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Teaching Idea
This activity will work especially well
if there are students in your class who
speak several languages. Write this
sentence on the board:
Puer est agricola.
(The boy is a farmer.)
Ask students who speak languages
other than English to translate the
sentence. Write the translations on the
board.
Note that as Latin was once the universal language of educated people, so
English, French, and Spanish are
becoming universal languages today.
Find other common Latin phrases, and
share those with students. You can
obtain rough translations from English
into other languages on this website:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
Gutenberg’s printing press
Teaching Idea
Show students how printing with movable type works by getting a set of letter stamps. Have students set and print
a class newspaper or brief message.
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think of themselves as “above the law” and not subject to the same rules as everybody else. The word Machiavellian has entered our language to describe someone
who is full of trickery and deceit and will do anything to get to the top. Defenders of
Machiavelli say he was just being realistic about what was needed to keep order and
that his advice made sense in the dangerous world of Italian Renaissance politics.
Discuss that the term Machiavellian has come to mean “deceitful” and “expedient.” Machiavelli wrote The Prince after a brief imprisonment by the Medici. The
theory set forth in the book is contrary to Machiavelli’s other works and to the
deeds of his own life. His purpose in writing The Prince has been the subject of
much debate. Ask students what they think the purpose behind The Prince could
have been and discuss the purpose for other writings from this time period.
B. The Reformation
Gutenberg’s Printing Press and the Bible
Prior to the 1400s in Europe, any books that were reproduced, including the
Bible, were copied by hand. (In Grade 4, students in Core Knowledge schools
should have learned that monks copied manuscripts of the early Greeks and
Romans and in this way helped preserve the knowledge of the ancients.) One
problem with this system was that it was slow; it could take years to make one
copy. There was also the possibility of introducing errors into works. A monk
could make an error in copying a verse of the Bible in the year 600 and that same
error would continue to be made in copies in the year 1400—if some other error
had not taken its place by then.
The ability to make many exact copies of the same work quickly and at a reasonable cost did not appear in Europe until the 1400s. As early as the 700s, as students should have learned in Grade 4, the Chinese had developed a system of
printing with blocks of type. They did not develop movable type until the 1040s.
In the 1440s, Johann Gutenberg developed a system for making individual letters
out of molten metal. Once the individual letters had been cast, they were arranged
in rows on a wooden frame to spell the letters of the words on an entire page, or
on several pages at once. The type was then inked and a sheet of paper pressed
over the letters. Once enough copies had been printed in his way, letters could be
removed from the frame, and a new page or set of pages could be set from the type
and printed. In this way, the type could be reused, but it also meant that many
sheets could be printed from the same frame of type. It only needed to be re-inked
as the ink came off on the printed sheets. While the first books printed by this
process were very expensive, in time the cost was greatly reduced, so that books
became affordable for middle-class Europeans. The development of printing
spurred the development of literacy.
Whereas in the Middle Ages the vast majority of people were illiterate, from
1500 on the percentage of people who could read and write began to grow. During
the Middle Ages most important documents were written in Latin. Although the
Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic (Old Testament) and Greek
(New Testament), it was generally read in Latin. During the age of printing, Latin
continued to be an important language. Presses produced editions of classical
works edited by humanist scholars, as well as new works written in Latin.
However, printers also begin to print works in the vernacular (the language
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actually spoken in a particular place). In response to a growing demand for these
books, English printers produced books in English, German printers produced
books in German, etc.
The Protestant Reformation
Background
During the Middle Ages, the Church was the single largest and most important organization in western Europe. The Church provided stability in the face of
political upheavals and economic hardships. This stability was evident both in its
organization and in its message: life on Earth might be brutally hard, but it was
the means to a joyful life in heaven. The Church taught that life on Earth was a
time of divine testing and preparation for life after death.
Because of the central position of the Church in the West, the pope, the head
of the Church, became a powerful secular as well as religious figure. As the
Christian church grew during the Roman Empire, it developed a structure and a
hierarchy. At the local level was the parish, a congregation of worshippers within
a local community who were looked after by a priest. Many parishes made up a
diocese, which was overseen by a bishop. Several dioceses were then combined
into a province, which was overseen by an archbishop. Above the archbishops
was a layer of cardinals who not only supervised the lower ranks, but who were
advisers to the pope. In 1059, cardinals gained the power to elect new popes. At
the head of the Church was the pope, who was also known as the Bishop of Rome.
The pope derived his power through the doctrine of Petrine Supremacy. This
tenet of the Church said that the pope was the direct successor of St. Peter, the
first Bishop of Rome. Because he possessed (or claimed to possess) that authority, the pope could claim to be God’s spokesman on earth. Based on this concept,
ambitious popes extended their authority to claim papal supremacy over secular
rulers. Wielding political influence and the threat of excommunication—withholding the sacraments from an individual—various popes enforced and enlarged
the power of the Church.
Papal power grew gradually during the Early Middle Ages. The height of
papal power occurred during the reign of Pope Innocent III, from 1198 to 1216.
Pope Innocent III had the Holy Roman Emperor Otto replaced and forced King
John of England to become a vassal of the pope. However, the popes suffered
some serious setbacks in the 14th century. From 1309–1377, the papacy relocated to Avignon in France. Then, from 1378 to 1417, there were actually rival
popes, each claiming to be the head of the Church, and each denouncing the
other. This was a serious blow to the prestige of the papacy.
After the schism was healed in 1417, the popes, now back in Rome, set about
restoring the power of the papacy and rebuilding the city of Rome. They wanted
to build new churches and redesign old ones. They were eager to hire the great
artists of the day—men like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael—to paint frescos. Of course, all of this was going to cost money, and the Church looked for
ways to raise more money. The church tried to tax believers in other countries,
but the rulers of those countries were trying to raise money themselves and did
not want to see their subjects’ money sent out of the country and to Rome—particularly since the Church generally did not pay taxes on its properties.
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IV. The Renaissance and the Reformation
Resentment against papal fundraising was acute in some parts of Northern
Europe. As a result, the Church had to develop creative ways of raising money.
One of those creative ways evolved into the selling of indulgences, a practice
which would lead to the Protestant Reformation.
In the past, historians have sometimes depicted the late Medieval Church as
deeply corrupt and ripe for the Reformation that struck in the 1500s. However,
more recent scholars believe this was not in fact the case. They argue that, in the
centuries before the Reformation, the Church was in many ways quite strong, and
in some ways it was actually gaining strength. This is not to say that there were
no abuses. It was widely known that some priests were not well trained or well
educated, that some monks were more interested in hunting than praying, that
some friars actually seduced the women whose sins they were supposed to be forgiving, and that some popes and cardinals lived a life of luxury rather than a life
of piety. Improprieties of this sort were noted in poems like Geoffrey Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales (circa 1390s), and there were periodic efforts to curb these abuses and reform the Church from 1000 on. Even the Protestant Reformation began
as a call for reform within the Church. Only later did it lead to the creation of a
new Church.
Anticipations of the Reformation
The Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform certain beliefs and
practices within the Roman Catholic Church and ended with the founding of various Protestant denominations and the division of European Christianity.
Although Martin Luther is usually credited with starting the Reformation,
there had been other attempts at reform prior to Luther’s time. One important
early reformer was the English theologian John Wycliffe (died 1384), sometimes
called “the morning star of the Reformation.” In disputes between the English
king and the pope, Wycliffe sided with the English king. Wycliffe also believed
that all Christians should have access to the Bible in their native language. He
therefore initiated a translation of the Bible into English. Wycliffe questioned
other accepted ideas, including the idea of transubstantiation. This idea held that
the bread offered to the people during the Eucharist (or communion) was transformed into the actual body of Christ. Wycliffe’s ideas and writings were condemned, but Luther and other Protestant reformers would advance similar ideas
many decades later.
Martin Luther and the 95 Theses
Martin Luther
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Martin Luther (1483–1546) was an Augustinian monk who later became a
professor of Bible studies at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. Based on
his close study of the Bible (especially the epistles of St. Paul), he concluded that
man is justified by faith alone—not by works. The key Biblical text for Luther was
Paul’s statement: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of
law” (Romans 3:28). In other words, a person cannot obtain salvation by going
on pilgrimages or performing other good works; salvation can only be obtained
through faith in Jesus Christ. This idea eventually brought Luther into conflict
with the Church. In order to understand why this happened, one must know a
little about the Church’s doctrines concerning sin and the forgiveness of sins.
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According to Church teachings of the time, a person could confess his or her
sins to a priest in the sacrament of penance and then receive absolution, or forgiveness, from the priest in God’s name. The priest assigned prayers for the lay
person to say as penance, that is, as an act of reparation. If the person was truly
penitent, and said the required prayers, the sins would be forgiven and the person would have an opportunity to go to heaven in the afterlife.
However, if a person died without having gained forgiveness for all of his or
her sins, that person’s soul would be sent to a place called purgatory before it
would be allowed to enter heaven. In purgatory a soul could work off sins accumulated during life.
The Church taught that good works, such as making a pilgrimage to a holy
place or saying special prayers, could remove some or all of this additional punishment that would otherwise have to be worked off in purgatory. The Church
called this remission, or pardoning, of punishment an indulgence. The Church
insisted that an indulgence would only work if the sinner was truly sincere in his
or her repentance.
Originally, there was no idea that forgiveness could be bought or sold.
However, by the time Martin Luther became a professor at Wittenberg, indulgences were being bought and sold, sometimes by rather unscrupulous salesmen.
One of these salesman, a man named Johann Tetzel, sold indulgences in a town
near Wittenburg. Some of the funds raised by the sale of these indulgences were
to go to the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, one of the great architectural achievements of the Renaissance. Tetzel said people could gain an indulgence, not by being truly repentant, doing good works, and by saying prayers, but
simply by paying money for a printed indulgence. Tetzel also claimed his indulgences were so powerful they could get not only the sinner, but also his or her
relatives out of purgatory. He even had a little jingle he used to sell his indulgences: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul out of purgatory springs.”
Tetzel’s extreme sales tactics angered Martin Luther and prompted him to
write out 95 Theses, or points of debate. In them Luther protested against indulgences and other Church practices. Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All
Saint’s Church in Wittenberg in 1517.
Among Luther’s teachings were the following:
• Salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone. You cannot buy your way
into heaven with indulgences, or work your way to heaven by good works.
• The Bible contains all the guidance that anyone needs in matters of faith.
• Individuals are responsible for their own salvation. The power of the priest
and of the sacraments that formed the core of the doctrine of the Catholic Church
could be dispensed with. To Luther, every individual’s spiritual status was as high
as that of a priest. He believed in “the priesthood of all believers.” The head of a
parish still conducted church services as before and served as the group’s leader,
but he did so because that was his job, just as other members of the church had
jobs and worked for a living. Every person held a great spiritual responsibility, as
great as that which had formerly been ascribed to priests.
• The pope has no political authority over church organizations or property
within nations; the rulers of the nations should govern churches within their
boundaries.
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IV. The Renaissance and the Reformation
• The longstanding policy of clerical celibacy was unwarranted. Priests should
be allowed to marry. (Luther himself married. However, in the Roman Catholic
Church the requirement of priestly celibacy continues to this day.)
• The church service was to be performed not in Latin but in a language the
people could understand.
• There was no transubstantiation, or transformation of bread and wine into
Christ’s actual body and blood, in the Eucharist.
• Only a handful of the traditional sacraments of the Church had a genuinely
biblical basis.
• Nunneries and monasteries should be closed.
Because of his emphasis on the Bible as the central element of faith, Luther
translated the Scriptures into German. One reason that his ideas created so much
interest and spread so widely is that he wrote in German, not Latin. Another reason
was the development of the printing press. Many historians believe that without
Gutenberg’s invention of movable type decades before the Reformation, Luther’s
revolt against the Church would have failed from lack of popular support. 43
Luther’s ideas spread rapidly. The pope sent a papal bull (a special order)
ordering Luther to retract his views. Luther refused—and even burned the papal
bull in defiance. Luther wrote more pamphlets and added to his list of complaints
about the pope and the Church. The pope gave Luther opportunities to recant his
statements. When Luther refused, the pope excommunicated him. Luther was
declared an outlaw, but one of the local princes protected Luther and kept him
from getting arrested for heresy. Over the next 18 years, Luther published several more works denying additional church teachings.
Because Luther questioned the authority of the pope and suggested that the
ruler of a territory should lead the church in that territory, his ideas attracted the
support of a number of princes in northern Germany. These princes were only too
happy to seize church property and declare themselves heads of new, local
Christian churches that were independent of Rome. Eventually war broke out
between Luther’s supporters and supporters of the pope. There was also an uprising among the peasants. Luther condemned this uprising, and it was put down
with brutal force. By the time the wars and bloodshed ended in 1555, Germany
had suffered through a series of terrible religious and political wars. Many thousands of people had died, and the area was divided between Protestants (those
who protested against Rome, including Lutherans and some other groups) and
Catholics (those who remained loyal to the pope and rejected Luther’s ideas). In
general, Protestantism was stronger in the north and Catholicism had more favor
in the south.
John Calvin
John Calvin
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Another important religious reformer was the French theologian John
Calvin. Having been converted to the ideas of the Reformation in the early 1530s,
he wrote a book, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Written in 1536, the book
attempted to systematize the ideas of the Reformation. By then, Calvin had been
forced to leave Paris because of his beliefs. He was invited to Geneva to help
establish the Reformation there, but his ideas about how Christians should live
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were too harsh and again he had to flee. However, in 1541, he was asked to return
to Geneva, where this time he was able to establish a model government based on
religious principles. Calvin ordered that stained glass windows, altars, and similar “distractions” be removed from churches. Dancing, fancy clothes, games, and
other worldly “pleasures” were banned. According to Calvin, living a moral life
was serious business.
Among the important teachings of Calvin are the following:
• Like Luther, Calvin believed Christians are saved through faith alone, not
works.
• Like Luther, Calvin believed that the Bible was the only reliable source of
God’s teaching.
Teaching Idea
Point out that what Calvin established
in Geneva was a theocracy, a government based on religious doctrine.
Students in Core Knowledge schools
should be familiar with this concept,
though not the term, from their study
of the Plymouth and Massachusetts
Bay colonies in Grade 3.
• Like Luther, Calvin rejected the authority of the pope.
• Calvin rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation.
• Calvin also believed in predestination, that God decrees that certain people—
the elect—will be saved and others will be sent to hell. (By contrast, the Catholic
Church teaches that through free will, people make their own choice for salvation
or damnation.) Calvin argued that the Bible said God was all-powerful and allknowing. If God is all-knowing, he must know who will be saved and who will
be damned. And if he knows who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, then how
can people have free will?
• People must constantly strive to be good, and worldly success was an indication that a person was one of the elect (was saved).
• Fancy church decorations, like pictures of saints and the Virgin Mary, statues,
elaborate altars, and stained glass windows (all very popular in Catholic churches) were corruptions of pure, genuine, simple Christianity. Calvin based his argument on the Ten Commandments, one of which is a prohibition of “graven
images.” Since statues and other decorations were “graven images,” Calvin judged
them to be improper.
• Calvin also protested against some rituals that had become traditional in the
Church, against fancy priestly garments, and against observation of countless
saints’ days. In each case he pointed to the conduct of the earliest Christians and
argued that many rituals, garments, and festivals had been added to the Church
many years after the time of Jesus. Calvin wanted to reform the Church so as to
return to the simplicity of the early Christians.
Calvin was an effective preacher and his influence was felt across Europe.
Calvinism, as his religious thought became known, spread to France (by the
Huguenots), the Netherlands, Scotland (by John Knox and the Presbyterians),
and England (by the Puritans). The Puritans, who ultimately settled
Massachusetts Bay Colony, had their roots in Calvinism. Many Christians in
America today are partly or wholly Calvinist in their views.
The Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, was the Roman Catholic
Church’s own effort to reform the Church and stop the spread of the Reformation.
Recognizing that there were some problems with the Church and its policies, the
pope convened the Council of Trent, a committee of important churchmen that
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IV. The Renaissance and the Reformation
met several times between 1545 and 1563. Among the reforms that resulted from
this meeting of cardinals and the pope were the following:
• Many of the theological teachings of Luther and Calvin, such as predestination, were explicitly rejected.
• The Protestant principle that faith should be based wholly on the scriptures—“sola scriptura”—was rejected. The Catholic Church reaffirmed the value
of the Bible but insisted that tradition and scholarly work were also important.
• The practice of selling indulgences was banned.
• Higher educational standards for priests were established.
• Moral standards for the clergy were reiterated.
• The authority of the papacy was reaffirmed.
• Various doctrines about the Bible, the sacraments, transubstantiation (the
Roman Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine in the Eucharist changes into
the body and blood of Christ) and the Mass were affirmed and clarified.
The administrative structure and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church as
they are today are, in large part, the result of the reforms decreed by this council.
Another lasting effect of the Counter Reformation was the founding of a new
monastic order, the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, by a Spanish
priest, St. Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556). The Jesuits took on the role of soldiers
of the Church. Jesuits took the lead in reinvigorating the education of priests and
of intellectual inquiry. Fearless Jesuits sailed to the New World to convert Native
Americans. Jesuit scholars played a leading role at the Council of Trent.
Copernicus and Galileo: Scientific Questioning
While many of the scientific theories of the ancient Greeks and Romans
stood the test of time—such as Galen’s belief that the arteries carried blood and
not air—some theories were not grounded in demonstrable facts. As scientists,
philosophers, and mathematicians of the Renaissance attempted to test and prove
these older theories using new scientific and mathematical tools, many of the theories were disproved and discarded. However, whether all the planets and the sun
revolved around Earth or Earth revolved around the sun became a heated controversy during the Renaissance.
Until the 1500s, the most influential theory on the movement of the planets
was that of Ptolemy, a Greco-Egyptian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer who lived in the 100s CE. He claimed that Earth was stationary and at the
center of the universe, and that all the planets and the stars revolved around it.
This view was generally accepted by Christians because it put Earth, God’s “greatest creation,” at the center of the universe, which was considered unmoving and
perfect, and also because it seemed to accurately describe what we see in the skies
every day: when the sun “rises” and “sets” each day, it certainly seems like the sun
is moving and Earth is standing still.
Even before astronomical telescopes were invented, Nicolaus Copernicus
used mathematics to try to prove or disprove the Ptolemaic theory. Copernicus, a
Polish astronomer, could not prove the truth of Ptolemy’s theory. In fact,
Copernicus argued that the geocentric theory (which held that Earth was at the
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center) was actually less likely than the heliocentric theory (which held that the
sun was at the center). At the request of Pope Clement VII, he published his findings in 1543, but his book raised little controversy.
Some 50 years after Copernicus published his findings, in 1609, the Italian
inventor Galileo heard about a telescope that had been invented in the
Netherlands. Galileo built a telescope of his own and began to study the heavens.
He quickly made a series of important discoveries. He discovered that the surface
of the moon was not flat but pockmarked with craters. He also observed that
there were many more stars in the sky than could be seen with the naked eye.
Finally, he observed several of the moons of Jupiter and noticed that these moons
appeared to be orbiting Jupiter. If that were true, then it must mean that not
everything in the universe was going around Earth. Eventually, Galileo came to
the same conclusion as Copernicus: the sun, not Earth, was at the center of the
universe.
In 1632, Galileo published a book in support of the heliocentric theory.
Copernicus had previously written in support of the heliocentric theory, but he
had been moderate in his claims. Galileo was bolder. Although his book was written in the form of a dialogue, in which each speaker gets a chance to state his case,
he gave the strongest arguments to the spokesman for the heliocentric views, and
he put some of the then-pope’s own views into the mouth of the book’s most rigid
geocentric believer. Also, his book appeared at a time when Europe was involved
in religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. At this time, the Catholic
Church was very sensitive to any questioning of its authority, having been stung
by the questioning of Luther and other Protestants. For all of these reasons,
Galileo’s book created an uproar among other scholars and the Church’s hierarchy for questioning both the ancients’ view of the world and, seemingly, the
Church’s teachings. Galileo insisted his ideas were not necessarily in conflict with
religious truth. He said his work investigated “how the heavens go,” whereas the
Church taught “how to go to heaven.” He was summoned before the Inquisition,
a Roman Catholic court organized to detect and defeat heretical ideas, and told to
recant his views or be punished. He chose to recant. Supposedly, as he left the
court after having recanted, Galileo murmured to himself, “But it [Earth] does
move.”
Teaching Idea
Core Knowledge students should be
familiar with Copernicus and astronomy from their studies in Grade 3. You
may wish to review the content.
Cross-curricular
Teaching Idea
You may wish to teach the science
biography on Galileo in conjunction
with this section.
The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo were early episodes in what would
later be called the scientific revolution. Beginning in the 1600s, those interested
in understanding how nature worked set about the careful observation and study
of natural laws, including those that governed human development and activity.
Rather than simply accepting what Aristotle and other ancient writers had
deduced the Bible said, scientists gathered data, established hypotheses, performed experiments to test their suppositions, and drew conclusions. Then they
repeated the process to verify their conclusions. In the years following the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, important discoveries were made in various
fields, including botany, physics, optics, and medicine. The work of Copernicus,
Galileo, and other scientists of the time continues to be carried on and advanced
by modern scientists.
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