Keep it short: What was the reason for the Reformation?

[Contarini]

I’m dying to know. Keep it short!

At least three things:

1. A general cultural and religious movement toward reform based on “humanist” scholarship and a return to (what people thought was) a simpler and purer version of Christianity as practiced in the Bible and the early Church.
2. An ongoing struggle among the varying centers of authority within late medieval Christianity–most simply, a struggle between the church and the civil authorities. The latter considered themselves the divinely authorized leaders of the Christian community, and were trying to establish a more efficient and “rational” system of governance.
3. The idiosyncratic theology of “faith alone,” deeply informed by the Bible and St. Augustine but unprecedented in at least some of its features, developed by an unstable theological genius named Martin Luther.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

Not a good book if you actually want to correct inaccuracies instead of compounding them!

Edwin

I’ve collected Belloc for over 45 years. I agree. He is a great read, but not a great historian.

GKC

 

[ralphinal]

Three things: misunderstandings, miscommunications and misdirection.