The Beginning of the Protestant Reformation

Tithe: one tenth of annual produce or earnings, formerly taken as a tax for the support of the Church and clergy.

Persecution: hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs.

Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider blasphemy to be a religious crime. 

Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs.

Indulgence: In the Roman Catholic Church, is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins". It may reduce the "temporal punishment for sin" after death, in the state or process of purification called Purgatory.

Vernacular: The language used in everyday life by the common people of a specific population.

St. Peter’s Basilica

Excommunication:To cut off from communion with a church or exclude from the sacraments of a church by ecclesiastical sentence. To exclude from membership or participation.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther, O.S.A. was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507.

VS

               Charles V                    Pope Leo X              

Ø  priests should marry and have children

Ø  the number of sacraments should be reduced

Ø  Catholic mass should be held in the vernacular instead of Latin

Ø  priests should not live like parasites off the common people by avoiding hard work and not having to pay taxes; and

Ø  the people themselves should choose their own priests and decide how they believed based upon their own reading of the Bible

John Calvin

Calvin, a Frenchman, believed that because man was helpless before an all-powerful God, there was no such thing as free will. Thus, man was predestined for either Heaven or Hell and could do nothing to alter his fate. (Predestination)

Ø He argued that some people had been "called" by God to do a certain thing on earth. 

Ø These people woke up early, worked hard at their calling, were thrifty, sober, and did not engage in frivolity - and in so doing, they acquired wealth. 

Ø Such spirit eventually became known as the Protestant Work Ethic.