Corruption In The Catholic Church During The Middle Ages

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated as well as they were no longer required to learn and teach the Holy Scriptures because the Church dictated their actions. The pinnacle of the Church’s corruption was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was the “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment” sold by priests as a temporary relief from sins. The indulgences were then sold to the general populace for money as the monetization of a priest’s services. Johannes Tetzel was a prominent preacher of indulgences who relied on the money from the sales to subsidize the rebuilding of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The corrupt sales did not go unnoticed as Martin Luther, in an effort to stop the corruption of the Church, posted the 95 Theses on the door of a Castle

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the church was promptly losing respect due to the corruption and simony within the church. However when Johann Tetzel began to sell indulgences, many felt that the church had reached rock bottom. Due to this sale of indulgences, Martin Luther issued his 95 Theses which sparked a religious reformation movement that spread throughout Europe. During the reformation, religious, political, and social aspects were associated with the changes in the church, significantly affecting Europe.

The Reformation started with the ideas and concepts of Martin Luther, all explained in his Ninety-Five Theses. Luther believed that God’s gift of faith was freely given to the unworthy, and the righteousness is passive and is not active or based on our good works or deeds. These ideas clashed with the Roman Church, which in turn created the “Indulgence Controversy.” To raise money to help rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Leo X issued the offer of indulgences as a penance for parishioners to buy. This penance acted as a way to pay as a remission of temporal punishment due to the sins of the person whose guilt has already been forgiven. Luther caught wind of the issue of indulgences happening within his own church and went ballistic

Beginning in the 1500s, Martin Luther sparked a reformation and eventually developed a new religions due to his actions. He posted the 95 Theses on the doors of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. The 95 Theses were used to point out the corruption in the Catholic church. An example of the corruption that took place was the selling of indulgences, which was buying a free pass from sins to reduce time in purgatory.

A long history of corruption caused people to view the Catholic Church as a for-profit organization rather than God’s voice on Earth. By the Renaissance, the Catholic Church had already lost much of its power over secular rulers but still held leverage over the masses. This authority naturally paved the way for corruption. The most outrageous form of corruption practiced by the Church was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence is the remission of temporal punishment still due for a sin that has been sacramentally absolved. One of the ways the Church would generate income was by selling them. The notion started off innocently enough; it stemmed from the idea that punishment for crimes could be converted to payments of money, in essence, a fine (Simon 35). However, it soon spiraled out of control as the Church used indulgences simply to gain money, as when Pope Leo X needed money for the construction of St. Peter’s basilica (Duiker and Spielvogel 429). People began to view salvation as something that could be bought; they could go out and sin on Saturday night, then simply pay for it monetarily Sunday morning. To encourage people to buy more indulgences, the Church even claimed that indulgences could be bought on behalf of those already dead and in purgatory (Sporre 378). This blatant victimization was what spurred Martin Luther to write his Ninety-Five Theses,

The Protestant Reformation cleared a path so that religious tolerance was acceptable throughout Europe. The Reformation not only created many changes in religion, but also changed the way politics and European life was carried. According to Eric Badertscher (2017), “It marked the end of the medieval “Christendom," a religious and political unity under the authority of the Papacy. From this point on, Western Christianity would be the story of many different sects or “denominations”…” (p.4). Martin Luther was a monk who had seen the way the Catholic Church had been corrupted by indulgences. Indulgences were promises made from the Pope to reduce a sinners time spent in purgatory, but only were received by making donations to the Catholic Church.

Protestantism began as a movement in 1517 AD, when Martin Luther - a German Professor of theology - posted his “Ninety Five Theses” on the walls of the “All Saints’” castle in Wittenberg, Germany. This great work brought awareness to the doctrinal faults - such as the dealing of indulgences - and corrupt practices of religious leaders from the Roman Catholic Church, and gave reason for a reform of the establishment. The content of the “Ninety Five Theses” - which addressed three main ideas, including: “selling indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter's is wrong”, “the pope has no power over Purgatory”, and “buying indulgences gives people a false sense of security and endangers their salvation” - was heavily contradicted and rejected by the church at that time. Furthermore, Martin Luther translated the Bible into German for the first time in history, and spread the work all across Europe. This placed the bible into the hands of a large majority of Christians, who were able to interpret the text without the need of religious figures. Although Martin Luther, began the Protestant movement and branch of religion, other important figures such as John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli also greatly contributed to the

During the eleventh and thirteenth centuries the power of the papacy was heavily abused. The pope became considerably intertwined with both religious and political affairs. Which consequently lead to the corruption of the churches doctrine. The system within the church was crooked, lords were in charge of selecting wicked, power hungry officials within the church who influenced and consulted the pope’s decisions. Germans purposely chose weak kings so they could select strong bishops and abbots whom then they used to control in the religious dealings.

As Martin Luther studied The Bible, he became convinced that the Catholic Church was corrupt and their leaders were taking advantage of their power by lying about the scripture and suppressing human rights. The Catholic church required indulgences for the forgiveness of people’s sins (Detrick “Reformation”). In accordance with the church’s traditional beliefs, the people trusted the Catholic Church’s teachings about finances and were essentially paying the church for the forgiveness of their sins. In addition, the church was suppressing human rights by deceiving most of a religious sect in the Renaissance Period; most people could not read and trusted the church preaching The Bible with honesty (the

In October of 1517 as a direct response to the selling of indulgences, Luther would post his soon to be famous 95 Theses onto the front door of Wittenburg Cathedral, signaling the beginning of a revolution. This document represented a personal manifesto of everything Luther felt was wrong about the Catholic Church, including the selling of indulgences. Luther’s Theses would quickly become extremely popular selling 50,000 copies in its first three weeks. While Luther’s monastic overseers strongly remained he stay silent Luther remained firm in his beliefs after being challenged to a debate by a fellow religious expert John Eck. During the debate Luther boldly claimed that the Pope himself was totally unnecessary. By 1520 Luther had gone all in on his claims, publishing pamphlets about his new ideas. Within these pamphlets he stated, “it is pure invention that pope, bishops, priests and monks are to be called the spiritual estate” (Rogers

The initial tremors of this Reformation resulted from Luther’s disputation of indulgences. The idea of being able to purchase remission of sin through the church, was considered by Luther to be diminishment of God’s power. He argued repentance and salvation should be obtained through personal connection with Christ, and not something that could be purchased from priests. “The true treasure of the church,” Luther argued, “is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God” (Coursebook, 18). This directly countered the idea that “the treasures of the Church, from which the pope grants indulgences, are not the merits of Christ and of the saints” (Pope Leo X). This dichotomy of beliefs served as one of the more

Martin Luther was an influential figure in the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation. Luther openly rejected the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church because he disputed the Church’s view on indulgences. Luther wrote the Ninety-Five Theses which proposed Reformation within the Catholic Church based on the clergy’s practices of selling indulgences in order to reduce sin. In addition Luther criticized the papal keys, “could not reach beyond the

While the Protestant Reformation was a movement that was influenced, and even caused by events prior to 1517; a domino effect was unleashed when, on October 31, 1517, a young German monk named Martin Luther nailed his work, “The Ninety-Five Theses,” to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Although Luther had never intended it to do so; his exploit acted as a catalyst for what was a nearly perfect formula for this reformation to ensue. In the years following that night; what started out as an intended scholarly objection, led to disputes, and disputes to rebellion, and eventually, those rebellions into what could be categorized

The Roman Catholic Church is undoubtedly the most influential institute of all time. If you ever have ever paid attention to within your own town you may notice that some of the largest buildings are churches. Why is this exactly? It’s the exact influence that I mentioned taking its form. Let’s dig deeper into this by going straight to the where Catholicism took its role as a dominant force, the Middle Ages.

In 1517 on Halloween, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenburg Church. His 95 Theses accused the Roman Catholic church of being unorthodox. This act of rebellion is seen to some as the starting point of the Protestant Reformation. This action by Martin was in response to the excesses and fraud of the Roman Catholic church and also to the selling of indulgences in return for forgiveness of one’s sins. The selling of indulgences was prohibited in Wittneburg by Prince Frederick III. Although the selling of indulgences was banned in Wittneburg many members of the church