Protestant Reformation Research Paper

The Protestant Reformation was time a time of tremendous change for Europe and the Christian Church. The reformation is said to have begun in 1517 when Martin Luther challenged the authority of the pope (Perry 324). He did this by creating the ninety-five these, which was a series of arguments against papal authority and their corruptness. Various people had tried to reform the church previously, but the real protestant movement did not begin until the time of Martin Luther. Following the ideas of Luther, the Christian church split for good which had a great effect on all of Europe that is still seen to this day. Many branches of the Protestant movement based their idea of humanists. The first known humanist was Francesco Petrarch, who lived from 1304-1374. He believed in the education of people through the literature and classics of the Ancient Greeks and the Romans. He admired Greek philosophy and Roman political ideas (McKay 378). Christian humanists later reformed his ideas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most famous of these was Erasmus. Erasmus believed that education should be centered on the Bible and the Greek and Roman classics (McKay 385). He wanted every person to be able to read the bible, just as the pope and
They were eventually forced to reform their own church as well (Perry 343). The Protestant Reformation and the ideas of people like Martin Luther and Erasmus had completely changed the religious background in Europe. During the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Catholic Church lost much of its power and following to Protestantism. Since then many other branches of Protestantism have been created all over the world. Today we can see that the Christian people are still divided into many different sects of Christianity. The ideas of Martin Luther certainly revolutionized religion in modern