The Catholic Church During The Early 16th Century

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated
Martin Luther, who was ordained as a priest, published the 95 Theses in Wittenberg, Germany. The document was directed towards the sale of indulgences and the position of the Pope in the Catholic Church. Specifically Clause 32 stated that “all those who believe themselves certain of their own salvation by means of letters of indulgence, will be eternally dammed.” Martin Luther also wished to limit the power of the pope when he stated that the “pope himself cannot remit guilt, but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God.” The spread of Martin Luther’s document warranted an early response from the Church. Pope Leo X (1513-1521) issued a papal bull “Condemning the Errors of Martin Luther” on June 15, 1520. The bull accused Martin of “adding evil to evil,” and promised to “banish all heresies from the lands of the faithful.” However, Martin Luther “[,] in the presence of a crowd of students and teachers from the university [,] committed to the flames both the bull itself and the canon law.” With this stunt, Martin Luther demonstrated his complete detraction from the Roman Catholic Church. His next
Ignatius Loyola was initially trained to be a soldier but had his right leg destroyed. He then focused on studies to find the “precise form of his service” to God. His studies lead him to find like-minded individuals which later caused him to create a new religious organizations. The Jesuits were formed to protect the Catholic Church and recover the ground lost to the Protestant Reformation. Subsequently, Pope Paul III, in a papal bull, officially recognized the Jesuits on September 27th 1540 which allowed the Jesuits to act formally with the blessing of the Catholic Church. The members of the Jesuits were accepted from “very high requirements for admission and the rigorous training” thus they were competent individuals to carry out the Jesuits’ goal. The purpose of the Jesuits was to “reach and convert the masses of people who had strayed from the church” which later evolved into spreading Catholicism as much as possible. The success of the Jesuits could be seen in the conversion of non-Christians in new countries discovered by Europe. One such individual, Francis Xavier, was sent to Goa to begin his work of conversion. He then traveled “over sixty-two thousand miles”, from India, Japan but stopped short in China. His focused on mass conversions, “on occasion baptizing hundreds of people at a time or giving the sacrament to whole villages.” Other Jesuits carried on his work on China,