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Who’s Who in Church History

Lesson Eight The Medieval Church in Turbulence 1300 – 1500 Initiating the

Background It is hard to think of a more turbulent time in Church history than the period of 1300 – 1500. After two centuries of war, the left Jerusalem in the hands of the Mamluks – the Crusades had failed. Two insipient world changes added significant stress to the Roman : the virtual simultaneous and Reformation. Most often spoken of separately, they both stem from an awakening of the Western World from the bleak dark times after the collapse of the Roman Empire. While we will not be looking at the Renaissance in any detail, it is important to recognize its role in creating an awareness of the world beyond the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

A few dates will help to set the stage: · Disastrous end of the Eighth Crusade: 1291 · Dante: 1265 – 1321 · Papacy moved from Rome to : 1309 · John Wyclif: 1330 – 1384 · Bubonic Plagues: 32 years of the , 41 years of the · : 1369 – 1415 · The Great : 1378 – 1417 · : 1340 – 1400 · Gutenberg printed: 1456 · Desiderius : 1466 – 1536 · Martin : 1483 – 1546 · Henry VIII, King of England: 1509 – 1547 · Leonardo Da Vinci: 1452 – 1519 · Michelangelo Buonarroti: 1475 – 1564

The great power and prestige of the Roman Catholic Church, greatly increased by the First Crusade, was slowly whittled away by the remaining seven. The great efforts by the papacy from Gregory VII (1073 – 1085) to Boniface VIII (1294 – 1303), to bring all secular rulers under papal control failed with the development of Nationalism. In 1302 – 1303, King Philip IV of successfully challenged the authority of Boniface VIII over the power and property of the church

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 1 in France – the first revolt of secular rulers against the Roman Catholic Church. The Reformation had begun.

By 1309 French cardinals formed a majority and Clement V moved the papacy to Avignon. The papacy was seen as an instrument of the French for the next 68 years. 134 nominations to the College of Cardinals were made during this period, 113 were French. Increasingly, the church found itself considered a pawn of France with the Avignon, France result that nations became less willing to send revenues to the church. To counter this revenue decrease, the papal Curia required greater and greater levies and taxes on the hierarchy and all parishes until over half of any ecclesiastical appointee’s first year income was taken and a tithe was required thereafter. Large gifts were required for appointments and advances as well as rulings and judgments – many times, the size of the gift directly influenced the ruling or judgment handed down. When an abbot, bishop, archbishop, or cardinal died, all his possessions reverted to the papacy. This continual outpouring of wealth further antagonized the Papal Palace, Avignon sovereign nations now fighting France during the Hundred Years’ War.

By this time the papacy was a royal court. Guillaume Durand, Bishop of Mend recorded it thus: “The whole Church might be reformed if… it would begin by removing evil examples from itself… by which men are scandalized, and the whole people, as it were, infected… For in all lands… especially the most holy Church of Rome, is in evil repute; and all cry and publish it abroad that within her bosom all men, from the greatest unto even the least, have set their hearts on covetousness… the clergy feast more luxuriously and splendidly, and with more dishes, than princes and kings.”

Enter The Humanists When we consider today, we think . When we look back to the Renaissance, however we see humanists from a different perspective. They came into being during the time of the Medici and revealed the past to an amazed world. They were given the name umanisti because they called the study of classics and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans humanities. This then was humanism.

The humanists were the original archeologists. For example, Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304 –1374) found manuscripts forgotten in monastery cellars “held in captivity by barbarous jailers.” Often, these

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 2 humanists traveled in groups to unearth manuscripts. In the 50 years before Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453), 12 went to Greece. Giovanni Aurispa brought back 238 manuscripts including Sophocles’ plays. Francesco Filelfo unearthed texts of Herodotus, , Demosthenes, , and Euripides.

It is important to remember that the original humanists were

Christians, but their work unearthed a new light on the ancient world opening Renaissance eyes to civilizations and ways of thinking that in many ways were counter to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The resultant intense requirement for Greek and scholars spread educational opportunities. While their work did bring about some separation of science from theological control, their focus on the past coupled with existing laws hindered direct scientific observation. These new intelligentsia saw the difference between that which was being preached by the church (chastity, poverty, obedience, humility, generosity, otherworldliness, etc.) and what the church leaders practiced and questioned the disparity, thus preparing the way for reform.

Petrarch, branded the condition of the papacy at Avignon as: “Impious Babylon, the hell on earth, the sink of vice, the sewer of the world. There is neither nor charity nor nor the fear of … as if their glory consisted not in the cross of Christ but in feasting, drunkenness, and unchasity… the delights of the pontifical games.”

John Wyclif (1330 – 1384) The Morning Star of the Reformation Into this time of turmoil came the first of the English reformers. He was born in north Yorkshire, studied at Oxford and became professor of . He was an ordained with multiple benefices in parish churches but continued to teach at the as was common.

A man of the period, he wrote extensively on subjects ranging from logic, metaphysics, church governance, and theology. Written in obscure Latin, they might have gone mostly unnoticed except for his radical conceptualization of God’s sovereignty. He argued that God is Lord of all and that everyone owes allegiance directly to Him. This allegiance, being direct, requires no intermediary (On Devine Dominion). He further stated that any claim of the church to the contrary was false teaching. He went on to say that it is due to God’s grace that man is saved, that He gives his grace to those whom He

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 3 chooses. As we have seen, the church had long positioned itself to take dominion over all temporal things and persons – kings thus were considered to have derived their authority from the church. Wyclif argued that all can and should hold themselves as obedient vassals to God without need of a priest or ordination. This was condemning enough, but he went on to express his opinion that anyone in a state of sin could not hold dominion over others (On Civil Dominion). Ungodly rulers, temporal or spiritual, have no legitimate authority and lose the right of dominion (lordship, rightful possession).

When the English Parliament refused to pay the tribute to the pope in 1366, Wyclif was engaged to defend Parliament’s actions. During this time the church was immensely wealthy, owning, it is said, over a third of all the property in England and claimed exemption from all taxation of the state. In July of 1374, Wyclif was appointed to the royal commission and sent to Bruges to discuss England’s continued refusal to pay the papal tribute. At this time, , the Duke of Lancaster, proposed confiscating the church’s property. Wyclif defended the proposal in a series of John of Gaunt sermons in September of 1376. He was branded a heretic by Bishop Courtenay and summoned to appear before a council of prelates at St. Paul’s. John of Gaunt accompanied him with an armed escort to ensure his safety. He returned to Oxford but the pope, Gregory XI, issued bulls in 1377 condemning him (mostly referring to Wyclif’s treatise On Civil Dominion) and calling for his arrest. Wyclif answered in one of his pamphlets that in essence, called for the separation of the English church from the papacy. The chancellor of Oxford refused to obey the arrest warrant and denied that any prelate had authority over the University.

1378 dawned as the decisive year for Wyclif and the papacy. Wyclif broke with Catholic tradition and the papacy was divided.

In 1375, 64 Italian cities aligned themselves with the pope as their temporal and spiritual head; by 1376, only Rome remained loyal. Gregory accused Florence of being the head of the revolt and excommunicated all Florentines. The Florentines confiscated all church property. The dispute got Gregory XI out of hand, many were put to death and Gregory, when told that Rome was about to rebel, was forced to seek a diplomatic end to the rebellion. On November 7, 1377, Gregory returned to Rome to oversee the return of to the fold. On March 28, 1378, he died. The conclave in Rome that met to name Gregory’s successor elected the Archbishop of Bari as pope. He took the name Urban VI. Meanwhile, the French cardinals issued an invalidation of Urban’s election as made under duress of the Roman mobs and on September 20, 1378 proclaimed

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 4 Robert of Geneva as the true pope (Clement VII). Thus, started the Great Schism of the Roman Catholic Church – Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon.

Urban was supported by , England, Flanders, , Hungary, , Portugal, and Scotland. Everyone else supported Clement. It essentially broke the church in two, with each half calling the other half heretics and excommunicating them. The Great Schism was not ended until 1417.

In 1378 Wyclif wrote The Truth of Holy Scriptures in which he stated that the Bible is the ultimate resource for knowing about God. He argued that the Bible contains God’s revelation and that there is no need for supplementation to be supplied by , the pope, or church tradition. He went on to say that since this is true, everyone needs access to a copy of the Bible in his own . It is reported that he personally translated the into English but the was not completed until ten years after his death by Hereford and Purvey.

1379 saw Wyclif write The Power of the Papacy. Here he argued that the papacy was an office created by man, not God, thus the pope’s power is limited and therefore, does not extend to secular government. He also opposed the doctrine of in his work, Apostasy. A year later he completed his thoughts on the subject in The . He held that Christ is present in the elements sacramentally, not materially.

“The spiritual receiving of the body of Christ consists not in bodily receiving, chewing, or touching of the consecrated host, but in the feeding of the out of the fruitful faith according to which our is nourished in the Lord… For nothing is more horrible than the necessity of eating the flesh carnally and of drinking the blood carnally of a man loved so dearly ( Christ).”

Near the end of his life in 1382, while translating the New Testament, he was ordered to stop preaching and teaching at Oxford by Bishop Courtenay and a council of clergy who found 24 of his propositions regarding doctrine, the papacy, and the Eucharist heretical. Wyclif left Oxford but continued his campaign of reform by forming a group of “poor preaching priests” or “Lollards” to take the message to the people. He wrote more than 300 sermons for these traveling priests further antagonizing the churc h. In 1384 he was summoned to appear before Pope Urban VI in Rome to answer claims of heresy. He suffered a stroke and died on December 28, 1384. He was buried at his parish in Lutterworth but by a decree of the (Germany) on , 1415, he was

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 5 excommunicated, his body was exhumed and cast into the nearby river Swift and as many of his works that could be found, were burned.

What We Should Remember About Wyclif Wyclif is called “The Morning Star of the Reformation.” Almost a century and a half before Luther, the Reformation could be said to have begun in England. All the issues of the reformation can be found in Wyclif’s writings: the call for reform of the church, the call for morality, the election of the chosen by God’s grace, the rejection of and the power of priests as intermediaries to God, the arguments against transubstantiation, the inerrancy of the Bible, and the of the Bible to the language of the people. Overall, a remarkable man living at the cusp of significant world changes.

Jan Hus (1369 – 1415) The Incendiary Reformer Jan Hus was born to poor parents in the village of Husinetz in southern Bohemia in about the year 1369, and was known as Jan of Husinetz, which he later shortened to Hus. The reform movement started by John Wyclif in England found a ready audience in Bohemia after the linking of the two nations by the marriage of King Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia in 1383. In 1388 Adelbert Ranconis left a bequest to the University of (founded by Charles IV in 1347) to enable students to study at either the University of or Oxford University.

In 1390, Hus entered the University of Prague, earning a of Arts in 1394 and the Master of Arts degree in 1396. He began teaching at the university after graduation, was ordained in 1400, and became dean of arts (humanities) in 1401. In 1402 he was appointed to the pulpit of in Prague (a special church founded in 1391 by a wealthy merchant to promote national religious reform). He was an instant success, preaching in Czech and permitting the congregation to take an active role in services by singing hymns. Becoming more acquainted with Wyclif’s religious writings, he preached reform of the church. He pointed to Christ’s walking barefoot while the pope rode on a bedecked horse in an entourage of church Bethlehem Chapel nobility, of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet contrasted to the pope preferring to have his feet kissed in homage. His fiery speeches soon created wide support, even among the nobility.

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 6 While not accepting Wyclif’s position on transubstantiation, he openly attacked clerical corruption – particularly the practice of (the sale of spiritual privilege and position). His acceptance and preaching of God’s grace and the elect with Christ as the head of the church – not the pope, infuriated the clergy. His desire that the cup be served during communion was a harbinger of things to come.

By 1403 the writings of Wyclif had gained such favor at the University of Prague that a council of the administrative clergy submitted a list of 45 excerpts of Wyclif’s works to have them barred from being taught at the school. The council was upheld by a majority of the university masters (the body was stacked 3 to 1 Germans versus Bohemians) and the 45 articles could no longer be taught or defended either publicly or privately. Hus ignored the ruling and in 1408 the clergy of Prague petitioned Archbishop Zbynek to excommunicate him. It should be noted that in 1402 Zbynek at the age of 25 bought the archbishopric of Prague so was not at all pleased with Hus’ condemnation of the church’s practice of simony.

But this was the time of the Great Schism, and King Vaclav IV of Bohemia (1378 – 1417) who was a vacillating, incompetent ruler hoped that by picking the right papal contender he could get back the title of , which he had lost in 1400. He and Hus backed the in their attempt to reconcile the church schism by electing a new pope. Vaclav switched allegiances from the Roman pope, Gregory XII, to the newly elected pope Alexander V of Pisa in 1409. Three now existed simultaneously: Gregory XII (1406 – 1415) in Rome, Benedict XIII (1394 – 1417) in Avignon, and the newly elected Alexander V (1409 – 1410) in Pisa. The German masters at the University of Prague remained loyal to Rome. Vaclav changed the university’s constitution giving the voting power to the and made Hus the rector. The Germans left and Hus became even more outspoken.

Archbishop Zbynek proceeded against Hus slowly, but when Hus refused to change his views, Zbynek excommunicated him in 1410. He further ordered that all of works of Wyclif in Bohemia be surrendered and burned. Over 200 were found and burned in his palace courtyard. The reaction of Prague was riots against Zbynek, who was forced to flee to his castle in Roundnice north of Prague. Hus responded, “Such bonfires never yet removed a single sin from the hearts of men. Fire does not consume the truth. It is always the mark of a little mind that it vents its anger on inanimate objects. The books which have been burned are a loss to the whole people.”

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 7 In 1411, Pope Alexander V died and the newly elected Pope John XXIII declared a holy crusade against Ladislas, King of Naples, who had seized Rome. To finance this war, John announced a new offering of indulgences and a full remission of sins for those who supported him. King Vaclav supported the sales, as he was to receive a portion of the funds collected. Hus publicly objected. The result was that John excommunicated Hus and any city he resided in was put under papal interdiction. This meant that no religious services could be held in Prague as long as he resided there. He exiled himself to rural seclusion.

During this period, Jan Hus wrote most of his major works. He denounced the immoral, extravagant lifestyle of the clergy, rejected image worship and the creation of new religious rites. In On the Church, he stated that God alone can forgive sin and that no member of the clergy, including the pope, could establish any doctrine contrary to the Bible. In Traffic in Holy Things he strongly attacked the practice of simony.

But the church and the machinations of politics would not leave him alone. Vaclav’s half-brother, Sigismund, King of Hungary (1387 –1437) imprisoned Vaclav in a bid to become the acknowledged Emperor of the and requested Pope John to call a council. The Council of Constance was called for 1414. When all the dignitaries arrived at the small German town, the clergy and attendants numbered 18,000. 5,000 clergy attended Hus at Council of Constance the council making it the largest since the Council of Nicea in 325. In October 1414, Hus was ordered to appear to answer charges of heresy. Sigismond offered him a safe conduct to and from Constance and a public hearing before the council. On arrival he was questioned and arrested. When Sigismond complained that the arrest violated his offer of safe conduct, the council answered that it had the right to overrule state authority on all matters pertaining to heresy. Hus refuted the allegations of heresy and stated that he would give up any of his views that could be disproved by Scripture. The council refused and called him “obstinate in heresy.”

On May 29, 1415, the council ordered all three popes to resign. On , 1415, after seven months in prison and three days of questioning, Hus was condemned of heresy, defrocked, and burned at the stake. It is reported that he died signing hymns.

What We Should Remember About Hus Thirty years after Wyclif introduced reform thinking to England, Jan Hus brought the reform movement into central Europe. While he spoke

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 8 strongly against the excesses and abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, he was a true reformer and desired to make it more closely conform to the early church rather than completely change it. He was a modern preaching professor with a gift for making his message clear to the people of his day. He spoke in their own language and used graphic images by commissioning paintings for the Bethlehem Chapel’s walls. In death, his martyrdom set off a that was to set the stage for . Almost exactly 100 years after his execution, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses of Contention to the church door at Wittenberg.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466 – 1536) The Reformation Forerunner The greatest of the Christian humanists was born in in 1466, the illegitimate second son of a priest and physician’s daughter. It is helpful to remember that Johann Gutenberg produced the first Bible on a with movable type in 1456, ten years before Erasmus was born. Erasmus was to become the most famous writer of his day, with his works outselling all others – second only to the Bible in sales until 1550. He studied with the Brethren of the Common Life where he was required to speak, read, and write only in Latin. His parents died in 1484. The modest estate being exhausted by guardians, Erasmus and his brother were forced into a monastic career. Erasmus was ordained as a priest in 1492. He induced the bishop to send him to study at the . It was here he learned French and Greek. He read everything he could lay his hands on and was soon conversant with the ancient Greek and Roman texts of , Euripides, , and Seneca.

In addition to the stipend he received from his bishop, he became a tutor. Some of his students were wealthy and took him to visit different parts of Europe. One of his pupils, Mountjoy, took him to England in 1499. At Mountjoy’s home in Greenwich he met and the future Henry VIII. He studied at Oxford and by the time he left England for Paris in 1500, he had Thomas resolved to translate the New Testament from the More Greek.

In Paris he produced his first major work -- a collection of 818 adages and quotations. It was an instant success with the writers and speakers of the day. It was at this time he received the first of many offers – in this case, Archbishop Warham offered a benefice in England. Erasmus refused to leave Paris. But in 1502, fearing plague, he left for Utrecht

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 9 where he was offered a professorship. He declined. We find him back in Paris in 1503, translating Cicero, Euripides, and . In 1505 he went back to England to participate in a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas `a Becket at Canterbury. Here he became incensed at the wealth of the and quantity of “relics”. He returned to London.

Fortuitously, Henry VII’s two sons were being sent to Italy; Erasmus was engaged as a tutor and guide to the King’s sons. He stayed in for a year and returned to England in 1506 as a professor of Greek at Cambridge. In 1508, he went back to Italy to work on a new expanded edition of his collection of quotations and adages -- it now contained 3,260 entries. 60 editions ultimately appeared in his lifetime with from the original Latin to Dutch, English, French,

German, and Italian. While in Rome (1509) he found himself welcomed by the cardinals as a priest of considerable learning and fame and offered rising ecclesiastical positions if he would but live in Rome. He was considering it when word came to him from Mountjoy that Henry VII had died and that Henry VIII had ascended the throne. The letter from Henry VIII gives us a picture of the esteem in which Erasmus was held: “Our acquaintance began when I was a boy. The regard that I then learned to feel for you has increased… So far you have borne your burden alone; give me now the pleasure of assisting and protecting you… Come to England, and assure yourself of a hearty welcome. You shall name your own terms… We shall ask nothing of you save to make our realm your home… Come to me, my dear Erasmus, and let your presence be your answer to my invitation.”

How could he refuse? He went back to England. Mountjoy gave him gifts, The Archbishop of Warham bestowed him with the revenues of a Kent parish, and he was made professor of Greek at Cambridge. He was the houseguest of Thomas More when he wrote his famous The Praise of Folly in 1509. It is a biting on the Roman Catholic Church reminiscent of the positions taken by Wyclif and Hus – nothing and no one was immune. 40 Editions were published in his lifetime. While Folly infuriated just about everyone, a stage presentation appeared in Paris in 1514, one year after the death of Pope Julius II. Although the authorship was concealed, Thomas More listed Julius Excluded from Heaven among Erasmus’s works and began a furor that suddenly put Erasmus as the forefront of the reform movement. In the work the pope finds the gates of heaven closed by St. Peter:

“Julius: Enough of this, I am Julius, P.M. Peter: P.M.! What is that? Pestis Maxima?

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 10 J: Pontifex Maximus, you rascal… Make an end, or I will excommunicate you… P: Excommunicate me? By what right? J: The best of . You are only a priest… Open I say! P: You must show your merits first… J: What do you mean by merits? P: Have you taught doctrine? J: Not I… There are monks to look after doctrine… P: Have you worked any ? J: Pshaw! Miracles are out of date! P: Have you been diligent in your prayers? J: The invincible Julius ought not answer to a beggarly fisherman… P: What did you do? J: I raised revenue. I invented new offices and sold them…”

In yet another book, Forms of Familiar Conversation, Erasmus created a text to ostensibly teach Latin, but actually to attack the excesses of the clergy. In it he condemned the misuse of , the selling of “relics” and indulgences, and the differences between the original church and the then current church. Needless to say, this book too, created a furor. Over 24,000 copies were sold in the first printing – a blockbuster the equivalent of a bestseller written by Brown, Clancy, Cussler, Griffin, and Ludlum rolled into one today.

He left England in 1514 and traveled to , Switzerland (the home of Froben, the printer). Here he published, in 1516, what is arguably his most influential book the first printed translation of the New Testament in both Greek and Latin. It was this work that was used by Martin Luther to translate the New Testament into German in 1522. In 1526, it was the primary source for to translate the New Testament into English. Title Page to Erasmus’s Greek NT, 1516 edition Erasmus, though a Latin scholar, was weak in Greek. His translation reflects this fault. But his notes, published in a separate volume, predated many of the timing, translation, and interpretation questions and issues of later editions of the Bible (Mark 16:9 – 20 for example). Also, his notes stood at the forefront of reform thinking. Contained within his notes on Matthew he commented:

“What would say could he see… the miraculous oils, the portions of the , enough, if collected, to freight a large ship? Here we have the hood of St. Francis… St. Ann’s comb… not presented as innocent aids to religion, but as the substance of religion itself – and all through the avarice of priests…”

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 11 “Truly the yoke of Christ would be sweet, and burden light, if petty human institutions added nothing to what He himself imposed. The church added to it many things… What rules, what superstitions… What shall we say about vows… about the authority of the pope, the abuse of absolutions and dispensations?”

What appears to us is an early reformer, willing to use modern technology (printing press) to make his reform points, but under the brash, sophisticated writing style lay a reformer who strongly believed that slow change is better that rapid, that is better than war, and that reason would prevail in the end. No writer of the period equaled his fame. He was loved by kings and popes, respected by reformers and the clergy, but walked a tightrope believing that reform of the church had to come from the inside. Erasmus wrote in gifted Latin for an awakening world audience – he was the sage, the link of the Reformation and Renaissance. Reformers considered him one of their own, yet his desire for peace and very slow reform grated on many. Many of the clergy saw in him a voice of reason.

1517 (the year of Luther’s 95 theses) began a period of traumatic pivotal decision making for Erasmus. By 1519 Luther had moved to a position of outright rejection of the papacy. Erasmus had to choose either supporting Luther and throwing away all that he had worked for all of his life (slow internal reform) or supporting the church and seemingly losing his reformer’s touch. He thought that real reform progress was being made and desperately wanted peace. Finally on May 30, 1519 he wrote Luther:

“Dearest brother in Christ… Old institutions cannot be rooted up in an instant. Quiet argument may do more than wholesale condemnation. Avoid all appearance of sedition. Keep cool. Do not get angry. Do not hate anybody…”

When Luther was excommunicated in 1520, it was Erasmus who went to his defense:

“I perceive that the better a man was, the less he was Luther’s enemy… How, while the re are persons calling themselves bishops whose moral character is abominable, can it be right to persecute a man of unblemished life, in whose writings distinguished and excellent persons have found so much to admire? …If we want truth, every man ought to be free to say what he thinks without fear. If the advocates of one side are to be rewarded with miters, and the advocates on the other side with rope or stake, truth will not be heard…”

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In 1524 Erasmus wrote The Freedom of Will as a compromise attack on a small portion of Luther’s reform teaching. To Erasmus, was an obscure issue with far reaching consequences. He reasoned that if ruled man, there could be no human dignity; there would be no reason for mankind to attempt to improve. He stated that the worst criminal could be an innocent if he had no choice but to commit the criminal activity. He concluded by admitting ignorance in understanding divine causality and asked Luther to postpone the “solution until the last judgment.” He had missed the key to Luther’s argument: God’s Grace.

Most Roman Catholics were displeased with the treatise as they thought it too conciliatory. Many reformers saw it as a rejection of the reform movement. At the end of his life, Erasmus had failed to walk the tightrope. By 1527, monks of the in Spain began a thorough examination of Erasmus’ works with the view of having him condemned as a heretic. Yet he continued his criticisms.

On June 12, 1536, he died condemned as a coward by many reformers and as a heretic by the . He had many admirers on both sides of the reformation but he died with few followers.

What We Should Remember About Erasmus He should be remembered first as a great Christian scholar. There is no question that his approach to the translation from the early Hebrew and Greek sources and his desire to increase availability of the Bible were cornerstones to the Reformation.

He was a true reformer. His condemnation of indulgences, immorality in the priesthood, and idol and relic worship put him in good stead with Wyclif and Hus. He was a product of the humanist movement in that he believed learning and reason were powerful instruments of change and that they would prevail in reforming the Roman Catholic Church. He believed in inducing change by influencing key leaders – and he personally knew most of them. He was the most well read author of his time and influenced reform thinking throughout the Western world. But when the Reformation broke out, it came out violently with emotion, and in many ways, passion took the place of reason. No longer would slow changes assuage the reformers and Erasmus found himself in an untenable position – both the church and the reformers wanted his support and he wanted to support both.

Walking the tightrope at the end of his life ultimately endeared him to neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the reformers. Now, centuries

NPC Summer Adult Education Series ‘04 Who’s Who in Church History, L8, p. 13 later, with the emotion and passion of the Reformation cooled, both Protestants and Roman Catholics recognize his great Christian mind and his heart of a peacemaker.

“And Now, Hailing from Greater Cappadocia, Starting at Power Bishop It’s…” There are several large movements within church history that will help us keep our bearings.

The Church of the Fathers (90 AD to 500 AD) Augustine 451 c. 130-c. 200 354-430 c. 150- c. 212

90 AD Athansius 500 AD 296-373

Council of Nicea 325

The Medieval Church* (500 AD to 1500 AD) Benedict Anselm 480-547 1033-1109 1225-1274 Erasmus Jan Hus 1466-1536 1369-1415 Gregory the Great 500 AD 540-604 c. 1330 -1384 1500 AD

Reformation and Reaction (1500 AD to 1700) Martin Jonathan Luther Edwards 1483-1546 1703-1758 1509-1564 1500 AD 1643-1649 1700 AD

* The “Medieval Church” for our purposes really refers to the church in Western Europe. In 1054 the tensions between church in the East (eastern Europe and the Middle East) and the church in the West came to a head prompting the “Great Schism.” Even though their remained a vibrant and growing church in the East, our tradition comes from these Western churches and so we focus on them.

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