Reformationist Spirit

The Humanist desire for a deeper spiritual focus and a critical approach to the church building and to scripture thus led to the rejection of the perform and the elevation of scriptural authority by the reformers. It did not, however, lead to the sociopolitical reforms that many early Protestant followers had hoped for.

Humanism is difficult to define. While it is sometimes purpose of primarily as the fifteenth-century renewal of classical discipline, it can excessively be shown that "medieval man had been permanently in topographic point with classical literature since the days of Charlemagne." The difference betwixt chivalric scholarship and Humanism lay in the uses for which classical learning was employed. In the Middle Ages, Roman law, Aristotelian physics, and other subjects were canvas for their practical value. Nothing taken from antiquity was allowed to challenge the primacy of the Church as the guarantor of social order and the only practicable means of human salvation. In fifteenth-century Italy, however, with its uniquely self-sufficing city-states, scholars unquestionable an "enthusiasm for the entire body of classical literature" and an storage area of "the moral, social and aesthetic standards it contained." The standards of feudal social arrangements and ecclesiastical queen did

In the end, however, the decision regarding pietism was often a matter of the peasants' attitudes toward their over sea captains. As Tracy demonstrated in a study of Dutch peasants, for example, conflicts with "prominent individuals or institutions that may be identified with one or another unearthly viewpoint" often had the effect of setting the peasantry against the favored religion. In the study of one locale where Calvinist preachers were imported by the principal landholder, Tracy demonstrated that even though nearby peasants had irresistibly adopted Calvinism, the group studied were at odds with the lord and adamantly adhered to the Catholic church.

Koenigsberger, H. G., George L. Mosse, and G. Q. Bowler. Europe in the Sixteenth Century. 2d ed. London: Longman, 1989.

Even at his most scholarly, Erasmus' thoughts reflected the desire to land Scripture closer to people. He did not believe that his drawn-out re dressing of the Vulgate was a scholarly exercise of value in itself. Instead, "typically humanist," Erasmus held that the "Gospel was primarily a philosophy of life in that it gave the divine message telling men how to lead their lives." This was work in which the scholar could engage for the benefit of the rest of the world, just as his honing of his beautiful Latin style could be entrust at the service of the world by explaining abuses and ridiculing abusers. The break between the position of traditional theologians and Erasmus' work of textual criticism is move in from his comment that, "I had rather see with my own look than with those of others, and in the next place, much as they have utter [the old commentators] they have left much to be verbalise by posterity." This attitude reflected the influence of the freedom of inquiry which began to be initiated in the Italian Renaissance and indicated the extent to which such independent thought would be carried by future theologians such as Luther and Calvin.

Man was at the center of the new scale o
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