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  • Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course World History and today were going to talk

  • about the Protestant Reformation.

  • Mr Green, Mr. Green, this is irrelevant for me; I’m an atheist.

  • Yeah I know Me From the Past, because I’m you. Although

  • actually you are now Episcopalian, a Protestant church started because a King wanted to get

  • a divorce. But anyway let me submit that religious history

  • is important regardless of your personal religious beliefs, because it helps us to understand

  • the lenses through which people have viewed their lives and communities, and given that,

  • the Protestant Reformation is what proper historians refer to as A Big-Ass Deal -- which I

  • will remind you is not cursing if you are referring to donkeys.

  • So before the Reformation, pretty much all Christians in Europe were Roman Catholic.

  • Yes, there were other types of Christians in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, but Roman

  • Catholicism was the dominant form of Christianity and had been since like the 4th century.

  • The Protestant Reformation broke so-calledwestern Christendomin twothen three,

  • then four, --until finally there were uncountable denominations of Christianity--not just Lutherans

  • but Apostolic Lutherans and Reformed Lutherans and Free Lutherans and Lutherans for Just

  • Going Back to Being Catholic Because This Has Become So Complicated.

  • This was hugely important--it changed people’s way of looking at themselves and the world,

  • it led to wider European literacy, and eventually forced governments to grant religious freedoms,

  • while also at the same time maybe being more of a political revolution than a religious one.

  • So, during the European Middle Ages, the Catholic

  • Church really dominated European civilization. It’s almost impossible to imagine the scope

  • of the Church’s power in the Middle Ages, but let’s try.

  • First off, the Catholic Church was the caretaker of the most important thing that Christians

  • had, their souls, which, unlike our temporal bodies, were eternal.

  • And then there was the parish priest, who played a pivotal role throughout every person’s

  • life, baptizing them, marrying them, hearing their confessions, providing last rites.

  • The church also provided all of the social services: It distributed alms to the poor, and ran orphanages,

  • and provided what education was available. And most Europeans would in their lives meet

  • exactly one person who could read the Bible, which was only available in Latin - their

  • parish priest. And, the church owned over 1/3 of all the

  • land in Europe, which helped make it the most powerful economic and political force on the

  • continent. And the Pope claimed authority over all the kings of Europe, as the successor

  • to the Roman Emperor. So this was a very powerful institution, and

  • it was undone by one chronically constipated monk.

  • Here at Crash Course, we don’t like to get too into like, Great Man History, but the

  • Reformation really was initiated and shaped by one man: Martin Luther. No, Stan, the Martin

  • Luther he was named for. No, Stan! The Martin Luther that HE was named for. Yes.

  • Okay, let’s go to the Thought Bubble: Luther studied law, and like most law students,

  • he hated it. Then one day a sudden storm blew up, lightning struck him to the ground, and

  • in a panic, he cried, “Help me, Saint Anne! I’ll become a monk!” He survived and

  • in the next two weeks, he withdrew from university, entered an Augustinian monastery, took his

  • vows, and sent a message to inform his family, who I’m sure were delighted to have spent

  • all that money on education because monking is so lucrative.

  • In 1505, Luther was sent to Rome on a diplomatic mission, and he ignored all the awesome art

  • and focused instead on Rome’s corruptionwith prostitutes openly soliciting on the filthy

  • streets, priests who made light of their duties, hurrying through mass so fast that it seemed

  • to mean nothing, and openly deriding Church doctrine.

  • Luther was obsessed with his own sinfulness and he kept confessing, incessantly. And finally

  • his confessor and teachers sent him to the University of Wittenberg, because you know,

  • they were a little bit annoyed with him, and they figured he’d be good at teaching scripture.

  • These days of course, incessant confessors are put on the real housewives of New Jersey,

  • but back then, you sent them to the University of Wittenberg.

  • Anyway, Luther finally found his answer in St. Paul’s epistles, specifically in one

  • line that said, “The just shall live by faith” (Bainton 65). In other words, salvation

  • comes through faith, not good worksnot through prayer, or fasting, or vigils, or pilgrimages,

  • or relics, giving to the poor, or the sacraments, or any action that a person can take. We can’t

  • ever be good enough, through our actions, to merit salvation. We can only have faith.

  • In Latin, sola fide, only faith. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

  • So, Martin Luther’s new interpretation ofsola fidegrew into a full-scale conflict

  • with the Catholic Church when a friar named John Tetzel came to Wittenberg, selling indulgences.

  • An indulgence was a donation to the church that came with a promise from the pope to

  • reduce a sinner’s time in purgatory. Like, to quote from an indulgence that Friar Tetzel

  • sold, “[I] replace thee in the state of innocence and purity in which thou wert at the hour of thy baptism."

  • Luther felt like that that wasn’t the sort of thing that, you know, should be for sale.

  • The price of this whole-life complete-forgiveness-of-any-horrible-sin

  • certificate, by the way, was three marks, probably about half a year’s wages for a

  • laborer. So, Luther didn’t like seeing his parishioners

  • handing over money they didn’t have for a scrap of paper that he believed to be meaningless,

  • so in response, he wrote 95 Theses against indulgences, and then dramatically nailed

  • them to the Church door, for all to see on October 31, 1517—or else he mailed them

  • to the archbishop, or possibly both. We don’t actually know.

  • This led to a series of debates with other men of the cloth, during which Luther’s

  • positions became increasingly radical. Starting from the statement that Christians were saved

  • only through faith and the grace of God, for instance, Luther then upped the ante, saying that the Church’s

  • rituals didn't have the power to save souls. And then he argued that far from being infallible,

  • the church, and the pope made errors all the time.

  • That was a pretty bold thing to say, and then it got even more dramatic when Luther ultimately

  • denied that the church and the officers of it had any spiritual powers.

  • He said that the priesthood was a human invention; and that individual Christians didn’t even

  • need priests to receive the grace of God. Instead, Luther described a “priesthood

  • of all believers.” So this had gone from a call for reforming

  • indulgences to, to a revolution. So in 1521, Luther was called to defend his ideas

  • before the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, at the Imperial Diet of Worms. Or in German,

  • Worms. Also, let me say retroactively, now that everyone

  • has commented on my poor German pronunciation, Wittenberg.

  • Emperor Charles famously said, “A single friar who goes counter to all Christianity

  • for a thousand years must be wrong.” To which Luther was like, “stop flapping

  • that hideous Hapsburg jaw of yours.” But there was something to what Charles was

  • saying, right? Because plenty of radical friars had criticized the church’s abuses and hypocrisies

  • over the years; why would Luther prove influential? Well, one reason was the printing press.

  • Now, most people in Europe at the time couldn’t read, but a lot of people could, including,

  • of course a lot of priests. And over two thousand editions of Luther’s writings appeared between

  • 1517 and 1526. And his ideas also appeared in pamphlets,

  • and posters, and cartoons that were seen and read aloud, reaching millions of readers and

  • listeners, In short, Luther’s ideas were all over,

  • like, the Tumblr of the day, which was a town crier and broadsides nailed to doors.

  • And it caused quite a stir, especially the part about, like, the Pope being the Anti-Christ

  • sent by the devil. Like I said, it got pretty radical.

  • But maybe the most revolutionary of Luther’s publications was his new translation of the

  • Bible into German. For the first time ever, non-priests could

  • read the Bible for themselves, because Luther used the German that people actually spoke,

  • instead of Latin, and his work quickly caught on among common people.

  • Hundreds of thousands of copies of Luther’s Bible were printed; people carried it in their

  • pockets and memorized it. Now everyone could quote scripture and discuss its meaning.

  • Now, Luther’s theory was that if everyone just returned directly to the scriptures,

  • they would see the one single truth, and the Church would be restored to its original simplicity.

  • Yeah, no. I have a message to the restorers of history. There is no original simplicity!

  • The thing is, once you start making scripture accessible to everyone and tell them that

  • their opinions are just as good as those of the clergy, what happens is that people start,

  • you know, having different interpretations of what religious truth is.

  • So Luther’s protest started creating spinoffs: the Zwinglians, and the Calvinists, and the

  • Anabaptistsand then the spinoffs had their own spinoffs.

  • It's like how first there was Iron Man, and then there was the Avengers, and then you

  • know, like an Avengers TV show. Pretty soon were gonna have Ant Man get his own movie.

  • The Protestant Reformation is just basically the same thing as the Marvel Comic Universe,

  • but no Thor! Because he’s pagan. Anyway, many of these new denominations will

  • be familiar to you: the Anglicans and Puritans, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Methodists,

  • the Baptists. Each of these new Protestant churches thought

  • that it knew the one true way to worship Godand that, you know, everyone else was going to

  • hell, and this led to some fighting. And also some disemboweling. Oh, it’s time

  • for the open letter. But first, let’s see what’s in the globe

  • today. Oh, that’s nice, I thought it would be disemboweled people, but it’s Anabaptists

  • not baptizing their infants. Hi there. So, you don’t believe in infant

  • baptism. You believe that like, people should come of age; that they can make their own

  • decision about salvation. Other people: Catholics, many protestants,

  • believe that it’s OK to baptize infants, or even that it’s good.

  • I don’t feel like this disagreement should lead to disembowelment, and yet it did.

  • The fascinating thing to me, Anabaptists, is that you never had a state, you never had, like,

  • widespread political say in any community. And yet, your brand of evangelical Christianity

  • managed to become incredibly important in world history.

  • In short, the bad news is that many of you are going to be executed. The good news is

  • that your message will prove surprisingly resilient

  • Stan, who did I even make that open letter for? The Anabaptists are Amish now. Theyre

  • not watching this. I guess some of them are Mennonites. I made it for you Mennonites!

  • OK, So with all these new denominations, there were years of religious mayhem.

  • Clergy preached radical new ideas, and then other people interpreted them in even more

  • radical ways. People, especially young people, smashed up churches because the bible says

  • no graven images. What started as a doctrinal dispute turned

  • into a social revolt, and in 1525, German peasants took up Luther’s ideas to give

  • voice to longstanding grievances against landlords and clergymen.

  • In their most famous revolutionary proclamation, the Twelve Articles, the peasants echoed Luther’s

  • language, proclaiming that serfdom was invented by men, with no basis in scripture.

  • The peasants rebelled, refused to pay taxes, pillaged Church lands, and raised an army

  • estimated at 300,000 people. And Luther was like YES FREE SOULS SOVEREIGN

  • AT LAST. No, just kidding, he wasn't. Luther chose the elite, and said thatChristian

  • libertywas a spiritual concept, not meant to promote equality or freedom in like, the

  • physical world. He then urged the faithful tosmite, slay and

  • stabrebels and kill them like mad dogs. He also gave up his idea that congregations

  • should elect their own ministers and argued that kings and princes were put in place by

  • God as caretakers of the church. And that turned out to be the winning side.

  • For a few hundred years, anyway. The German PeasantsRevolt, the biggest revolutionary

  • uprising in Europe before the French Revolution, was suppressed with crushing brutality; an

  • estimated 100,000 people were killed. So Luther chose the princes, in the name of

  • stability and success, but why would princes choose Lutheranism, when the Holy Roman Emperor

  • had forbidden it? Let’s look at one example: the first actual

  • ruler who broke with the Pope: the heroic, frequently divorced, founder of Anglicanism,

  • King Henry VIII of England... What’s that Stan? Apparently it was not King Henry VIII.