(^68) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
• Scripture Alone, which stated that scripture was the only source of true knowledge of
God’s will
• The Priesthood of All Believers, which argued that all true believers received God’s grace
and were, therefore, priests in God’s eyes
Each of Luther’s assertions put him in direct opposition to the Church’s orthodox theology:
• Salvation by Faith Alone contradicted the Church’s assertion that salvation was gained
both by having faith and by performing works of piety and charity.
• Scripture Alone contradicted the Church’s assertion that there were two sources of true
knowledge of God: scripture and the traditions of the Church.
• The Priesthood of All Believers contradicted the Church’s assertion that only ordained
priests could read and correctly interpret scripture.
Creation and Spread of the Protestant Movement
In the autumn of 1517, Luther launched his protest by tacking 95 theses, or propositions,
that ran contrary to the theology and practice of the Church to the door of the Wittenberg
castle church. His students quickly translated them from Latin into the German vernacular
and distributed printed versions throughout the German-speaking kingdoms and prov-
inces. With the aid of the printing press, Luther attracted many followers, but the survival
of a Protestant movement was due to the political climate. Had the papacy moved quickly
to excommunicate Luther and his followers, the movement might not have survived.
However, Luther found a powerful protector in Frederick of Saxony, the prince of Luther’s
district. Frederick was one of seven electors, the princes who elected the Holy Roman
Emperor to whom the princes of the German districts owed their allegiance. Frederick’s
protection caused the pope to delay Luther’s excommunication until 1520. By that time, it
was too late: Luther and his followers had established throughout Germany congregations
for the kind of Christian worship that, after 1529, would be known as Protestant.
Luther promoted his theology to both the nobility and common people. To the nobil-
ity, he wrote an “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation” (1520), which
appealed both to the German princes’ desire for greater unity and power and to their desire
to be out from under the thumb of an Italian pope. To the common people, he addressed
“The Freedom of the Christian Man” (1520), in which he encouraged common men to
obey their Christian conscience and respect those in authority who seemed to possess true
Christian principles. Through this strategy, Luther offered the noble princes of Germany
an opportunity to break with the Roman Church and papacy without losing the obedience
of the common people. It was an opportunity that was too good to pass up. By 1555, the
German princes made it clear that they would no longer bow to Rome; they signed the Peace
of Augsburg, which established the principle of “whoever rules, his religion” and signaled to
Rome that the German princes would not go to war with each other over religion.
Once it gained a foothold in northern Germany, Protestantism tended to flourish in
those areas where the local rulers were either unwilling or not strong enough to enforce
orthodoxy and loyalty to Rome. Accordingly, the Protestant movement spread with success
to the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Scotland, and England, but it encountered more difficulty
and little or no success in southern and eastern Europe. The site of the most bloodshed
was France, where Protestantism was declared both heretical and illegal in 1534. Initially
French Protestants, known as Huguenots, were tolerated, but a civil war pitting Catholics
against Protestants erupted in 1562. Peaceful coexistence was briefly restored by the Edict
of Nantes in 1598, which established the principle of religious toleration in France, but the
edict would be revoked in 1685.11_Bartolini_Ch11_065-074.indd 68 13/04/18 12:11 PM