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Purpose Of The Church And What It Means To Be A Good Christian During The Renaissance

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The Purpose of the Church and What it Means to be a “good Christian” During the Renaissance
Throughout most of the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was a powerful institution that rivaled kings in the amount of its power and wealth. However, the Reformation and the Renaissance eras challenged The Roman Catholic Church. They argued against the Church on many principles, including salvation, repentance, and the definition of a "good Christian." This paper will discuss what the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation, and the Renaissance's humanists thought of what it meant to be a good Christian and compare them to the scriptures. The Roman Catholic Church had a large amount of influence, power, and riches during the Middle Ages. Due to …show more content…

The reading section on Martin Luther describes the process of repentance and salvation for Catholics. The process begins with "a remorse for sin" and a desire for repentance, to which the individual goes to a priest to confess their sins, and once they confess their sins, they enact penance. The readings describe penance as a "reciting of prayers, fasting, or pilgrimage" (“Section 12: Martin Luther”). During this time, another act of penance was the practice of indulgences, a way to pay for one's sins to the Church or to pay someone out of purgatory. Many critics of the Church arose and adamantly opposed the practice of indulgences. The most famous of these critics is Martin Luther, who nailed 95 theses criticizing indulgences' …show more content…

Amongst the new philosophers and scholastics, the majority that emerged was the secular, commonly known as Humanists. However, they were not similar to modern secularists, as the classical humanists are described as "promoting the humanities" and studied many of the early church fathers (“Section 6: Humanism”). Many northern Humanists remained "deeply religious" and "experienced a revival" (“Section 7: Northern Humanism”). Humanists admired and followed the early Church and adamantly opposed the Roman Catholic Church and its corrupted ways (“Section 8: The Church in the Late Middle Ages and the

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Martin Luther was a German monk who disagreed with the practice of granting indulgences. Indulgences were bonus blessings that were granted by the church. The Indulgences promised less time in purgatory. Martin Luther believed that people should have confidence their sins are being forgiven because of their faith, not because of indulgences. Martin Luther's revolt led to other Protestant reformers to leave Catholicism.

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Throughout the centuries The Roman Catholic Church has come under attack by staunch opponents of its teachings and practices. Martin Luther a German theology professor and monk was one such opponent. Martin Luther forever changed religious history by writing and publishing the Ninety-Five Theses. Three core topics of the Ninety-Five Theses were selling indulgences to finance the building of Saint Peter’s Basilica was wrong, the salvation is through faith and God’s grace, and finally purchasing indulgences gives people a false sense of security. Of all the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church most offensive to Martin Luther was the selling of indulgences.

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He denies that the pope has any power over people in purgatory through the 95 Theses. Martin believes that the bible is the only thing that holds the value. God has ultimate power in forgiving punishments in purgatory. The Reformer Martin Luther explicitly shows characteristic of the Protestant Reformation when he takes action against the church's ideas of purgatory by exposing them. He shows that he isn't agreeing with the core foundations of the church making him a reformer during the

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The Protestant Reformation, occurring between years 1517 to 1648, challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s authority and practices. The most well known practice of the church was the selling of indulgences, a payment taken in order for sins to be forgiven and lessen the time spent in purgatory. The church was corrupt and it didn’t go unnoticed. An Augustinian monk named Martin Luther was appalled. He acknowledged that faith, and faith alone, was enough to grant one through the gates of heaven.

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This piece of evidence shows that when the re-introduced idea of humanism was brought to the people during the Renaissance, it was very influential at the time, but people were still not fully on board with the new idea. Although these ideas were very progressive at the time, they did stir some opposing and confusing ideas from others. One conflict that came out of the Renaissance Europe time period was The Protestant

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In the early to mid-1500s, church leaders were more focused on worldly affairs such as patronizing the arts, spending extravagantly, pleasing themselves, and fighting wars. In addition, the lower clergy of the Church, to whom were given the responsibility of educating the public by Church leaders, were, in fact, uneducated themselves. The Church leaders’ lack of interest in priests reflected directly on the integrity of their words and made them less credible. During the same time, the Church was giving indulgences as a reassurance of entering heaven, meanwhile, the Bible says one can only enter through faith. Indulgences are a prime example of the people trusting the church, and the uneducated clergy communicated that indulgences were good for the people.

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Europe in the Middle Ages was built around Christianity. The Catholic Church had a lot of power and control, being the largest landowner in Europe and owning vast amounts of wealth. However, the Church was negatively affected by the Black Plague. The quality of the clergy declined as a vast number had perished in the pandemic.

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One of the major European movement during the sixteenth century was the Protestant Reformation. In the beginning, this movement intended to reform the practices and beliefs of the Catholic Church. Before the age of dissent and division, the church was viewed as the sole vehicle for salvation. However, with all the turmoil within the Catholic Church, the people has lost faith in the church’s ability to lead them into salvation. They have lost sight in its very core.

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For example, Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses, which are 95 statements that are to help to be the better version of the Christian faith. These theses were rejected and seen as an insult by the Pope, which led to Martin Luther’s ban and Luther creating his own for of religion, Lutheranism. Lutheranism, very similar to the Catholic faith, was more reformed and allowed for less corruption and a more profound justification. Some of Luther’s theses include, “Because, by works of love, love grows and a man becomes a better man; whereas, by indulgences, he does not become a better man, but only escapes certain penalties.” and “Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence.”

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Martin Luther was said to begin the Protestant Reformation after he wrote his “95 Theses.” This book explained Martin’s beliefs that the Bible is the center of religious authority, and that humans can achieve Heaven if through their faith, disregarding the good or bad deeds they have done in the past. The church on the other had, was getting too involved in politics and losing its focus on religion and faith. The combination of political manipulations and the rising of church power and wealth lead to a drastic downfall in the church. This lead to the vulnerability of church leaders and caused them to make poor decisions.

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Many reformers such as Martin Luther, John Wycliff, and John Calvin played prominent roles in sixteenth-century Europe; they helped to reform Catholic churches and change the Europeans’ ways of thinking. “The Reformation was a rejection of the secular spirit of the Italian Renaissance” is a true statement. The main goal of the religious reformation was to bring back the former beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, which were based off of the bible; this went against the Renaissance ideas. Martin Luther was one of the many important reformers in sixteenth century Europe. Luther helped to completely change the church systems by writing his 95 theses.

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During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a great amount of power because it was the only one at the time. As expressed in The Canterbury Tales, it even oversaw the court, so one could propose that the Church had exponential power. They seemed to rule the economy and hold a lot of land. Kings and queens were even preceded by the Church. Supposedly, in those times, the Catholic Church was a source of great hypocrisy or a good number of its people were.

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By questioning the sale of indulgences and arguing that the pope does not have complete authority over forgiveness of sins and, to a larger extent, salvation, Luther established a precedent for the word of the Church to be called into question rather than it having absolute authority. Given that Luther opens his 95 Theses with “out of love and concern for the truth,” it is clear that his intentions are not necessarily to completely undermine the authority of the Catholic Church, but rather to open a dialogue between the Catholic Church and its faithful on what is actually true in regards to God. The collective judgment of the Catholic community, particularly those who did not have positions of power in the Church, would then have a much greater effect on the direction in which the Catholic Church took than it would have before Luther’s 95 Theses.

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