The Protestant Reformation: A Major Turning Point In History

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The Protestant Reformation was a major turning point in history. At this point in time, the Catholic Church was the center of all power. There was no separation between church and state. The more power the church was receiving the more power it wanted to claim. The Catholic Church was beginning to take advantage of the common people by trying to sell indulgence. This drew the Augustinian monk, who later became a priest, Martin Luther to remove himself from the church and practice a new meaning of faith. The Protestant reformation was a religions movement, however there was a lot more than just religion that needed to be reformed during this time. There was a lot of corruption, secularism, and a growing theocracy. These problems became …show more content…
The peasants revolted in Germany hoping that Luther would support them. According to the novel The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction, “The sight of this theology transformed into revolutionary ideology horrified Luther, who brought no credit on himself by publishing in May 1525 a pamphlet urging princes to slaughter without compunction the ‘robbing and murdering hordes of peasants’. They needed little encouragement: the revolt was crushed with great brutality” (Marshall 21). The peasants took Luther’s beliefs and radicalized them. He refused to help them in anyway and felt that the people still had to respect the rules of their countries authority. The Protestant Reformation also had a major effect on the Commercial Revolution. The Commercial Revolution had a major effect on the economy; it was based off of the principles of capitalism in which we use money to make money. This was one of the key ideas of Calvinism, their main focus was the individual and how they work in society. Another effect of the Protestant Reformation was the witchcraft trials. Since there was a period of chaos, they blamed the lowest people in society, the single women. They would accuse women of being witches who were diabolical and evil. This phenomenon was the causes of many deaths in young innocent

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