Protestant and Catholic Reformations

In the early 16th century, the protestant reformations took place under the leadership of Martin Luther, a monk from Germany. The reformations took place due to the state of the church. Martin Luther claimed that the Catholic Church was corrupt and unfair and that it should be reformed.

There were calls for reformations of other things in the church such as the language in which the bible was written in. the bible was written in Latin yet only few people spoke an dread Latin while the majority of the Christians could not speak or read Latin. Martin also claimed that the church sold forgiveness and it was immoral. According to Brown (2008), the idea behind the reformation of the protestant was very simple. That the church should change and reform so that it becomes less greedy, fairer and accessible to all people ad not just the educated and the rich.

He stressed that people could only win salvation by faith in God’s forgiveness.The reformations of the Protestants and the Catholics led to various changes. There were political, social and religious changes that resulted from these reformations. Religious changes occurred to the church when the reformists following in the footsteps of Martin Luther spread Protestantism in many parts of the world. To counter the increasing Protestantism, the Catholic Church made counter reforms to its internal order.

In some countries like France, war broke out between the French Catholics and Protestants. The protestant reformation brought about social changes too. According to Brown (2008), Social changes were realized through increased capitalism, growth of towns and cities, invention of the printing press for the bible and the renaissance of the art to propagate the gospel of reformation.The context in which the protestant reformation took place made many protestant believe that it was a divine providence. According to Varges (2009), the political context in which the protestant reformation took place revolved around Saxony in Germany, the Holy Roman Empire and the political systems in France, Spain, Italy and England. Spain was the strong hold of the catholic territory since at the time; it was the home of the Roman Empire’s King.

Due to the existence of many Catholics, Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain. The political divide in these countries and kingdoms encouraged the spread of protestant reformation (Brown, 2008).The protestant reformation took place in the early 16th century after the previous attempts had failed. Martin Luther led the reformation and its objectives were to reform the church so that it became fairer, less greedy and accessible to all people. Due to these protestant reforms, the Catholic Church started counter-reforms that were aimed are reducing the spread of Protestantism. These reforms hade political, religious and political changes.

The social changes were the growth of capitalism and cities. The political context of the spread of Protestantism was the political instabilities in the different countries during that time. The religious were depicted by rapid spread of Protestantism.