The protestant reformation

The Protestant Reformation

In the sixteenth century saw a major crisis in the Catholic Church in Western Europe due to the numerous problems of ecclesiastical corruption and lack ofreligious piety. The straw that broke the camel was the sale of indulgences to finance the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which eventually led to Western Christianity split into two, one led bythe Roman Catholic Church, which after the Council of Trent was claimed itself as the sole heir of Western Christendom valid driving dissent and subject entirely to the domain of the Pope, and theother half who founded several Christian communities themselves, generally national in its majority, reject the Christian heritage medieval and seek the restoration of an idealized early Christianity.This led to Europe was divided between a number of countries that recognize the Pope as the supreme and only head of the Catholic Church, and the countries that rejected the claims of Rome and werecalled Protestants. This division led to a series of religious wars in Europe.

The Protestant Reformation or doctrines are four basic questions that the reformers believed that the RomanCatholic Church was wrong. These four questions or doctrines are: How is a person saved? Where does religious authority? What is the church? And what is the essence of the Christian life? In answering thesequestions the Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, John Knox and established what became known as the "Five Solas" (sola, is taken from the Latin word-only-) of theReformation.

With Pope Paul III in 1534, the church leadership got the power to make reforms and sitting in front of the emergence of the Protestants. One of his initiatives was to promotenew religious orders like the Ursulines, Capuchins, and especially the Society of Jesus. This Jesuit religious institution was founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534 and confirmed by Pope in 1540. Its...