The REFORMATION

The Beginning: Reading led people to realize the church might not know everything. The behavior of some priests during the Black Death gave people doubt. Humanism led to new ideas about the importance of every individual. Wait a minute… This says I shouldn’t murder people! I’ll tell you what, why don’t you just go ahead and bless yourselves?

Part I: Problems in the church

Teachings The church often seemed to be going against it’s own teachings. (Crusades) What was worse though was that they were enforcing teachings that many people saw as pointless. For example, all Church activities were to be done in Latin only, even if people didn’t understand it!

Power! The church wanted to force everyone to follow them. The church in Spain kicked all non-Christians out of the country completely (and took their stuff!) They then set up the Inquisition to make the church even stronger. They used torture and threats of death to keep people in line.

Money Problems Pope Leo X spent tons of the church’s money on his own entertainment. Donations from people was not enough. They came up with new ways to make money from the people like letting people pay to become priests. So, what? Priests who paid to join the priesthood did so for the power and tax breaks. They often knew nothing of the Bible and rarely even lived near their church.

Heaven? No problem! That’ll be 5 dollars. Indulgences Indulgences were passes to shorten the time spent in purgatory before Heaven. You could buy them before you sinned or even for people who already died. Basically they were selling tickets to Heaven.