500 years ago, there was only one Christian denomination throughout most of the world. 500 years ago, the church and the government killed those who resisted tradition. 500 years ago, no one could read the bible in their own language. How did we get from there to here? Discover the wild and exciting story of Christianity for the last 500 years, so you can understand how the world ended up the way it is now, avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, and gain inspiration from heroic people who made a difference.
In this first lecture, you’ll learn:
1. What the religious world was like 500 years ago in Europe
2. Precursors to the Reformation, including John Wycliffe and Jan Hus
3. The movement called humanism, including Gutenberg’s printing press and Desiderius Erasmus

All the notes are available here as a pdf.
—— Notes ——
Three aims for this class:

to understand why the world is the way it is now
to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past
to gain inspiration from heroic people who made a difference

I want to talk about Martin Luther, but first need to do some background

key person
reason why this class if 500 instead of 600 or 400
on Oct 31st 1517 he started the Reformation (i.e. the changing of Christianity)
before we can understand what he reformed, we have to understand what was already there

Three points for today:

Setting the Scene
Precursors of the Reformation
Humanism

1| Setting the Scene

life and death

no electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, gas heat, computers, phones, facebook, cars, postal service
thinly populated (black death in 14th)
high infant mortality

15-35% of infants died before first birthday
10-20% of children died before 10


agricultural subsistence
65-90% were peasants or small farmers
suffering and death were pervasive (bad medical care, famine, epidemic disease, war)
highly stratified society, most stay at same status they were born into

towns had extreme differences in wealth






beliefs/practices

infant baptism
church as God’s instrument of salvation on earth
death => eternal torment in hell, purgatory, heaven
needed right belief and right behavior, which was determined by church
faith was not enough for salvation, needed concrete actions
authority on the basis of apostolic succession and good standing with hierarchy
hierarchy: pope, bishops, local priests
religious orders: monks, nuns,

contemplative orders: Benedictines, Cistercians, etc. cloistered lives of prayer and devotion
mendicant orders: Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, etc. served through preaching, teaching, missionizing, and hearing confessions


weekly mass with Eucharist as weekly sacrifice to God (transubstantiation)

priest’s words make bread and wine Christ’s actual body and blood


sacraments: means by which God dispenses grace through priests who claimed authority on the basis of apostolic succession

baptism, penance, communion, confirmation, matrimony, extreme unction, and holy orders
communion was only once a year before which one did confession and penance to cleanse sins


processions and pilgrimages (relics)
vigorous practices

books of hours were most common printed book 50 years before Reformation
endowing masses, paying for urban preachers, paying for church upkeep
many were taking their faith seriously


anti-cler

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