “Moreover
this designation [woman] carries with it a wonderful and pleasing description of marriage,
in which, as the jurist says, the wife shines by reason of her husband’s rays.” “Whatever the husband has, this the wife
has and possesses in its entirety. . . .the result is that the husband differs
from the wife in no respect than in sex...” This certainly wasn’t equality as we now
understand it, what with the wife shining by reason of her husband’s rays, but the
notion of equity of marital property was heresy piled on top of the heresy of clergy marrying. [[TV: An Appropriate Battle]] All of this
led to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V deciding to put down the pesky Protestant princes of
the Schmalkaldic League once and for all in 1546 and 1547 and he almost did so. He had vast resources at his disposal, including
tough soldiers from the Spanish armies, who defeated the League and captured some leading
Protestant princes. And Catholicism appeared to be making a comeback. But then in 1552, the League suddenly took
to the field again, roundly defeating the imperial forces. [[TV: Peace of Augsburg]] In 1555, the Peace
of Augsburg decreed that whoever ruled would determine the religion of his territory. [[TV Window]] And so communities became Catholic
or Protestant based on the religion of their prince. Phew. We really dodged a religious war bullet--nope
no. The Reformation story was not over. Luther had called Church corruption a “horrid
abomination” and its defenders “excrements and vermin”; and those who now entered this
titanic religious struggle in other parts of Europe were just as vehement, even though
following different plots. The finer points of theology continued to
divide people, as did the politics of religion and overseas empire. In short, more bloodshed to follow. We’ll take that up next time. Thanks for watching.
