[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. BETH HARRIS: So
this is the first video in a short series
introducing some of the major ideas of the
Protestant Reformation. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
And in this video, we just want to
lay the groundwork. What was it like to live in
Europe before the Protestant Reformation? DR. BETH HARRIS:
That is, before 1517, when Martin Luther, a German
monk and professor of theology, nailed his 95 Theses to the
door of the castle church in Wittenberg. And we'll get back to that. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: I was
driving around my neighborhood about a week ago, and
I took photographs of some of the churches
that were there. And within only
15 or 20 minutes, I had photographed
the signs in front of six different
kinds of churches. DR. BETH HARRIS: And this is
a really good place to start, because it's at the
time of the Reformation that we get this explosion
of different kinds of Christianity. So tell us what you
took pictures of. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: I took
pictures of a Lutheran church, of a Baptist church, of a
United Methodist church, there was a Catholic
church there, there was a
Congregationalist church, there was a Presbyterian church. And so five of
those six churches were created as a result of
the Protestant Reformation. So let's go back to
a time when there was only one kind of
Christianity in Western Europe. DR. BETH HARRIS: And that's
the religion, we today call, Roman Catholicism. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Now we didn't need to use that phrase, Roman
Catholicism, because there was nothing to
differentiate it from. The term Catholic
really means universal. And so that makes the point that
this was the universal Church. DR. BETH HARRIS: Or
that was their ambition, to be the Universalist Church. And we use the term
Roman Catholic, because the head of
the Church is in Rome. And that's the pope. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And that
man was enormously important, because he would lead the way to
salvation, to Heaven, according to the Catholic tradition. That is, one found
one's way to salvation, which was tremendously
important, because the
alternative was hell. DR. BETH HARRIS: And it's
important to remember, I think, that back then,
the concern for most people was salvation-- was
how to get to Heaven. And the path was one path. It was through the
teachings of the church, through the sacraments. In a way, it was a
simpler time to live, because you had one choice. You didn't have to say,
what religion should I be? DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Except
for those very few people in Europe, for
instance, very few Jews and even fewer Muslims. So the church really
infused everybody's life-- it was the vehicle to salvation. And just for the average
person in a small town, the church's spire would tower
over the other buildings, the bells in the tower
would ring on the hour, the church would celebrate
the saint's feast days-- what we call holidays,
that is, holy days-- and it was, in a
sense, the church that marked the
days of your life, and the major events
in your life, as well. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
through the sacraments, you hoped to earn
God's grace, you hoped to secure yourself
a place in Heaven. And the sacraments included
baptism, confirmation, communion-- which you might
know as the Eucharist-- penance-- also known
as confession-- marriage, last rites, and
ordination for priests. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
And so it's just a good reminder of how
important the Church was in the lives of everyday people. And those everyday
people, although they might look to their
local priests, would look to the pope in
Rome as the ultimate authority on earth. And the pope, at this point
in 1517, was Pope Leo X. DR. BETH HARRIS:
So Pope Leo X was intent on rebuilding the Church
of Saint Peter's, and the plans for Saint Peter's
were very ambitious. In fact, Pope Julius II, who
commissioned the rebuilding of Saint Peter's-- the
pope before Leo X-- said he wanted to create the
most grandiose church in all of Christendom. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And they did. The church itself,
Saint Peter's Basilica, was tremendously important
to the authority of the pope. By tradition, Saint Peter
is buried under that church. And Saint Peter was
charged by Christ himself to lead to church,
and so Saint Peter is understood to be the first pope. And so every succeeding
pope is taking on the job of Saint Peter
from Christ himself. And so the very
authority of this office is vested in this building. The problem is, the building was
really expensive to construct. And the question was, where were
they going to get the money? DR. BETH HARRIS: Well, there
was a pretty common way to get money, and that
was selling indulgences. Now an indulgence
was a piece of paper that made it possible for you
to get to Heaven more quickly. Most people when they died--
you had, throughout your life, confessed your sins, you
had atoned for your sins, but there would
probably be something that you hadn't
quite atoned for. And so for most people, you
wouldn't go straight to Heaven. You would go,
instead, to this place in between-- a
kind of way station before you got to Heaven. A place called Purgatory. And it was indulgences
that bought you time off from Purgatory. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So
this is a little tricky, because indulgences were
actually a very old tradition. Where if you did
a good work, you could, in fact,
receive an indulgence. That is, a kind of certificate
that would speed your soul out of Purgatory, to Heaven. Even in certain
extraordinary cases, it might allow you to circumvent
Purgatory entirely, and go directly to Heaven. The problems began not so much
in the actual indulgences, but in the perception of
the selling of indulgences. And here's what happened,
Leo X granted indulgences to his representatives to raise
money for the building of Saint Peter's, but this
was misunderstood to mean that one could
simply pay money and then gain access to Heaven directly. DR. BETH HARRIS:
But keep in mind, that money was for the
rebuilding of Saint Peter's. And say you were
doing a good work, and according to
the Catholic church, doing a good work
is one of the ways you can assist in the
process of gaining yourself a place in Heaven. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
And it does make sense that even a monetary donation
to doing good Christian work would be itself a
kind of holy act. DR. BETH HARRIS: But it did come
to be seen as a money exchange for getting to Heaven. And the one example that really
got under Martin Luther's craw, so to speak, was a
man named Tetzel, who was selling indulgences
not far from Wittenburg where Luther was professor
of theology. Tetzel said, "as soon as
the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from
purgatory springs." So you can see right
there, money is going in and a soul is
going up to Heaven. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
It sounds so crass, and you're absolutely right. Martin Luther, who was a monk
and was a very devout professor of theology, was really
rubbed the wrong way by people saying that they
had bought these indulgences and therefore, they were
freed of their sins. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
as a monk, Luther felt oppressed by the
sinfulness of human nature, or his own nature,
and so the idea that you could pay money
to erase those sins and get quicker entry to Heaven
was really an issue for him. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: He took
these issues very seriously and really struggled with them. And then he did what any good
doctor of theology would do, he wrote out a
series of arguments. But in his case, he
posted them, at least according to
tradition, to the doors of the castle church
in Wittenberg. 95 Theses, 95 arguments,
that took issue primarily with the selling of indulgences. DR. BETH HARRIS: Luther sent
them to the local archbishop, and they made their way to Rome. And so we have the beginnings
of the Protestant Reformation. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
In fact, if you think about those words,
Protestant Reformation, for just a moment, I think
it's interesting to note that the word Protestant is
formed out of the work protest, and reformation out
of the work reform. So this was a kind of
protest against the church, and it was an
attempt to reform it. [MUSIC PLAYING]