Protestant Reformation Dbq Essay

The Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century heralded a dramatic change in Western religion. Until the Reformation, the Catholic Church had dominated every aspect of European lifestyle. The Reformation was initiated in 1517 by Martin Luther, a former Catholic priest who witnessed discrepancies within the Catholic Church of his day. The Reformation provided many with the platform needed to thoroughly question and differ from Catholic practices, and as time went on, Reformist movements evolved into groups with their own unique social and religious identities, with many figures throughout Europe launching their own Protestant denominations. Because the Protestant Reformation displaced the place of the Catholic Church traditions in a religious

One depicts Jesus’ act of washing his disciples’ feet compared to the high-and-mighty Pope displaying his grandeur whilst seated on a throne surrounded by his court (Document 2). The images are presented in such a manner as to draw attention to the humility of Christ juxtaposing his behavior with that of the distant, affluent Pope. This is significant because the Catholic Church traditionally emphasized a hierarchical progression driven by rank. This is evidenced by the extensive pecking order of cardinals, bishops, archbishops, etc. that made up the leadership of the church. Because one of the great grievances of the Church was the corruption of the hierarchy in the form of nepotism, many Protestants were not open to yet another hierarchical-based religious leadership structure. The Protestant Reformation spurned such an arrangement in favor of a more decentralized use of “pastors.” These, Luther once argued, were to be shepherds of men but not kings among them. This opposite organization of leadership was one of the fundamental traits that set many Protestant churches apart from their Catholic

Some cities, like the Dutch city Malmø, altered the social atmosphere of their communities by imposing new ordinances and expectations for their citizens (Document 7). Protestant cities like Malmø used their disaffiliation with the Catholic Church to justify a break in municipal lawmaking systems traditionally directed by external influences. While Malmø’s strict “Sunday laws'' were not an original concept, the implementation and execution of local city codes of conduct as opposed to (Catholic) Church-dominated municipal law was a development in regional authority of the 16th century. Such developments were only the beginning of the decentralization- and by extension destabilization- of Catholic political dominance as cities broke away from Papal law in the early 1500s. Another acute social upheaval was the shift in perspective regarding marriage. Catholic clergy had spent centuries preaching on the superiority of the celibate, but the Protestant Reformation brought an end to that stigma. Calvin and other prominent Protestant leaders touted marriage as the vehicle to fulfill humanity’s call to ‘multiply across the Earth [from the Biblical book of Genesis].’ As such, marriage ministries were developed in churches to facilitate marital relationships (Document 5). Calvin’s stated