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Protestant Reformation Dbq Analysis

Decent Essays

The Protestant Reformation, followed by the Catholic Reformation, was an attempt to cleanse the Catholic Church of all corruption and blind teaching. As presented in the documents provided, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations represented great change in the life of Europeans. Whether positively or negatively, almost every European citizen felt the impact of the Reformations on their lives. This was due largely to the fact that the Catholic Church struggled to defend ideas, affecting the clergy, peasants, and nobles all in different ways. During the Protestant Reformation, the clergy and the papacy faced the difficult task of negating all heretical ideas. The most influential of all heretics to the Catholic Church was Martin Luther, …show more content…

Their only real burden was choosing where they held their loyalty; whether Catholic or Protestant, they had a decision to make. A large majority of them saw Protestantism as a way of avoiding responsibilities thrust upon them by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Document 2 brings up the “Twelve Articles,” a list of peasant demands for the Protestant church. However, feeling devoid of responsibility, they did nothing to deserve any cooperation with these demands. While this new-found liberty was exciting for the peasants, they took advantage of it at times, angering the Protestant church with rebellions, specifically Luther himself. Document 3 brings up another example of the Protestant foundation being for everyone. It sought to let peasants be as successful as possible, rather than keeping them in the dark and in poverty as the Catholic Church did. Luther wrote, “Let the government, when it sees a promising boy, have him kept in school; if the father is poor, let it help him with church property.” This conveys Luther’s feelings towards the peasants, wanting them to reach their potential, while still helping the church, and being helped by the nobles. As it would play out, peasants typically converted to Protestantism, and were required to in England (under Henry VIII’s new Anglican Church). This impacted all of their lives, and unlike the Catholic clergy, it was usually for the

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