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DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So to recap from the last video,
Luther refused to renounce his teachings at the Diet of Worms,
and was kidnapped, as he left the Diet of Worms,
by the Elector of Saxony, and secreted away
in a castle where he translated the New Testament into German.
DR. BETH HARRIS: This is an enormous undertaking,
which he completes in a matter of months.
And it's important to Luther because it
means that everyone can read the Bible for themselves.
Luther's main ideas are scripture alone,
and the priesthood of all believers.
So you don't need to go to the church
to understand the word of God, to understand
the path to salvation, all you need
to do is to read the Bible-- scripture alone,
so putting the Bible in the hands of everyone.
This other idea of the priesthood of all believers,
is this notion that we can have a direct relationship with God
that's unmediated by the priests, by a local bishop,
or by the pope.
It's just us and our creator.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So we've come across three major ideas
then from Luther, faith alone, scripture alone,
and the priesthood of all believers.
Now these ideas, that we can look directly
at the scriptures, that we can have
that kind of direct relationship with God,
means that lots of people can come up with slightly varying
understandings of what that relationship is.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Right.
As soon as the word of God is not mediated by the church,
as soon as everyone can read it for themselves,
it becomes clear just how ambiguous much of what's
in the New Testament and the Old Testament really is,
and how differently it can be interpreted
by different people.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And that's why
we have so many different Protestant sects.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Immediately, Luther's words
spread very quickly.
If we go to Zurich, to Switzerland, we find Zwingli.
Like Luther, he looks to scripture
as the sole authority, not the church, but scripture.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Now he differed from Luther
in one important regard, the Eucharist.
Now Luther had already broken with the Catholic Church's
understanding of the Eucharist, that there
was transubstantiation-- that is, that the bread and the wine
was by miracle transformed into the actual flesh
and the actual blood of Christ.
Luther believed that the blood of Christ
and the flesh of Christ was present in the bread
and the wine, but not that the priest
had this, kind of, special power that
allowed for the transformation itself.
And then Zwingli changes that interpretation,
and says that the Eucharist is entirely symbolic,
and that there is no actual blood and no actual flesh
present in the church.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Right, and actually, Luther and Zwingli
got together to debate this issue,
to try to create a more unified Protestant Church,
but they were unable to agree.
So you can see these very serious doctrinal disputes
that are going on during this time.
Everything is being questioned.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, in Zurich, at the same time
also, we have another group, the Anabaptists.
And they're fascinating, because they take issue
with the practice of baptism close to birth.
That is, an infant is brought and baptized.
They look back to the belief that Christ
was baptized as an adult.
That is, he was baptized of his own free will.
And they were called the Anabaptists
by people who didn't like them, because they
saw this kind of spiritual awakening
later in life when we could take responsibility
for our spiritual lives.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Right.
And Anabaptist actually means re-baptism,
which was completely against Catholic Church doctrine.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And the Amish and the Mennonites, actually,
come directly from the Anabaptists.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And those may be more familiar to us.
John Calvin, another really important reformer
during this period, who we might know
for his doctrine of predestination.
This is really following very much what Luther also
taught, that all you needed to have was faith.
God had already decided, for Calvin,
from the beginning of time who was elect.
In other words, who was blessed, who would go to Heaven,
and who would go to Hell.
In other words, completely disregarding the possibility
of free will, of choice.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's interesting,
because we generally think that we have some agency-- that we
can make our way into Heaven if only we are really, truly good.
But Calvin and Luther are both saying,
no, this is entirely God's will, and we only enact it.
DR. BETH HARRIS: God exists in an eternal realm,
and so it's not like God woke up on Monday and said,
you're damned, and you, over there, you're going to Hell.
But something that's predetermined.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Now, Calvin was French.
He was a lawyer, originally, but he fled to Switzerland.
But let's go to England.
What's happening there?
DR. BETH HARRIS: Well, Henry VIII
wants an annulment from his first wife Catherine of Aragon,
because she's failed to produce any male heirs to the throne.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, she had produced, or I should say,
they had produced male heirs.
They just haven't survived infancy.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And so Henry VIII
applies to the pope for an annulment,
and the pope is actually worried about offending the Holy Roman
Emperor, and there's all sorts of political issues,
but he says, sorry, I can't grant you an annulment.
So Henry then goes to the head of the Church in England,
and says, will you grant me an annulment?
And that is granted.
And so the power of the pope is usurped in this case,
and soon after that, an act of parliament
makes the king, the monarch of England,
the head of the Church in England.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: But I think we need to be careful.
Because we don't want to say that the Anglican Church, that
is, the Church of England that Henry is now heading,
is entirely the result of his desire for a divorce,
or an annulment.
There are strong spiritual and also political issues here.
Just like in the Germanic countries,
many felt that the pope had too much power.
And Henry was not only getting his annulment,
he was also getting the lands of the church.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Protestantism is spreading
in primarily German-speaking countries, up in Scandinavia,
and England, and Scotland, in Switzerland,
but if we look to southern Germany and Italy, or France,
or Spain, those countries remain predominantly Catholic.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: All true, but focusing too much
on the politics and focusing too much on Henry's marriages--
because ultimately, Henry VIII will have six marriages--
is to miss the brutality, the violence of this period.
DR. BETH HARRIS: On both sides, Catholics and Protestants.
Thousands of people were hanged, burned at the stake,
tortured, simply because of their beliefs.
And each side was convinced that they were in the right,
and the other side was not only in the wrong,
but actually, somehow in the power of the devil.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: This was one of the most violent periods
in Europe, and some of the worst violence took place in France.
Now the French Protestants were known as Huguenots.
And initially, there was some tolerance,
but that ended fairly quickly.
And the Huguenots were declared, en masse, heretical.
That is, Protestantism was outlawed in France.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And it was a civil war
in France for much of the end of the 16th century.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: But just like in the German countries
and just like in England, the issues
were not only spiritual, they were also political.
And so what you had is an alignment of the ruling
families of France pitted against each other
on both the Protestant and the Catholic sides.
DR. BETH HARRIS: We also see attempts at tolerance.
So for example, in the German states,
the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 establishes this principle
of, "Whose realm, his religion."
This idea that the local princes in the Holy Roman Empire
could choose the religion for their area.
In other words, they could choose
between Protestantism and Catholicism.
It's not going to be declared by the Holy Roman Emperor.
The ruler of each region is going to get to decide.
And similarly, in France, we have the Edict
of Nantes in 1598, which establishes
the principle of religious toleration.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So that really ends
this long period in the second half of the 16th century known
as the French Wars of Religion.
And finally, there is some peace.
But ultimately, things just got worse.
By the early 17th century, we see the beginning
of the 30 Years' War, which pitted Protestants
and Catholics against each other,
especially in the Holy Roman Empire.
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