The History of the Christian Church

This episode of CS is titled, Luther’s Struggle.As we saw last time, Luther’s situation after appearing before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms didn’t look hopeful. The majority of officials there decided to apply the papal bull excommunicating Luther and removing his protection. Some of the nobles knew they could incur the Pope’s favor by taking matters into their own hands and assassinating the troublesome priest. But the German prince Frederick the Wise, one of the Emperor’s most important supporters, arranged to air-quotes à “kidnap" Luther on his way back to Wittenberg. He secreted Luther to his castle at Wartburg under an assumed identity. Now in hiding, Luther used the time to translate the NT from Greek into a superbly simple German Bible.  He finished it in the Fall of 1522 and followed it up with an OT translation from Hebrew. This took longer and wasn’t finished till 1534. The completed Bible proved to be no less a force in the German-speaking world than the King James Version was later to be in the English sphere, and it’s considered one of Luther’s most valuable contributions.The revolt against Rome sparked by Luther’s list tacked to the castle church door at Wittenberg began to spread.  In town after town, priests and town councils removed statues from churches and abandoned the Mass. More priests and monks stepped forward, adding their voice to the call for reform, many more radical than Luther. More importantly, an increasing number of civil officials decided to back Luther in defiance of the Emperor and Pope.By 1522, it was clear to Luther he could safety return to Wittenberg and put into practice the reforms he was convinced the Church needed to install. What he did there became the model for a good part of Germany. He abolished the office of bishop because he couldn’t find it in Scripture. Local churches needed pastors who were servants, not a religious royalty.During his time at the Wartburg, Luther gave much thought to the issue of celibacy. He wrote a tract called On Monastic Vows where he expounded on the idea that a sequestered life wasn’t really Biblical.  When he returned to Wittenberg, he dissolved the monasteries and ended clerical celibacy. The resources of the monasteries were used to relieve the poor, and marriages between former celibates became the order of the day. Erasmus noted that the tragedy of the break with Rome looked like it would finish as a comedy; with everyone married and living happily ever after.Luther himself took a wife in 1525, the former nun, Katherine von Bora. The story goes she was an eminently practical woman but not all that attractive. When her fellow sisters got married, she was left single and approached Luther, saying it was his fault she was now alone and without support. She suggested it was his duty to remedy her situation. When he asked how he as supposed to do that, she replied marrying her was his best option. So he did.A new image of full-time ministry appeared in western Christianity—the married pastor living like any other man with his own family. Luther later wrote, “There is a lot to get used to in the first year of marriage. One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails on the pillow which were not there before.” By all accounts, while Martin and Katherine’s marriage began as a purely pragmatic arrangement, the love between them grew into a rich joy. Luther was deeply affectionate to his wife, who often was instrumental in keeping Luther’s frequent dark moods from overwhelming him. They had six children.Martin and Katherine lived in what had been the Augustinian convent. Their house was nearly always full of guests who enjoyed sitting at their table. Some of his students the Luthers had in for meals took down their conversation, now published in a work called Table Talk.Luther understood if Reform was to take root and grow, it had to be fueled by the study of the Bible. Studying Scripture required the ability to read it and to reason logically. So he placed a great emphasis on education and urged parents to send their children to school. To assist in the education of youth, he composed a Large Catechism in 1528, then a more popular Small Catechism a year later. In the Small Catechism, Luther gave a simple exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the two sacraments. He offered forms for confession, morning and evening prayers, and grace at meals.Keep in mind Luther hadn’t begun in 1517 with a fully developed theological position and a plan to Reform the Roman church or break away and start a separate religious franchise.  That was nowhere on the horizon. When he tacked his list on Wittenberg’s church door, it was simply a reflection of his desire that church officials begin examining both long-held traditions and more recent innovations by holding them up to the light of Scripture. As things progressed, Luther realized he had to follow his own advice.Many Protestants have heard of Luther’s 95 Theses but they’ve not read them. It’s surprising to see what he calls for people to examine there. Turns out, there’s little in Luther’s List that ended up in the core doctrines of the Reformation. But once Luther embraced the principle of reviewing everything in the light of God’s Word, a far more complete doctrinal picture began to take shape. He saw his way clear in the matter of justification by grace thru faith. When he applied this to the issue of indulgences is when he popped up on Rome’s radar. His emerging understanding of the priesthood of all believers was a threat Rome couldn’t ignore because it threatened their religious hegemony. Soon, everything was being scrutinized in the light of Scripture.Luther translated the Latin liturgy into German. People began receiving Communion in both bread and wine. The emphasis in church services switched from the celebration of the Mass to the preaching and teaching of God’s Word.In 1524, Germany got a taste of how far reaching Luther’s call for reforms could reach. His insistence that church and society follow the commands of Scripture led to an uprising of the peasants against the nobility.  The people applied the concept of the freedom of the Christian to the economic and social spheres. Long kept under the domineering thumb of the nobility, the peasants revolted against their feudal lords. They demanded an end to medieval serfdom, unless it could be justified from the Bible, and relief from the excessive services demanded of them which kept them in virtual slavery.At the beginning of their protest, Luther agreed with the peasants and recognized the justice of their complaints. What he stridently warned against was the use of violence to enforce their will on a recalcitrant nobility. When violence did break out, he lashed out against the peasants. Since the printing press was already a major part of his work, he employed it again and wrote a pamphlet titled, Against the Thievish and Murderous Hordes of Peasants.  In it, Luther called on the princes to “knock down, strangle, stab … and think nothing so venomous, pernicious, or Satanic as an insurgent.”In 1525, the nobles crushed the revolt at a cost of some 100,000 lives. The survivors now called Luther a false prophet. Many of them returned to Catholicism or turned to more radical forms of the Reformation.Luther’s conservative political and economic views devolved from his belief that the equality of all men before God applied to spiritual rather than secular matters. Though these views alienated the common people, they proved a boon to Luther’s influence with the German princes, many of whom became Lutheran in part because Luther’s views allowed them to control the Church in their territories, thereby strengthening their power and wealth.In 1530, a conference of Reformation leaders convened in Augsburg to draw up a common Statement of Faith. The leadership of the movement had already begun to move beyond Luther. He was still an outlaw and unable to attend. So the task of presenting Luther’s ideas fell to his colleague, a young professor of Greek at Wittenberg, Philip Melanchthon. The young scholar drafted the Augsburg Confession signed by Lutheran princes and theologians. And though a growing movement of the German nobility now threw their weight behind the Reform, Emperor Charles V, who depended on their support, was no more inclined to join the movement than he’d been a Worms.After 1530, Charles made clear his intention to crush the growing heresy. The Lutheran princes banded together in 1531 in the Schmalkald League, and between 1546 and 55 there was scattered, on-and-off-again civil war. The combatants reached a compromise in the Peace of Augsburg, which allowed each prince to decide the religion of his subjects, with the only acceptable options being Lutheran or Catholic, and ordered all Catholic bishops to give up their property if they turned Lutheran.The effects of this treaty were profound. Lutheranism became a State religion in large portions of the Empire. It spread north to Scandinavia. Religious opinions became the private property of princes, and individuals had to believe what their prince chose.Luther remained engaged in unending debate with the Roman Church. And it wasn’t long before he found himself embroiled in disagreements with other reformers. Outspoken and combative, he often collided with equally fierce opponents. These controversies took on a bitter edge that saw Luther hurling vicious epithets at his opponents. The insults he’d once used for the Pope were turned on fellow Reformers. All this greatly hampered reform.For example, Luther became entangled in a controversy with the humanist scholar and reformer Erasmus. The two had much in common, sharing concerns for scholarship, for opening up the Scriptures, and for doctrinal and practical reform. Still, they differed sharply in character and theological approach. Under pressure to declare himself either for Luther or against him, Erasmus turned to the important issue of the freedom of the will and published a work titled, Diatribe on Free Will in 1524. To this Luther made a scornfully sharp reply a year later in his Bondage of the Will. This work is a powerful statement of the Augustinian position that in matters of righteousness and salvation human will has no power to act apart from God’s enabling grace. Erasmus replied to Luther’s reply, but Luther ignored it. Erasmus then aligned himself with opponents of the Reformation, although still urging reform and maintaining friendly relations with other reformers.The Lutherans themselves experienced a split over how to understand Communion. Like a bulldog, Luther clung to the words of Jesus "This is my body" as supporting his belief that Jesus was present in the elements. When the Southern Germans and Swiss broke away saying that the elements were meant ot be understood as symbolic, Luther published a couple of scathing responses in 1526 and 7. There’s a coarseness to his style in the second of these that may indicate Luther had no desire to win his opponents, only to insult them.Since this is a history and not theology podcast, I’m not going to go into all the nuances of the Eucharistic debate that ensued between the Lutherans and other Reformers. Suffice it to say, it became one of the major issues of controversy between them.Luther ran into other difficulties, too.He hoped at first that the renewing of the Gospel would open the way for the conversion of the Jews. When that didn’t pan out, he made virulent attacks on them, planting a deep stain on his record. Philip of Hesse, a champion of the Reformation, became an embarrassment to Luther when he gave assent to Philip’s bigamous marriage in 1540. The development of armed religious alliances in the empire worried Luther, for while he accepted the divine authorization of princes and valued their help in practical reformation, he struggled hard for the principle that the Gospel does not need to be advanced or defended by military power. He was spared the conflict that came so soon after his death.Even his sympathetic biographers have found it hard to justify some of Luther’s actions in his declining years. By the time of his death in 1546, says biographer Roland Bainton, Luther was “an irascible old man, petulant, peevish, unrestrained, and at times positively coarse.” As chance would have it, his schedule brought him to Eisleben, the town of his birth, where he died on Feb. 18, 1546.Fortunately, the personal defects of an aging rebel don’t in any way detract from the greatness of Luther’s achievements, which transformed not only Christianity but Western civilization. He took four basic concerns and offered vital new answers.To the question - How is a person saved, Luther replied: not by works but by faith alone.To the question - Where does religious authority lie, he answered: not in the visible institution called the Roman church but in the Word of God found in the Bible.To the question—What is the church?—he responded: the whole community of Christian believers, since all are priests before God.And last, to the question—What is the center of the Christian life?—he replied: serving God in any useful calling, whether ordained or not.

This episode of CS is titled, Martin’s List.In the summer of 1520, a document bearing an impressive seal circulated throughout Germany in search of a remote figure. It began, “Arise, O Lord, and judge Your cause. A wild boar has invaded Your vineyard.”The document was what’s called a papal bull—named after that impressive seal, or bulla bearing the Pope’s insignia.  It took 3 months to reach the wild boar it referred to, a German monk named Martin Luther who’d created quite a stir in Germany. But well before it arrived in Wittenberg where Luther taught, he knew its contents. 41 of the things he’d been announcing were condemned as à “heretical, scandalous, false, and offensive to pious ears; seducing simple minds and repugnant to Catholic truth.” The papal bull called on Luther to repent and publicly repudiate his errors or face dreadful consequences.Luther received his copy on the 10th of October. At the end of his 60-day grace period in which he was supposed to surrrender, he led a crowd of eager students outside Wittenberg and burned copies of the Canon Law and works of several medieval theologians. Included in the paper that fed the flames was a copy of the bull condemning him. That was his answer. He said, “They’ve burned my books. So I burn theirs.” That fire outside Wittenberg in December of 1520 was a fitting symbol of the defiance toward the Roman Church raging throughout Germany.Born in 1483 at Eisleben in Saxony to a miner, Luther attended school at Magdeburg under the Brethren of the Common Life. He then went to university at Erfurt where he learned Greek, graduating w/an MA in 1505. His plan was to become a lawyer, but the story goes that one day he was caught in a thunderstorm; a bolt of lightning knocked him to the ground. Terrified, he cried out to the patron saint of miners: “St. Anne, save me! And I’ll become a monk.” To his parents’ dismay, Luther kept the vow. 2 weeks later he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt where he became a dedicated brother. Some years later he said about his being a monk, “I kept the rule so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by sheer monkery, it was I. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work.” Luther pushed his body to health–cracking rigors of austerity. He sometimes engaged in a total fast; no food OR water, for 3 days and slept without a blanket in winter.In the Erfurt monastery he did further theological study and was made a priest in 1507. When he transferred to Wittenberg in 1508, he began teaching moral theology, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and the Scriptures. A visit to Rome on Augustinian business in 1510 opened Luther’s eyes to the corruption so prevalent among the higher clergy there. When he returned to Wittenberg in 1512 he earned his Doctorate in Theology and was appointed to the Chair of Biblical studies which he occupied for the rest of his life.But throughout this time, Luther was consumed by guilt and the sense his sinfulness. While the majesty and glory of God inspired most, it tormented Luther because he saw himself as a wretched sinner, alienated from an unapproachably holy God.While performing his first Mass, Luther later reported, “I was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken. I thought to myself, ‘Who am I that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine majesty? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin, à and I am speaking to the living, eternal and true God?’” No amount of penance nor counsel from his peers could still Luther’s conviction he was a miserable, doomed sinner. Although his confessor counseled him to love God, Luther one day burst out, “Love God? I do not love Him - I hate him!”Luther found the love he sought in studying the Word of God. Assigned to the chair of biblical studies at the recently opened Wittenberg University, he became fascinated with the words of Christ from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”  Luther found an odd solace in the idea that that Christ was forsaken. Luther was a sinner. Christ wasn’t. The answer had to lie in Christ’s identification with sinful humans. Luther began to ponder the possibility that Jesus endured estrangement from God for us.A new and revolutionary picture of God began to develop in Luther’s restless soul. Finally, in 1515, while pondering Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Luther came upon the words of Ch1v17 “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”This was the key that turned the lock and opened the door to everything else that would follow. He said, “Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”Luther saw it clearly now. Man is saved only by his faith in the merit of Christ’s sacrifice. The cross alone removes sin and save from the grasp of the devil. Luther had come to his famous doctrine of justification by faith alone. He saw how sharply it clashed with the Roman church’s doctrine of justification by faith and good works—the demonstration of faith through virtuous acts, acceptance of church dogma, and participation in the sacraments.The implications of Luther’s discovery were enormous. If salvation comes through faith in Christ alone, the intercession of priests was unnecessary. Faith formed and nurtured by the Word of God, written and preached, requires neither monks, masses, nor prayers to the saints. The mediation of a Church magisterium crumbles.At first, Luther had no idea where his spiritual discovery would lead. It took a flagrant abuse of church finances to move him to the center of rebellion in Germany, and into a revolutionary position regarding papal authority.The sale of indulgences, introduced during the Crusades, remained a major source of church income, especially that destined for Rome. The theology behind indulgences is rather complex and a subject we could spend considerable time on, but the upshot is this:  Jesus and the saints have done far more good than they need for themselves and have lived lives that produce an excess of righteousness others can draw upon. The Church hierarchy, specifically the Pope and his agents, are able to open what’s called the “Treasury of Merit” all this excess goodness has gone in to, and assign it to less worthy individuals. So, in exchange for a meritorious work—like, making a pilgrimage, going on a Crusade, or making a financial contribution—the Church offered the sinner exemption from acts of penance.All too often, the peddlers of indulgences made them seem a sort of magic—as though a contribution automatically earned the one seeking it a reward, regardless of the condition of their soul. Sorrow for sin was conveniently overlooked. And some even implied you could buy permission to sin before committing it. All this deeply troubled Luther.So, armed with his new understanding of faith, he began to criticize the theology of indulgences in his sermons. He ramped things up in 1517 when the Dominican John Tetzel was preaching throughout Germany on behalf of a Vatican fund–raising campaign to complete the construction of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. In exchange for a contribution, Tetzel boasted, he would provide donors with an indulgence that would even apply beyond the grave and free souls from purgatory. Tetzel was a clever sloganeer who understood the power of marketing. He came up with the catchy ditty - “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”To Luther, Tetzel’s preaching was more than bad theology, it bordered on blasphemy. Irked by Tetzel’s fleecing of the common people and provoked by his studies in Scripture, Luther drew up 95 propositions for theological debate and on October 31st of 1517, following university custom, posted them on the Castle Church door at Wittenberg, the place people put public notices. Among other things, Luther’s list argued that indulgences can’t remove guilt, do not apply to purgatory, and are harmful because they create a false sense of security. Little did anyone know that the spark had just been lit that fired the Reformation.Within a short time, Tetzel’s fellow Dominicans in Germany denounced Luther to Rome as guilty of preaching dangerous doctrines. A Vatican theologian issued a series of counter-theses to Luther’s list, claiming that anyone who criticized indulgences was guilty of heresy.At first, Luther was willing to accept a final verdict from Rome. But he quickly shifted to the position that his critics show him in Scripture that he was wrong. As his appeal to the Bible grew, he began to question the doctrine of purgatory. During an 8–day debate in 1519 with Church theologian John Eck at Leipzig, Luther said, “A council may sometimes err. Neither the Church nor the Pope can establish articles of faith. These must come from Scripture.”Luther had moved from his first conviction—that salvation was by faith in Christ alone to a second. Scripture, not popes or councils, is the standard for Christian faith and behavior.John Eck didn’t miss Luther’s spiritual resemblance to Jan Hus. After the Leipzig debate, he asked Rome to declare Luther a heretic. Luther put his case before the German people by publishing a series of pamphlets. In his Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, Martin called on the princes to correct abuses within the Church, to strip bishops and abbots of their wealth and worldly power, and to create a national, German Church.In his work titled, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church Luther spoke not to the Papal Schism of a century and a half before but how the doctrine of justification by faith had reformed, get this, his doctrine of the Church. He argued that Rome’s sacramental system held Christians “captive.” He attacked the papacy for depriving individual Christians of their freedom to approach God directly by faith, without the mediation of priests. He said that in order for a sacrament to be valid, it had to be instituted by Christ and exclusively Christian. By these tests Luther could find no justification for five of the Roman Catholic sacraments. He retained only Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and placed even these within a community of believing Christians, rather than in the hands of an exclusive priesthood.All this had sweeping ramifications for the Church.  It brushed aside the traditional view of the church as a sacred hierarchy headed by the pope and returned to the early Christian view of a community of Christian believers in which all believers are priests called to offer spiritual sacrifices to God.In his 3rd pamphlet published in 1520, The Freedom of a Christian Man, Luther set forth in a conciliatory but firm voice his views on Christian behavior and salvation. This work is probably the best introduction to his central ideas. He wrote. “Good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works.”On the eve of his excommunication from the Roman Church, Luther removed the necessity of monasticism by stressing that the essence of Christian living lies in serving God in one’s calling whether secular or religious. All useful callings, he said, are equally sacred in God’s eyes.In June of 1520, Pope Leo X issued his bull condemning Luther, giving him 60 days to turn from his heretical course. The bonfire at Wittenberg made clear Luther’s intent, so his excommunication followed. In January of 1521 the pope declared him a heretic.The problem now fell into the hands of the young emperor, Charles V, who was under oath to defend the Church and remove heresy from the empire. Remember that all Church hierarchy can do is examine those suspected of heresy and declare them innocent or guilty. Punishment was not the duty of priests or monks. That was for the civil magistrate to carry out. So when Luther was declared a dangerous heretic and booted from the Church, it fell to the Emperor to carry out his execution. He summoned Luther to the imperial assembly at Worms, called a Diet, to give an account of his writings. Charles V understood how highly charged the political situation around Luther was since he’d become the hero for a good part of the German nobility Charles desperately needed in his contest with France and the Turks. The emperor wanted to make sure Luther was a verifiable heretic and not just someone Rome wanted to be rid of.While the exact record of the Diet at Worm s is a little cloudy, it seems one day, as Luther was shown a table full of books purported to be his, wherein his radical ideas were expressed, when asked if they were indeed his, and if he stood by all that he had written in them, he hesitated and showed some uncertainty. Whether his hesitation was due to his concern that maybe there were books there he’d NOT authored, or that some of his earlier writings may not have been as accurate in reflection of his present views – or that with the Emperor watching him he was being faced with a potentially life-ending challenge – we don’t know. In any case he was allowed to retire for the day where he reflected on what he was really being challenged by and emerged to stand before the assembly on the morrow were he once again insisted that only Biblical authority would sway him. In a famous and oft quoted line he stated, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither honest nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”Bold. Courageous. But Charles V was not impressed. He declared Luther an outlaw. He pronounced, “This devil in the habit of a monk has brought together ancient errors into one stinking puddle, and has invented new ones.” Luther had 21 days for safe passage to Saxony before the sentence fell. It never came. Luther was saved from arrest and death by Duke Frederick the Wise, the prince of Saxony whose domains included Wittenberg. The Duke gave Luther sanctuary at his lonely Wartburg Castle. Disguised as a minor nobleman, and given the alias Junker George, Luther stayed for a year. He used the time to translate the New Testament into German, an important first step toward reshaping public and private worship in Germany.

This episode of CS is titled Erasmus.As we begin, I once again want to do a brief, and I promise it will be brief, summary of the threads that conspired to weave the tapestry of the Reformation. Others might refer to them less as threads that weaved a tapestry as those that frayed in the unravelling of the Church caused by a pack of trouble-makers. The reason I’m compelled to do all this summarizing is because of the massive sea-change coming in our study and the need to understand it wasn’t just some malcontents who woke up one day and decided to bail on a healthy church. Things had been bad for a long time and the call for reform had been heard for a couple hundred years.The Western European Church of the 14th and 15th C’s experienced a major crisis of authority. This crisis came from challenges both within and without. They combined to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of many about the credibility and legitimacy of Church leaders. Let’s review some of the things they’d done, and that happened to the Church, to create the crisis.Due to the politics of late medieval Europe, Pope Clement V moved the papal seat to Avignon, France, in 1309 in what’s called the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church” because the Pope came under the influence of the French throne. When another Pope was elected in Rome, the Church was faced with 2 men who claimed the title of “Vicar of Christ.” This Papal Schism confused the people of Europe and stirred strong feelings that the office of Pope was more a political fixture than a spiritual office. At the insistence of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Council of Constance ended the schism. But the solution raised serious questions about the authority of the papacy, further dividing church leaders and distressing the people of Europe.In addition to these political shenanigans, the Church was marked by widespread corruption and fraud. Simony, the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices, was common. Immorality among monks, priests, bishops and cardinals was at some times and places, not even hidden. The Church spent a fortune acquiring thousands of relics for its cathedrals and paying for them with the selling of indulgences, which we’ll talk about soon.The Inquisition had terrorized whole regions of Europe, especially in Spain and while the Church justified its actions saying it was rooting our dangerous heresy, many knew some victims of the Inquisition were innocent. The Church simply wanted their property and wealth and had used the Inquisition as a means of enriching itself.With the birth of the Renaissance and a new open-mindedness about thinking outside the realm of official authority, the Church became an object of ridicule and satire in pamphlets and books that were readily available with the invention of the printing press.Let me be clear. Some of the harshest criticism of the Church came, not from outsiders, but from faithful priests and monks disgusted with the corruption and error they saw among their peers.As a reaction to the stultifying academic pursuits of Scholasticism, there was a popular movement all across Europe known as Mysticism, in which people simply wanted to “feel” their faith and sought make contact with the divine through meditation and a more personal link to God than going through the official priesthood.Most significant was the movement known as The Brethren of Common Life. Their most famous spokesman was Thomas à Kempis whose little book On the Imitation of Christ continues to be a widely read devotional classic. The Brethren stood in opposition to the monastic orders which for the most part had become centers of corruption. The Brethren breathed new spiritual life into the church. They stressed personal devotion to Jesus through meditative study, confession of sin, and imitating Christ. They emphasized holiness and simplicity in lifestyle. In many ways, the Brethren prefigured the Reformers of the 16th C.With the Bible being translated into the common tongue, no longer did people have to rely on a priest telling them what it said.The 16th C world was one of astonishing change. Medieval civilization, dominated by an institutional Church was disappearing. Modern nation-states challenged the Church for political and economic supremacy, and the voyages of discovery made the world seem smaller at the same time new worlds were opening. The Renaissance of Northern Italy saw many turn from a hide-bound and superstitious Catholicism to the romanticized glories of ancient Greece and Rome.Into this changing world stepped one à Desiderius Erasmus.Taking the pulse of the times, Erasmus ridiculed the Catholic church with biting satire. His works were wildly popular. In his most famous, Praise of Folly written in 1509, Erasmus took jabs at the church’s immorality, corruption, and decadence. He ridiculed such superstitions as fanatical devotion to relics, stories of bleeding Communion bread, and the cult of the saints. In another work, he depicted Saint Peter railing against Pope Julius II for his luxurious and opulent lifestyle and military conquests.But it was in 1516 that Erasmus published his most important and influential work—a Greek edition of the NT. He examined and compared the available NT manuscripts and citations from the Church Fathers. The result was an accurate NT Greek text that became the NT of the Reformation.One epigram regarding the Reformation states, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”The illegitimate son of a Dutch priest, Erasmus lived in search of knowledge, in pursuit of piety, in love with books, and oppressed by the fear of poverty. Along the way, his writings and scholarship started a theological earthquake that didn’t stop until European Christendom was torn in two.Born in Rotterdam and orphaned by the plague, Erasmus was sent from the school of St. Lebuin’s—which taught classical learning and the humanities—to a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life. There he learned an emphasis on a personal relationship with God but detested the strict rules of monastic life and intolerant theologians. They intended to teach humility, he later recalled, by breaking the students’ spirits.Being poor with no prospects, Erasmus joined the Augustinians. He wanted to travel, gain some academic elbow room, and leave behind the, as he called them, “barbarians” who discouraged him from classical studies. As soon as he was ordained a priest in 1492, he became secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, who sent him to Paris to study theology.He hated it there too. The dorms stank of urine, the food was atrocious, studies mechanical, and the discipline brutal. He began a career in writing and traveling that took him to most of the countries of Europe. Though his health was often poor, Erasmus was driven by a desire to seek out the best theologians of his day. On a trip to England in 1499, he complained of bad beer, the uncouth nature of the English, and terrible weather, but >> he met Thomas More, who became a friend for life.On that same trip he heard John Colet teach from the Scriptures, not just quote from the commentaries he’d studied in Paris. Colet, who later became dean of St. Paul’s, encouraged Erasmus to become a “primitive theologian”- that is, someone who studied Scripture like the church Fathers, not like the argumentative scholastics who’d dominated theology for the last hundred years.So, Erasmus devoted himself to learning the Koine or Common Greek in which the NT was written. The result was his most significant work: an edition of the NT in original Greek, published in 1516. Accompanying it were study notes as well as his own Latin translation, correcting over 600 errors in Jerome’s Vulgate.Two of the most noteworthy praises of Erasmus’s work came from Pope Leo X and from a German monk named Martin Luther—who, a year later, launched the Reformation.Before that turning point however, which would eventually consume Erasmus, he became famous for his other writings. There were plenty of them to be famous for. By the 1530s, some 15% of all the books sold were written by Erasmus.Historians refer to Erasmus as a humanist, but that label has a very different meaning than it does in today. A humanist in the 15th C referred to someone who studied the humanities, that is, the social sciences of language, history, art and other subjects concerned with culture and society. But Erasmus was too brilliant a mind to simply study the humanities; he felt an obligation to better society.  So he wrote to confront and correct the errors he felt had crept into the Church, an institution he knew had by the far the biggest influence in shaping culture. He found he had great skill in the use of satire to make his point and people enjoyed reading his books and tracts.Those books brought him fame, as did his Greek NT. This and his attacks on the church caught Martin Luther’s attention, who wrote asking for support.The two never met, but their fates were entwined. Erasmus’s enemies accused him of inspiring Luther who was accused of breaking up God’s Church. Erasmus found much he liked in Luther’s writings, describing him to Pope Leo X as “a mighty trumpet of Gospel truth.” At the same time, he privately told his printer to stop printing Luther’s writings because he didn’t want his own efforts to be identified with Luther’s.For 4 years, Erasmus pleaded for moderation on both sides of the divide Luther’s work caused. When pressed, he sided with the Pope. Still, he hated the bickering and intolerance on both sides; saying, “I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss. It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed.”His mediating position satisfied neither side. He said, “My only wish is that now that I am old, I be allowed to enjoy the results of my efforts. But both sides reproach me and seek to coerce me. Some claim that since I do not attack Luther I agree with him, while the Lutherans declare that I am a coward who has forsaken the Gospel.”Indeed, Luther attacked him as a Moses who would die in the wilderness without entering the Promised Land. And the Roman Church banned his writings.

This 85th episode of CS, is titled, Dawn.I want to take a brief moment here at the start to say “Thank you” to all those who’ve spread the word about CS to their friends and family. We’ve had a significant bump in subscribers and lots of new likes on the FB page. So—Kudos to all who’ve spread the word.As most of you know, iTunes is by far the major portal for podcasts. So, if you use iTunes, a review of CS is a great way to boost our rating – and ratings usually translate into new subscribers. Why do we want more subscribers since there’s no commercial interest in CS? Because information and knowledge about history are crucial to a well-rounded worldview. I’m convinced an accurate view of history is crucial to overcoming prejudice, to tearing down the walls that divide people. That is when we discover not just WHAT people believe but WHY – it helps puts things in perspective and disabuses us of errant opinions.Anyway, that’s my hope.As I’ve learned about different groups, I’ve revised my opinions. Traditions almost always have some origin in history, in some ground that at the time seemed perfectly reasonable to the people who created them. We may not agree with them today, hundreds and even thousands of years later, but at least we can respect those who originally framed them; and if not respect, gain a modicum of understanding for the complexities they wrestled with.Okay, back to it …We’ve come now to one of the most significant moments in Church History; the Reformation. Since it’s considered by many the point at which the Protestant church arose, it’s important to realize a couple of things.First – The student of history must remember almost all those who are today counted as the first Protestants were Roman Catholics. When they began the movement that would later be called the Reformation, they didn’t call themselves anything other than Christians of the Western, Roman church. They began as an attempt to bring what they considered to be much-needed reform to the Church, not to start something new, but to return to something true. When the Roman hierarchy excommunicated them, the Reformers considered it less as THEY who were being thrust forth out of the Church as it was those who did the thrusting, pushed them out of the true church which was invisible and not to be equated with the visible religious institution HQ’d in Rome, presided over by the Pope. It’s difficult to say for certain, but you get the sense from the writing of some of the Reformers that they hoped the day would come when the Roman church would recognize in their movement the true Gospel and come to embrace it. Little did they envision how deep and wide the break between them would become, and how their movement would shatter and scatter into so many different sects, just as the Roman hierarchy worried and warned.Second - There’d been groups that diverged from Roman Catholicism and its Eastern cousin the Orthodox Church, for a long time. We’ve already considered the Nestorian Church which dominated the Church in the Far East for hundreds of years and didn’t lose its place of prominence until the Mongol invasions of the 13th C. There were little communities of what can be called non-aligned Christians scattered throughout Europe. And we’ll consider some of those as we turn now to the Reformation.Long before Luther nailed his list of 95 topics for discussion to the chapel door at Wittenberg, others had sniped at the theological position of the Roman church.  There’d always had been some who didn’t agree with its teaching, and many had broken off into separate religious communities.By way of review …Peter Waldo was one of the most effective of the pre-Reformers. A wealthy merchant of Lyons, France, moved by Matthew 19:21, he was convinced that poverty in the service to Christ was the path to heaven. So three centuries before Martin Luther, he sold his estate and gave the proceeds to the poor. Within a year, he was joined by others, both men and women, who called themselves the “Poor Men of Lyons,” and took on an itinerant ministry of preaching repentance and living from handouts. These were an early form of what came to be the mendicant monks.Thinking themselves to be good Roman Catholics, they appealed to the Third Lateran Council in 1179 for permission to preach but were refused because they were considered ignorant and unlearned laymen. But they were convinced they were like the first followers of Jesus and should obey God rather than men. So, Peter and his followers continued to preach.In 1184, Pope Lucius III excommunicated them for their disobedience. Contrary to what we might expect, this brought numerous supporters, and the movement spread into southern France, Italy, Spain, the Rhine Valley, and Bohemia. That they gained such support after being drop-kicked by Rome leaves the impression the Church’s reputation wasn’t so grand, at least in the regions where the Waldensians lived and worked.It’s hard to know if all those called “Waldensian” were really followers of Peter Waldo or if contemporary opponents just used that term as a blanket description for the many disaffected individuals who opposed the Church. It’s possible as well that many smaller groups of non-aligned Christians emerged from hiding to join the Waldensians.Whatever the case, they took the New Testament as a rule of life and used it in what we might call a legalistic sense. They went about 2 by 2, wearing simple clothing, preaching repentance, frequent fasting, and living from the gifts of others. They rejected the doctrine of purgatory, masses and prayers for the dead, and promoted the necessity for translations of Scripture in people’s native language. They insisted on the right of anyone to preach, man or woman—but they did have some organization among their clergy, with bishops, priests, and deacons.While Peter Waldo never embraced the doctrines we’d call genuinely evangelical, his emphasis on Scripture as the basis of faith and practice opened the door for his followers to become so.The Waldensians were persecuted harshly for centuries. Part of the reason for their widespread distribution in Europe was that they were driven from their homeland. In Bohemia, they ultimately became part of the followers of Jan Hus. In their mountain retreat of the Alps between France and Italy, their homeland by the time of the Reformation, they met with representatives of the Swiss Reformation in 1532 and adopted the theology and government of the Swiss Reformers. Then, in 1545, about 4000 were massacred in Provence, France. It wasn’t until 1848 that they won recognition. Today they number about 20,000, the only medieval separatist group to survive to the present.That brings us to the next pre-reformer, the Englishman JOHN WYCLIFFE, who we’ve already looked at.John Wycliffe lived about 200 yrs after Peter Waldo. Like Waldo, Wycliffe was determined to derive his theology, both theoretical and practical, from Scripture. Like the Waldensians, Wycliffe encouraged the translation of the Bible into the common language and that anyone ought to be able to preach, not just sanctioned and licensed clergy.Though he personally translated or supervised the translation of parts of the Bible, the version given his name wasn’t completed until after his death. Its widespread use had an influence on the development of the English language. Wycliffe was educated at Oxford and later became a master of Balliol College there. For a while chaplain to the king, with access to Parliament, he was able to reach some of the upper-class English. But he also sought to reach the common people, sending out lay evangelists to instruct them.After 1375, Wycliffe’s reforming views developed rapidly. Pope Gregory XI condemned him in 1377 for his efforts, but he was protected by some of the nobles and the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of Edward III. These were the days of the Hundred Years War between England and France, when it was unthinkable an Englishmen would surrender one of their most outstanding countrymen to a pope at Avignon, under the domination of England’s French foes.To Wycliffe, Scripture, which he interpreted literally, was the sole authority for the believer. Decrees of the pope were not infallible except as based on Scripture. The clergy were not to rule, but to serve and help people. He concluded that Christ and not the pope was the head of the church; in fact, the pope, if he were too eager for worldly power, might even be regarded as the Antichrist. Ultimately, Wycliffe repudiated the entire papal system. He also attacked transubstantiation, the Roman doctrine that the bread and wine of Communion become the actual body and blood of Christ in the Mass.  Wycliffe condemned the doctrine of purgatory, the use of relics, pilgrimages, and indulgences. For all this, he’s called the Morningstar of the Reformation.Wycliffe’s followers were forcefully suppressed in 1401. Those who held his views went underground and helped to prepare the way for the British Reformation a century later. Bohemians studying at Oxford in Wycliffe’s day carried his ideas to their homeland, where they influenced the teachings of Jan Hus, another pre-reformer we’ve already looked at, but whom we’ll consider again now in this set up for the Reformation.Hus was the professor of philosophy at the University of Prague and lead preacher at Bethlehem Chapel.  Historians used to think Hus transported Wycliffe’s views to Prague but it seems clear now that while Hus was later influenced by Wycliffe’s views, his reforms ran tandem to what was happening in England.Hus’s approach was similar to Wycliffe’s but his influence in Europe was greater than that of the Englishman’s. Luther was greatly impressed with the work of Jan Hus. His greatest work was titled On the Church. He said that all the elect are members of Christ’s church, of which Christ, rather than the pope, is head. He argued against simony, indulgences, and abuses of the mass. He demanded a reform in the lives of clergy, and the right of laymen to take both the bread and wine in Communion.Hus became the leader of a reform movement that spread across Bohemia. Almost the entire realm supported him, in spite of being excommunicated by the pope. After Hus’s death the reform carried on, and in the middle of the 15th Century the Bohemian Brethren rose out of the embers of the fire Hus lit. They still exist as the Moravians.The 4th pre-Reformer was Savonarola who lived in Florence, Italy in the late 15th C. He was a fiery preacher against the worldliness and corruption of church and society. A Dominican, he was transferred to the priory of San Marco in 1482 and rose in influence and power in the city. His studies in the OT prophets and the book of Revelation made him a powerful preacher against the evils of a decadent society.Savonarola served as the spiritual leader of the political party that came to power in Florence when the Medicis fled the city in 1494. Exercising a virtual dictatorship, he tried to reform both the church and state. But over time, the people of Florence found his rule too strict and used his criticism of the Roman Church as the excuse to remove him from office. Pope Alexander VI’s excommunication of Savonarola in 1497 was all the Florentines needed to arrest and try him for sedition and heresy. He was cruelly tortured then hanged in the piazza before the city hall, not far from where Michelangelo’s David would stand just 5 years later.Although Savonarola demanded reform in the church, he never took the more advanced position of Wycliffe and Hus. He had no quarrel with the teachings or the organization of the church but seems to have believed in justification by faith.At the same time, Wycliffe and Hus were leading their attempts at reform, a mystical movement flowered in northern Europe. Known as The Brethren of the Common Life, they emphasized Bible reading, meditation, prayer, personal piety, and religious education. The main aim of the Brethren was to secure a revival of practical religion. They gathered in homes rather than monasteries, held property in common, worked to support themselves, and avoided the ill-will of the communities in which they lived by not seeking tax-exempt status or begging. They had good relations with the townspeople but sometimes incurred the suspicion and opposition of the clergy and monks. They attended parish churches and had no peculiar doctrinal positions.The Brethren were committed to education. They established several schools in the Netherlands and Germany that were outstanding for scholarship and piety. Four of their best-known students were Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, Luther, and Thomas à Kempis, who’s credited with writing the widely distributed Imitation of Christ.Europe was a seething kettle by 1500, ready to boil over. In the realms of economics, politics, education, and religion, the time had come for change. All that was needed was someone who could mold these explosive elements into a single movement. Such a movement could, and eventually would cover Europe.There are a couple of reasons that need to be stated for why the Reformation succeeded—besides the obvious one many Protestant Christians would note first > It was God’s Will.The more pedantic reasons are two-fold:First – The Great Papal Schism had left a bad taste in the mouth of many Christians in Europe. How could the Pope, the Vicar of Christ not be able to keep the Church together? And how could the Pope become such an obvious tool in the hand of secular rulers? The corruption of the Church was so obvious, so blatant, even the most devoted churchmen were embarrassed and wrote impassioned pleas for reform.And that leads us to the second reason the Reformation occurred; this was the age when the nation-states of Europe were emerging. Kings and regional governors were coming out from under the thumb of the Church hierarchy. Instead of Popes being king-makers, kings made popes. And some kings decided they didn’t want to play Rome’s game at all. They wanted to take their ball and go home to start their own game. If only someone would write some new rules.Enter: Martin Luther.In central Europe, the Holy Roman Empire which was essentially a German entity, had an emperor check-mated by numerous states with only slight allegiance to him. Muslim armies knocked at the doors of the empire not long after Luther tacked his theses to the church door at Wittenberg. After toppling Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks strolled across Eastern Europe until they stood at the gates of Vienna in 1529.What really happened was this. Charles, a Hapsburg with holdings in central Europe and king of the Netherlands and Spain, was elected in 1519 as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. Francis I of France, surrounded by Charles’ territory and defeated by him in 1525, made an alliance with the Ottomans in 1526 to apply a pincer movement against Charles. The Emperor needed the help of all his German vassals to defeat the Muslims. When some of the German princes became supporters of Luther, Charles was no longer able to put religious pressure on them. If he did, they’d withhold aiding him politically and militarily. So Charles wasn’t able to force Luther’s political covering, the powerful Frederick of Saxony, to surrender Luther when the Pope demanded his head on a pike.This is all very fun, isn’t it?Now consider this à Just a few years after Luther’s birth, Columbus reached the New World in 1492 and launched the Spanish Empire in the West. Shortly after Luther posted his theses, Magellan’s expedition sailed around the world. At the same time, the Portuguese were establishing outposts of empire in Brazil, Africa, India, and the Far East.Did you know Columbus and Luther were contemporaries?Let’s not forget as well that a whole new world of thought had come in with the tide of the Renaissance. Rediscovering the literature and thoughts of the classical age, contributed to a greater secularization of life.Humanism was one of the main features of the Renaissance, involving a new emphasis on man and his culture and an effort to make the world a better place in which human beings might live. The pull of the future life was not so great for the true child of the Renaissance as it had been for his ancestors during the Middle Ages. As has been said, the Renaissance man would rather eat his pie now than have it in the sky by and by.In harkening back to the literature of the Classical Age, humanists put renewed emphasis on the study of Greek and Hebrew in an effort to read the classics in the original languages. The greatest of all ancient documents was the Bible, and the renewed emphasis on ancient languages led many to the Scripture.The literary humanists included a good deal of biblical study in their academic diet, and it was in the north that the Reformation gained the most headway, among scholars like Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon, and Erasmus.Erasmus was a great satirist of the evils of the institutional church and society. That he got away with it and was so popular proves that criticism of Romanism by Renaissance leaders contributed to the success of the Reformation.Adding to the effectiveness of the Reformation was the Renaissance spirit of individualism, which paved the way for Luther’s emphasis on the priesthood of the believer and its attendant ideas of the right of believers to go directly to God and to interpret the Scriptures for themselves.Another important ingredient of the intellectual development of Europe on the eve of the Reformation was the invention of movable type and the spread of printing. Without it the Reformers would not have had the same impact. The tremendous literary activity of the Reformers was largely responsible for building the printing trade.Lastly, an important phenomenon of the period was the rapid growth of universities, which provided education for a larger number of people, fostered a critical spirit, and provided a means for leaders of the emerging generation to be reached with Reformation principles.As we end this episode, I wanted to let you know that the donation feature is once more active on the CS site. We had to block it for a while because fraud did a lot of damage. You’ve heard reports of identity theft. It seems once crooks snag a bunch of credit accounts, they check to see if they’re still valid by using sites like CS to post a bogus donation of 1 to $5. If it goes through, they know the accounts good and make real charges. Problem is, EVERY time my account gets one of these bogus donations, the bank charges me a transaction fee. Let’s just say, 10K bogus donations made for a hefty cost to the CS account. So we had to block the donation feature until the proper security could be installed. That’s done now thanks to the excellent work of Dade Ronan at Win at Web. Thanks, Dade. You’re a genius!So, if you’d be so kind, a donation to keep the site up would be marvelous.

This 84th Episode of CS is titled Lost & is a brief review of The Church in the East.I encourage you to go back and listen again to episode 72 – Meanwhile Back in the East, which conveyed a lot of detail about the Eastern Church & how it fared under the Mongols and Muslim Expansion in the Middle Ages.Until that time, Christianity was widespread across a good part of the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Persia, & across Central Asia – reaching all the way to China. The reaction of Muslim rulers to the incipient Mongol affiliation with Christianity meant a systemic persecution of believers in Muslim lands, especially in Egypt, where Christians were regarded as a 5th Column. Then, when the Mongols embraced Islam, entire regions of Christians were eradicated.Still, even with these deprivations, Christianity continued to live on in vast portions of across the East. (more…)

This special episode of CS posts to the sanctorum.us website on Easter Sunday, 2015. I realize many subscribers will hear it at a later time, but since each week’s episode posts early Sunday morning, and this is Resurrection Sunday, a special podcast seemed appropriate. This week, we’ll be taking a look at the place of the celebration of Easter in the Early Church.There’s considerable controversy over the origin of the word Easter as the label that’s come to be attached to the Christian commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ. It’s best to see the word coming from the Germanic languages & the Teutonic goddess of Spring, Eastre. Her festival marked the vernal equinox, & with the arrival of Christianity the holiday morphed to be the anniversary of the resurrection of Christ.Today you’ll occasionally hear someone connect the word Easter to the Canaanite goddess Astarte, the Babylonian Ishtar, or some such other ancient deity. While there may be some etymological connection between the Teutonic Eastre & the Mesopotamian Ishtar, it’s submerged under the mists of time. (more…)

This is the 7th and last episode in our series The Long Road to Reform.In Italy, the Renaissance was a time of both prosperity and upheaval.Moderns of the 21st C are so accustomed to thinking of Italy as one large unified nation it’s difficult to conceive of it as it was throughout MOST of its history; a patchwork of various regions at odds with each other. During the Middle Ages and a good part of the Renaissance, Italy was composed of powerful city states like Florence and Venice who vied endlessly with each other. Exacerbating the turmoil, was the interference of France and Germany who influenced affairs to their advantage.It was within this mix of prosperity, intrigue, and emerging Renaissance ideals the papacy carried on during the last decades of the 15th Century.I need to insert a cautionary footnote at this point. As this is the last of our series laying out the history for WHY the Reformation occurred, we need to deal with something that may be a bit unsettling for some of our listeners; the string of popes who were, how shall I describe them? Less than holy, less than the men of God others were. Even many loyal Roman Catholics acknowledge the men who’ve ridden Peter’s chair haven’t always been of sterling reputation. Not a few have been a ragged blight on the Holy See. That there was a string of them in the 15th Century helped set the stage for the Reformation.And I hope this mini-series in CS has made it clear that Reform only became something OUTSIDE the Church when the decades old movement for it WITHIN the Church was forced to exit. Never forget Luther began a Roman monk and priest who was forced out.During his reign in the mid-15th C, Pope Eugene IV sought to decorate Rome with the new artistic styles of the early Renaissance. He recruited Fra Angelico and Donatello. This began a trend among the Popes to imbibe the ideas of the Renaissance, especially in regard to art. They sought to adorn the city with palaces, churches, and monuments worthy of its place as the capital of Christendom. Some of the popes moved to greatly enlarge the papal library.All this construction wasn’t cheap, especially the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. So the popes came up with new ways to raise funds. A subject we’ll come back to later.Not all Renaissance popes focused on the arts. Some were warlords who led military campaigns. Others took delight in playing the high-stakes game of political intrigue.Eugene IV was succeeded by Nicholas V, who spent his term from 1447 to 55 trying to gain political dominance over the Italian states. His goal was to turn Rome into the intellectual center of Europe. He recruited the best authors and artists. His personal library was said to be the best. But, being a scholar didn’t preclude him being brutal. He ruthlessly pursued and executed any who opposed him. During his reign, Constantinople fell to the Turks. He called for a great Crusade to retake the City, but everyone knew he only wanted it to increase his own prestige, so they ignored him.His successor was Calixtus III, who served only 3 years. Calixtus was the first pope of the Spanish family of Borgia. Under the guise of standing against an invasion by the Turks, Calixtus embarked on a campaign to unite Italy by military conquest. Nepotism reach a new height during his reign. One of the many relatives Calixtus elevated was his grandson Rodrigo, whom he appointed as a cardinal. This Rodrigo would later become the infamous Alexander VI.The next pope was Pius II who served from 1458 to 64. Pius was the last of the Renaissance popes who took his office seriously. He tried to bring about the much-needed Reformation of the Church but his plan was stalled by powerful cardinals. Pius was a true scholar who began work on a vast Cosmography. Unable to complete the work before he died, it was instrumental in shaping the ideas of a certain Genoese ship’s captain named Cristofor Columbo.Pius II was followed by Pope Paul II, an opportunist who, upon learning that his uncle, Eugene IV, had been made pope, decided a career as a churchman was more promising than his occupation as a tradesman. His main interest was collecting jewelry. His lust for luxury was proverbial, his concubines acknowledged by the papal court. Pope Paul wanted to recover the architectural glory of pagan Rome and devoted vast sums to the work. He died of internal bleeding, brought on by his debauchery.Sixtus IV served from 1471 to 84 and came to power by literally buying the papacy. Corruption and nepotism reached new heights. His sole goal was to enrich his family, one of whom would become Pope Julius II. Under Sixtus, the church became a family business, and all Italy was involved in a series of wars and conspiracies whose sole purpose was to enrich the pope’s nephews. His favorite was Pietro who at the age of 26 he made a cardinal, the patriarch of Constantinople, and archbishop of Florence. Another nephew plotted the murder of one of the Medicis in Florence who was stabbed to death before the altar while saying mass. When the dead man’s relatives took revenge by hanging the priest who murdered him, the pope excommunicated the entire city of Florence and declared war.Despite all these groteque shenanigans, history remembers Sixtus for something else entirely; the Sistine Chapel, which was named after him.Before his election in 1484, Innocent VIII made a solemn vow to quit the nepotism that had become endemic to the Papacy. But as soon as he was pope he declared, since papal power was supreme, he wasn’t bound by the prior oath.What’s the old phrase? “It’s good to be King.” I guess we could also say, “It’s great to be Pope.”Innocent VIII wasn’t! Innocent that is. He was the first pope to acknowledge several of his illegitimate children, on whom he heaped honors and wealth. Under the management of his son, the sale of indulgences became a shameless business proposition. Pope Innocent ordered Christendom to be cleared of all witches. Hundreds of innocent women were executed.After Innocent’s death, Rodrigo Borgia bought the cardinals’ votes and became pope under the name of Alexander VI. He ruled from 1492 to 1503. Under Alexander, papal corruption reached its all-time zenith, or we should say, it’s nadir.I hope Roman Catholic listeners don’t hear this and assume I’m just Catholic bashing. It’s Catholic scholars who chronicle all this. It’s simply a sad chapter in Church History.Pope Alexander was a moral wretch who publicly committed all the capital sins, save for gluttony because of a persistent case of heartburn. The people of Rome, well-acquainted with Alexander’s excesses, said of him, “Alexander is ready to sell the keys, the altars, and even Christ himself. But, he’s within his rights, since he bought them.”Alexander had numerous affairs with the wives of the men of court. These women gave him several children he openly acknowledged. The most famous of these were the infamous pair, Cesare and Lucrezia. Italy was besmirched by blood because of his many plots and wars. His court was so corrupt many fabricated tales were hatched. Sad, since there was no need to embellish the list of sins attached to his reign, which for long after hurt the reputation of the papacy.Alexander VI died unexpectedly. The suspicion is that he mistakenly took a poison meant for another. His son Cesare had hoped to inherit the Holy See but was struck by the same ailment. So the cardinals elected Pius III, a reformer. He lasted 26 days before dying mysteriously. Can anyone say “Conspiracy?”This brought Julius II to the papal seat, a worthy successor to Alexander.When Popes are elected, they pick a name they want to take for their tenure as the head of the Church. The papal name gives us a hint how he sees his role; what he hopes to accomplish.Julius was only the second to take that name, which exists as a harbinger for what he aimed to do. Appointed a cardinal by his uncle Sixtus IV, Julius modeled himself more after Julius Caesar than any saint. Like many of the popes of that era, Julius was a patron of the arts.During his pontificate, Michelangelo finished the Sistine Chapel, and Raphael’s frescoes decorated the Vatican.But this pope’s favorite pastime was war.Visitors to the Vatican today are struck by the bright colors of the Swiss papal guard. The only way they could be called camouflage is if they were trying to hide in a Jason Pollock painting. It was Julius who reorganized the papal guard, dressing them in uniforms said to have been designed by none other than Michelangelo.We might expect a Pope to make a poor general, but he was in fact so successful in his military and diplomatic exploits, it was rumored he might finally achieve the unification of Italy. Of course, France and Germany opposed these plans, but Julius defeated them both in diplomacy and on the battlefield. He died in 1513, earning the epithet, Julius the Terrible by his contemporaries.He was succeeded by Giovanni, son of Lorenzo de Medici. Giovanni took the name of Leo X. Like his famous father, Leo was a patron of the arts. He failed to consolidate Julius’ military and political gains and in 1516 was forced to sign an agreement with Francis I of France that gave the king enormous authority in church affairs.Leo’s immersion in the world of the arts overshadowed his pastoral concerns. He was determined to complete St. Peter’s in Rome. The financing of that project was the main purpose for the sale of indulgences that provoked the protests of a German monk named Martin Luther.In our next episode, since we’ve now come right up to the Reformation in Europe, we’ll get caught up with our narrative of the Church in the East.Martin, John, and Philip – that is Luther, Calvin and Melanchthon are just chomping at the bit to jump in.

This is the 6th episode in our podcast mini-series The Long Road to Reform.Much of the reform energy in the European Church of the Late Middle Ages was among the poor. Being poor meant being illiterate. The poor and illiterate don’t, as a rule, write books about their hopes and dreams.  So it’s often from sources hostile to the reforming movements of this era we learn of them. That hostility colors the picture of them much of history since has regarded them by.Wycliffe’s ideas lived on, not so much among scholars or nobles who initially endorsed them, as among the poverty-committed Lollards who went from village to village, carrying his reforms like torches, continually setting new places ablaze with reforming zeal. The Lollards preached a simple Gospel that contradicted a great deal of what commoners heard from local priests.In Bohemia, the ideas of Jan Hus, at first so popular among the gentry, ended up being embodied by an Apocalyptic sect called the Taborites, made up largely of the illiterate poor.Another movement took place in the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance that rarely seems mention. We’ve already talked about how some women were drawn to the monastic life and lived in sequestered communities affiliated with a men’s compound. There were orders for women in both the Franciscans and Dominicans. But in the late Middle Ages, the number of women seeking inclusion in these orders swelled dramatically. So many applied, the orders had to limit their intake of new sisters. Those rejected didn’t just shrug their shoulders and go home; back to the default of being a wife and mother. Many of them decided—if the established orders wouldn’t take them, they’d form their own communities. Though not sanctioned by the Church, they devoted themselves to corporate lives of prayer, devotion, and poverty. Called beguines, [beg-geenz] their communities were usually large houses they converted into beguinages. Just what the word ‘beguine’ means is unclear; most likely a less than complimentary label assigned these women by critics. Because they lived outside the church sanction, they were suspected of being aberrant at best and probably downright heretical, if tested.The Low Countries had many lay-Beguine orders from the 13th thru 16th Cs. While they lived in semi-monastic communities, they didn’t take formal religious vows. They promised not to marry, but only so long as they remained a Beguine, something they could step out of at any time. In a practical sense, the Beguines were an attempt to re-connect with the simplicity of the Gospel as it altered one’s relationship with God and others. So Beguines focused on personal devotion to God and the care of one’s fellow man. Their charitable works were well-known across Northern Europe.Though the Church in many places passed rules banning these unofficial monastic communities, their popularity grew and soon men formed their own version. Such men where called “beg-hards” a word which eventually morphs into today’s “beggar.”Another popular movement first appeared in 1260; the flagellants. They got off to a slow start, but by the 14th C, their numbers swelled.While the personal discipline of flagellants took many forms, the primary method, the one yielding their name, was to whip themselves with the flagellum. Self-flagellation as penance for sin wasn’t new. It was a practice common to many monastic houses. Now it was a popular craze. Thousands of people from all levels of society lashed themselves till bloody, convinced by current events and the fiery preaching of Apocalyptic Announcers the end was near; that God was about to destroy the world for its failure to repent.But don’t think this was all just a bunch of emotionally-worked up illiterates who’d been stoked into some kind of mass hysteria. No: Flagellants followed a specific rite of self-flagellation and other forms of personal mortification. The movement held to a rigid discipline. While the specific details altered over time and place, typically, those who wished to join the Flagellants did so for 33½ days. During that time they owed total obedience to their spiritual overseers.Twice a day, Flagellants marched two by two while singing hymns to the local church. After praying to Mary, they went, still singing, to the public square. They formed a circle and knelt in prayer with bared backs. Then, as they prayed or sang, they commenced the lashes until their backs poured blood. Occasionally, one of their leaders would preach to them on the sufferings of Christ. Then they’d rise, cover their bleeding back and again, withdraw in an ordered procession. Besides these two daily public self-flagellations, they were committed to a private third.As I said, they did this for 33½ days. But for ever after, they were supposed to renew the scourging annually on Good Friday.At first, Church officials saw little danger in the movement. But flagellants soon began to refer to what they were doing as penance and a “second baptism;” a term the Early Church had used for martyrdom. This talk of self-induced penance concerned church officials because it threatened their hegemony. The Flagellants were accused of seeking to usurp the “power of the keys,” given only to St. Peter and his successors, the officially sanctioned church hierarchy who alone could prescribe proper penance.In several countries, Flagellants were persecuted and eventually, the practice of public flagellation was abandoned. Despite this, the movement continued for generations. You can still find lingering echoes of the flagellants in the American Southwest.There were individual instances of attempts at reform that took place all over Europe in the Late Middle Ages. I’ll give just one of those many tales. It centers on a man named Hans Böhm [Boohm] and the village of Nicklashausen, in Wurzburg, Germany.During the Lenten Season of 1476, Hans, a young shepherd and street entertainer, claimed to have a vision of the Virgin Mary calling him to preach a message of radical reform. He burned the drum that was the means of his entertaining income in one of those Bonfires of the Vanities that had becomes popular across Europe.Times were bad in the region of Wurzburg. Many crops had failed, yet the bishop oppressed the poor with ever higher taxes.At first, Böhm preached on the need for repentance and a return to classic, Christian virtue. But being moved by the poverty of so many of the pilgrims that flocked to hear him, his message took on a more strident note. He began calling out the contrast between the commands of the Gospel and the greed and corruption of a corpulent clergy. As his popularity grew, he announced a day was coming when all would be equal, and all would work for a living; including those indolent, rich fat-cats who at that time were living of the labor of the good, honest, hard-working folk of Wurzburg.He urged his nearly 50,000 followers to act in advance of that great day by refusing to pay taxes and tithes. He set a date when all would march together to claim their rights.On the eve of the appointed day, the bishop’s soldiers seized him and dispersed his followers. Böhm was tried and convicted of being a heretic and burned.That didn’t dissuade his followers who continued gathering at Nicklashausen. The bishop put the entire village under an interdict. Still they came. The archbishop of Mainz [Minez]  ordered the Nicklashausen Church destroyed. So, now with no leader and no headquarters, Böhm’s movement dissolved. Many scholars believe they fueled the Anabaptist movement of the 16th C.This was just one of many similar movements in the late Middle Ages where calls for justice merged with the cry for reform in the church. These movements were often put down by force of arms, which only served to further alienate commoners against the nobility and clergy. It was only a matter of time until enough of the clergy would themselves recognize the need to reform a Church grown too cozy with secular power.Another factor fueling the call for Reform was the intellectual quagmire Scholasticism fell into in the Late Middle Ages. After reaching its zenith in Thomas Aquinas, scholastic theology morphed into the proverbial serpent that eats its own tail.Scholasticism began as an attempt to provide a reasonable base for the Christian Faith.John Duns Scotus used the tools developed BY Scholasticism to introduce a divide between faith and reason. William of Occam turned that divide in a great divorce and introduced a bifurcation between theology and philosophy that exists in the minds of many moderns today.Scholastic theologians began to ponder such complex, and pointless, issues as à 1) Can God make a rock so big even He can’t lift it? 2) How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? 3) Does God do good, because it is inherently and intrinsically good, or is it good because God does it?While these questions may cause us to pause and say, “Huh, interesting,” to the hundreds of thousands of commoners who were concerned with having enough bread for tonight’s dinner, that the Church which was supposed to guardian their souls, pre-occupation with such things seemed a terrible waste of time and resources. While clergy were concerned with angels and pin heads; the peasantry began to think the pin-heads were the clergy! They assumed there was a vast divide between religion and daily life. And THAT – was a totally new idea; one fostered by the excesses of a Scholasticism run-amok.This is not to say all priests were died-in-the-wool Scholastics of the Scotus or Occam variety. Many of the clergy reacted against the complexities of late-Middle Age Scholasticism by calling for a return to the simplicity of the Gospel. The best-known book voicing this reaction is the classic, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a’Kempis. The book asks, and I paraphrase à  What good is it if you’re able to discuss the Trinity with great profundity, but lack humility, and thereby offend the Trinity? For high sounding words do not make one holy and just. Only a life of virtue is acceptable to God. Were you to memorize the entire Bible and all the sayings of the philosophers, what good would this be without the love of God and His grace? Vanity of vanities. All is vanity, except loving God and serving Him.Now, much could be said at this point, as we trace the Road to Reform, which is the theme of this series within CS, about the Renaissance. And the fact is much HAS BEEN SAID about it. So I’m not going to. I certainly have nothing to add to what far more learned and erudite teachers have written and said on the subject. I suspect that not a few of our CS subscribers know a whole lot MORE about his subject than I.So let me sum it up by offering this . . .While we call it the Renaissance, Rebirth; it would be wrong to assume the Middle Ages were left behind, dropped like a cast-off doll. Yes, the people of Renaissance Europe knew their societies were going through a monumental shift and that new ideas were afoot. But the Renaissance was built on a foundation provided by the Middle Ages, it was not a clean break from it.As the Turks took over the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire folded, many scholars moved West, bringing their manuscript-treasures with them. These manuscripts were in Greek, a language that by the 13th C had been nearly lost in Europe. These Eastern scholars revived it and presided over a reinvestment of study in the ancient classics of the Greco-Roman world. Those works fueled even more study as scholars realized the brilliance of writers like Cicero and Aristotle. This literary awakening began in Italy then spread beyond the Alps.This interest in antiquity was also seen in art. Sculptors, architects, and painters sought inspiration in pagan sources rather the Christian themes that had dominated their craft for hundreds of years. And though they imbibed, then emulated the styles of the Classical Era, they didn’t wholly abandoned the Gothic. Renaissance art is in many ways a fusion of Gothic and Classical as those who’ve been to Florence and Rome know.This interest in a return to the Classical Era coincided with Gutenberg’s invention of the movable-type printing press in 1439. Printing had long been done by inked woodcuts pressed on paper. Gutenberg’s invention had a profound impact on the development of the Renaissance, but it took a while – for a reason not often mentioned.It turns out that most early printing was difficult to read because it was in either Latin or Greek rather than the vernacular. And the typography of the day imitated, get this à handwritten script. So printed books looked LIKE they’d been hand-written rather than printed! Why was that? Because only the wealthy could afford books prior to the printing press. So it was the wealthy who bought books. The printing press was originally conceived of as a way to make expensive books more cheaply for rich people. Only later did printers work out the economics and realize they could make a lot more money by standardizing their type and printing lot of books at cheaper prices.Gutenberg didn’t even publicize his invention. His original aim was to produce a large numbers of books he could sell as expensive manuscripts. So, rather than simplifying the printed page, he made it as elaborate as any traditional hand-written manuscript. Take a look at a Gutenberg Bible if you get a chance – and you’ll see this laid out before you.Eventually though, printers realized how their presses could be used to mass produce books, and deep learning was made available for people who never thought it possible. Put in those books dangerous new ideas about reform, and who knows what might happen?We’ll conclude our series The Road to Reform next episode as we take a look at the Popes of the Renaissance and see why so many in Europe were so, so ready for Reform.

This is the 5th episode in the podcast mini-series we’re calling “The Long Road to Reform.”What do you think of when I say “The Inquisition”?Many shudder. Some get a queasy feeling in their stomach because of the way the Inquisition has been cast in novels and movies. There’s a bit of truth in that portrayal, one-sided and stereo-typed as it may be.We’re backing up yet again in our timeline as we take a closer look at this sad chapter of Church History.The 4th Lateran Council of 1215 was the high-water mark of the medieval papacy under Innocent III. The Council was little more than a rubber-stamp committee for Innocent’s reforms. Those brought much needed positive change to the morals of the clergy, but installed structures that worked against later reform. The 4th Lateran Council established the doctrine of transubstantiation and the sacrament of penance. It also made official the Inquisition, which had begun as a commission of inquiry under Pope Alexander III a generation before, but now became a permanent feature.The major challenge Innocent III faced was from the Albigensians, AKA the Cathars, inhabiting Southern France.  Since we covered this maybe-heretical group in an earlier episode, we’ll just say that, if the reports by their opponents about them are true, they were a dualistic pseudo-Christian cult-turned-movement that possessed a lot of energy during its relatively short life. Innocent sought to convert them by preaching and debates, but early efforts met with little success. So he approved a Crusade against them from 1209 that lasted the next 20 yrs. The Crusade crushed the Albigensians, devastating Southern France in the process. It was the Albigensians that so provoked Dominic, and propelled his efforts in launching the Dominicans.Though this heresy was eventually put down, their earlier success convinced Innocent the Church would be better served if it had a means to conduct official investigations into questions of doctrine. Earlier popes authorized bishops to investigate accused heretics based on rumor alone. It was up to the accused to prove their innocence. This became the foundational premise of the Inquisition.The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical institution whose aim was to search out and punish heretics. The punishment for heresy was death, since heresy was regarded on par with treason and witchcraft; crimes that stood to imperil the health and well-being of thousands. In 1199, Innocent III issued a decretal saying for the first time that heresy was treason under Roman law.In the late 12th C, bishops turned confirmed heretics over to secular authorities for execution. The 4th Lateran Council confirmed these regulations and threatened excommunication of temporal rulers who failed to rid their territory of heresy.In 1229, the Synod of Toulouse drew up the procedures for seeking out and punishing heresy. The Inquisitor was subject to no law outside the Pope’s authority and word. He was prosecutor and judge. The “trial” was secret, with the accused having to prove their innocence, as in all courts following Roman law, without the benefit of counsel or knowledge of the accusers.The final step came in 1252 when Pope Innocent IV authorized torture as a means of getting information and confessions from accused heretics.Till then, Church leaders and thinkers rejected with horror the very thought of using torture. But no such reserve remained after Innocent III ascended the papal throne and the Catholic Church achieved its majestic and powerful unity. Noteworthy among the tortures used by the Inquisition is that, while execution was still carried out by the civil government, it was priests who did the torturing, with fire, stretching on the rack, or beatings that allowed no blood-letting. Remember, good Christians can’t shed blood.It was an ugly business, but following the ideas of Augustine, almost everyone agreed that saving the body by amputating a rotten limb was the path of wisdom. The Church was the body; the heretic the rotten limb. One more abhorrent idea we can attribute to Augustine.The Inquisition developed a complex system for classifying heresy and heretics. There were heretics who simply added additional beliefs to the essentials; then there were those who denied those essentials. There were perfect and imperfect heretics. Those accused of heresy were categorized as lightly suspect, vehemently suspect, or violently suspect.Typically, the Inquisitor would arrive in a town and begin his work by preaching a sermon calling for people to bring forth charges against those they knew were guilty of something damnable, or confessing something in themselves they feared was aberrant. People were given a period of grace to make this initial confession. This was called the “General Inquisition.” When that period expired, the “Special Inquisition” began and the accused were summoned to trial.The Inquisitor then functioned as Prosecutor, Judge and Jury. The trial was held in secret, the testimony of only two witnesses enough to condemn. The accused most often wasn’t even aware of the charges against them. So they had no context for answering questions. Witnesses weren’t named but there was no defense attorney. Well, there might have been, except for the fact that any lawyer who rode defense was likely to then be brought up on charges himself.Trials could last years, while the accused was kept in prison. Once torture was applied, it was kept on until a confession was secured. All this because the Inquisition followed strict rules. One of them the repeating of torture. It could only be used ONCE; in one hearing, which might last months, even years. So, once torture was applied, it was with the understanding the victim would either die or confess. As I said, the Inquisition followed a strict set of rules, except when it didn’t; which as a rule, was often.Children, the elderly, and pregnant women were exempt from torture. Except when they weren’t.Those convicted of lighter charges then recanted their error were allowed to do penance and bore physical markers of their having fallen afoul of the Inquisition for the rest of their lives. The worst of the heretics were hauled to the stake. Their lands and possessions confiscated by the Inquisitor, who kept them, adding them to the Church’s treasury, or sold off. The heirs of heretics who’d lost lands were technically able to reclaim them, but were practicably rarely able to.The Inquisition met with varying success around Europe. In Spain, it was co-opted by the crown. The Spanish Inquisition then became a thing of abject terror; what most think of today when they hear the word “Inquisition.” The Spanish Inquisition was turned to both religious and political ends, with the accused often being convicted more for the acquisition of their property than for heresy.In Germany, the Inquisition was fierce under the zealous fanatic Conrad of Marburg, but when he was murdered, it fizzled out. France’s Inquisitorial campaign differed from North to South. In Southern France, Inquisitors continued to root out the Cathars, while in the North, trials were often a reflection of old feuds, with nobles accusing one another for political and economic ends. Italy, with its patchwork of provinces saw spotty application of the Inquisition. In England, it hardly appeared.Modern Christians find it nearly impossible to understand the medieval attitude toward heresy. We regard faith as a matter of personal choice and seldom think of religious beliefs as a matter of life and death. Why should anyone die for their faith, or kill another for theirs?In Medieval Europe, Christians would consider our modern view equally odd. Faith wasn’t a private and individual intellectual preserve. The Christian Faith was the cement of society. Denial of a single article of the Faith was understood as a kind of treason because it imperiled one’s neighbors. An apostate or heretic, if not punished by the civil authorities might incur God’s wrath. He might punish those who let the heretic get away with error.The heavy emphasis on the individual that’s such a prominent feature of the Modern Western world is very far from the collective community that dominated the thinking of Medieval Europe. There was no such thing as private religious faith. Society itself was thought to be a manifestation of the Christian faith. The Church was society’s soul. Under such a worldview, heresy was a spiritual malady that imperiled well à Everything!So the question follows: What is heresy? In the 12th C, it was the denial by a Christian of any doctrine of the Christian faith. But the list of what were considered inviolable doctrines was a bit different from what Protestants hold as essentials today.  The unity of the Church and the divine appointment of the Pope as head of the Church were part and parcel of the standard body of beliefs Christians were to hold.  Variance from the beliefs of the official Church was considered heresy.In dealing with heretics, the church had 2 objectives:First was the return of the heretic to a position of approved faith. Second—The protection of Christian society.The central question was—How far can the Church go to protect the Faith and the Society that Faith sustained? Is it right to take a life in order to protect other lives, not just their physical lives, but their eternal souls?We won’t understand the Medieval world’s posture toward heresy until we understand it in these terms. The Church viewed itself as the moral and spiritual steward of European civilization.The challenge of heresy drove the Western Roman Church to its greatest internal conflict: The question of how the Church could employ violence as a safeguard to orthodoxy and a peaceful society? The tragic answer to that question was the Inquisition; a permanent blight on the Church’s reputation. The Inquisition demonstrates what happens when people substitute common sense, political expediency, and pure reason for Biblical fidelity. On the surface, it’s impossible to get from the crucified Christ who said “Follow Me,” to the horrors of the Inquisition. Yet à the prosecutors of the reign of terror known as the Inquisition saw themselves as the agents of Christ. The Inquisition not only executed heretics, it first subjected them to prolonged torture. In driving out one demon, the Church opened the door for 7 others. But, the absurdity of the entire thing wasn’t apparent at the time. Oh sure, there were a few who were uncomfortable with what was being done in God’s name, but they kept silent for fear of being the Inquisition’s next victim.  Most went along with the Inquisition because the pace for killing in the name of God had already been set by the Crusades. A Church that sent crusading armies against infidels could certainly condemn and execute heretics. Everyone agreed a pure church was the will of God. The question was how to get there.While there were real threats to the doctrinal purity of the Church, many of the attacks the Church faced came from genuine believers who saw corruption in the clergy and wanted reform. It was easy for those church leaders being called out to use the power of their office to brand their critics as heretics and bring down the full weight of society on their sorry heads. Other critics didn’t attack corrupt clergy, but rather—beliefs that diverged from Scripture. While these doctrinal challenges occasionally did see a realignment with God’s Word, more often they were labeled as pernicious assaults by the forces of hell and the challenger was summarily done away with.One of the earliest voices against the worldliness of the Roman Church was Arnold, Abbot at Brescia, in northern Italy. In a sermons series, Arnold said the vices of the clergy were a result of the Church’s marriage to civil power. He urged the Church to surrender its property and secular influence back to the civil government and return to the poverty and simplicity of the early church. He said that the True Church’s mission was the Gospel.By 1139 Arnold managed to raise enough support that he turned the people against their bishop. Pope Innocent II banished Arnold from Italy. He went to Paris where he studied under Abelard, another thorn in the Church’s side.After 5 years in exile, Arnold returned to Rome and joined a movement to overthrow the Pope. The Romans, filled with dreams of the ancient Roman republic, seized power during the Pope’s absence and Arnold became the leader of a new, purely secular government. He announced that the clergy should live in apostolic poverty, and denounced the College of Cardinals as a den of thieves.Arnold and his group managed to retain power for 10 years before Pope Hadrian IV placed Rome under an interdict and persuaded the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to intervene. Arnold was captured and executed a year later in 1155 by being burnt. The final insult was having his ashes thrown in the Tiber River.People had barely forgotten Arnold when another voice for reform arose in eastern France, Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons. One day Waldo heard a wandering troubadour singing the virtues of the monastic life. The ballad was about young Alexis whose wealthy Roman parents pressed him into an arranged marriage. But the reluctant groom was dedicated to the ideal of chastity, so on his wedding night he made a pact of virgin purity with his bride and immediately left for the Holy Land. Alexis’ parents searched for him in vain. Years later he returned home a beggar, so emaciated from his lifestyle of self–denial no one recognized him. He lived in the courtyard on scraps from the family table. Only as he lay dying did he reveal his identity, too late for the grieving family to claim him.The moral of the Ballad was clear to Peter à A Christian must be willing to sacrifice everything in this life for the sake of the next. Struck to the heart by the story, he sought a priest to find out how to live like Christ. The priest turned him to the answer Jesus gave to the rich young ruler in Matt. 19:21: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” The same text 9 centuries before had launched the monastic movement with Anthony in Egypt, first of the Desert Fathers.Waldo determined to follow the same path. He provided an adequate income for his wife, placed his two daughters in a convent, and gave the rest of his estate to the poor. To launch his mission, Waldo enlisted a couple priests to translate portions of the Bible into French. After memorizing long passages, Waldo began teaching commoners how to imitate Christ by practicing voluntary poverty. His innovations lay in applying the life of poverty and discipleship to all believers , not just monks, as Francis soon would. As followers joined his growing ranks, Waldo sent them out 2 by 2, after the apostolic pattern, into villages and market places, to teach and explain the Scriptures. They called themselves the “Poor in Spirit.” We know them as Waldenses.But Waldo’s unauthorized preaching soon met the opposition by the Archbishop of Lyon, who ordered him to stop. Waldo refused, quoting Peter in Acts 5:29: “We must obey God rather than men”. The Archbishop excommunicated him.Waldo and his followers appealed to the Pope. They arrived in Rome and found it crowded with churchmen attending the 3rd Lateran Council of 1179. They were able to gain a hearing before the Council but had the misfortune of being ridiculed by a smooth, fast–talking Englishman named Walter Map. Pope Alexander III found no evidence of heresy among them and was impressed by their poverty. They were mere laymen, however, so he ruled that they could preach only by the invitation of bishops, which of course was highly unlikely.Peter Waldo was convinced the Scriptures commanded him to preach to the poor with or without approval. Along with a growing bevy of followers, he continued to preach and practice apostolic poverty. The movement spread into southern France and across the Alps into Italy. By 1184, their disobedience compelled Pope Lucius III to excommunicate them.The conflict is understandable. The Waldenses wanted to purify the church by a return to the simple life of the apostles. This meant the surrender of worldly power. Their aim, like that of the Roman church, was salvation. But their means were radically different.The Pope couldn’t renounce the church’s right to give the sacraments; He couldn’t forfeit the priesthood, nor admit that faith in God might be something other than the mandates of Rome made it. From their side, the Waldenses came to feel more and more that no teaching except Christ’s was binding. The Scriptures must rule. But how could they find support for their cause if everyone lived in apostolic poverty? Slowly they came to accept—just as early monastic houses had—two levels of Christian commitment. The main members of the movement were bound by special vows and worshiped together in simple services. Another circle of “friends” remained in the main Catholic church but supplied new recruits and support for the movement.Even after their excommunication, the Waldenses gained so many members the Church launched an all-out assault on them, encouraging some of the Crusades to begin in Europe by practicing the skills they’d need to use on the Muslims, by slaughtering the Waldenses.The Waldenses were so clearly a back–to–the–Bible movement that over the years some have called them “reformers before the Reformation.” Compared to the Roman church’s doctrine of papal authority, the Waldensian call to return to the Bible does indeed sound like Luther or Calvin. But their view of salvation, a life of penance and poverty, lacks the clear note of God’s grace that sounded so powerfully in the Reformation.

This is the 4th episode in a mini-series we’re calling “The Long Road to Reform.”It was late Spring of 1490 when a Dominican friar stood at the gates of Florence. This was not the first time the 33 year old Girolamo [ger-all-a-mo] had made the 160 KM / 100 miles trip from his native Ferrara to the city of the Medici’s. He’d lived for a spell in the city. The Florentines admired his scholarship but were put off by the vehemence of his preaching. They had a hard time adapting to his accent. But now he returned at the invitation of Lorenzo de Medici; Lorenzo the Magnificent, who virtually owned Florence, and to whom he’d been recommended by the famous philosopher Mirandola.Girolamo Savonarola joined the monastery of St. Mark and began a series of lectures for his fellow friars. Soon others joined the sessions causing them to relocate to the main hall. The lectures turned into sermons. By the Lenten Season of 1491, Savonarola’s growing fame saw him invited to preach at the main church in Florence. Short on tact, Savonarola lambasted the decadence of the city’s rich, of which there were not a few. Lorenzo de Medici was especially displeased. Who did this upstart think he was? He’d only come to Florence at Lorenzo’s invitation. This was no way for a guest in HIS city to act. Medici hired another preacher to attack Savonarola. It failed since the people sided with Savonarola. He’d become their champion in decrying the exorbitant luxuries of the wealthy.The mercenary preacher refused to accept defeat. He went to Rome to plot his revenge.Savonarola was then elected prior of St. Mark’s and within a short time, reformed the life of the community so thoroughly, the people of Florence all remarked on how holy the order had grown. Savonarola sold off some of the monastery’s estates and gave the proceeds to the poor.Savonarola’s reputation was unimpeachably. Though bitter enemies, when Lorenzo lay dying, he asked for the prior to come bless him. Lorenzo’s successor was Pietro de Medici, who promptly lost all respect from the Florentines. The French King, Charles VIII, was on his way to claim the rule of Naples. Instead of organizing the defense of Florence as he ought, Pietro tried to buy him off. The Florentines were furious and sent their own embassy under Savonarola. They expelled the now hated Pietro and settled with the French by becoming allies. Though Savonarola was technically just a monastic prior, he’d become the civil leader.  The Florentines asked him to design a new government. He recommended a republic and installed reforms to heal the ailing economy. He gathered a good part of the gold and silver of the many city churches and sold it to feed the poor. This was the high-water mark of his term.History regards Savonarola as a religious fanatic & ignorant monk. He wasn’t. He was simply someone who understood that the Church and Italian society had gone far from the Biblical ideal. What Savonarola was, was an anti-politician. That is, he had little to no capacity for compromise; doom for anyone engaged in civil politics. Savonarola was unable to distinguish between rules and principles; between non-negotiables and his own opinions. As a result, he was on a collision course with the very people who’d put him in power.Savonarola believed study ought to be at the center of reformation. So the friars at St. Mark’s studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. He railed against the luxuries of the wealthy, placing them all under the rubric “vanity.” These vanities, he railed, were a distraction that weakened the soul and made it prone to sin. So, at his urging the people of Florence regularly gathered to pile such vanities up and set them ablaze. First, a large pile of wood was erected in the main square. Under it was placed straw and kindling sprinkled with gunpowder. Onto of the pile people put their vanities; frilly dresses, jewelry, wigs, and ostentatious furniture. Amidst singing and ceremony, the thing was set on fire – a Bonfire of the Vanities. These bonfires replaced the traditional celebration of carnival just before Lent, something else Savonarola had banned.His reforms were echoed in surrounding cities. When Florence’s rival republic of Siena  requested Savonarola’s assistance, he went with twenty fellow monks. They arrived in Siena and went to work with their reforms. First order of business was to clear house in the monastery there. When some of the expelled monks resisted the reforms, Savonarola decided if they weren’t going along with his plans, he’d leave. He had more luck at Pisa and the monasteries scattered round Tuscany.As we might expect, Savonarola’s downfall came about because of his inability to play the political game.Alexander VI, one of the worst of the popes, made an alliance against France that included a good part of Italy, Germany, and Spain. The smart move was to join the pope’s party. But Savonarola insisted on keeping his promise to the French. The pope responded with severe measures against Savonarola personally, then against all Florence. These measures were largely economic in nature. When the Florentines realized they’d lost a great deal of trade because their pastor was being stubborn, opposition grew. The City became increasingly fractured between supporters and opponents. On the opponent’s side were most of the wealthy. His supporters declared Savonarola a prophet and demanded he perform miracles. When something he foretold came to pass, they grew even more enthusiastic. But when he failed to perform the required miracles, they turned on him.A mob marched on St. Mark’s to apprehend him. Savonarola refused to defend himself. He forbade friends resisting the mob lest an innocent be harmed. He was hauled to the City Square where he was beaten and turned over to the authorities, some of whom had longed for this day for years.This was it; the civil showdown. The authorities had to find something damning to accuse him of. To elicit a confession, he was tortured for days. But the most they could make him confess to was something he’d never claimed to begin with; being a prophet.The pope sent legates to assist in the trial. These also tortured Savonarola. All they could obtain was an admission he’d planned to appeal to a church council. Savonarola admitted he’d been too proud in his call for reform, saying, “Lord, if even Peter, on whom you had bestowed so many gifts and graces, failed so thoroughly, what else could I do?”Despairing of finding charges severe enough to execute him, the judges condemned Savonarola and two friends as “heretics and schismatics,” without identifying what heresy they espoused. They were turned over to the civil authorities to be executed, for again, the Church must not kill. The only mercy Savonarola received was that he and his friends were hanged before being burned. Their ashes were then thrown into the Arno River flowing through Florence. This was considered the height of infamy. By scattering one’s ashes, there was nothing left of them to remember; no place people could mark a memorial and keep their name alive. In spite of this, there were many of Savonarola’s supporters who kept his relics.I’ve been to Florence and stood at his little memorial on the paving stones of the Main Square.Years after his death, when Rome was sacked by the Germans, some saw it as the fulfillment of Savonarola’s prophecy. To this day, there are those in the Roman Church who argue Savonarola was a saint, and that his name should be added to the official list.As we end this episode, I wanted to take a quick moment to say thanks to all the new CS subscribers and the many of you who’ve liked us on FB, or written a review on iTunes.