The Elizabethan Era and the Reformation

• The Elizabethan Era
• the renaissance spread to England in the mid 1500s, the Elizabethan Era
• Elizabeth reigned from 1558-1603
• Elizabeth spoke in French Italian Latin Greek
• Wrote poetry and Music
• Supported English art and Literature
• William Shakespeare
• the most famouse writer of the Elizabethan age
• born in 1564 in stratford-upon-Avon, 90 miles northwest of London
• Writing plays and poems in London by 1592
• wrote tragedies such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet
• Wrote comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew
• Gutenberg
• Around 1440, Johann Gutenberg, a craftsman from Mainz, Germany, developed a printing press.
• the bible was the first book printed
• Luther and the Reformation
• The church was weakened because
• Socially: the Renaissance emphasis on the secular and the individual challenged the church's authority
• The printing press helped spread these ideas
• Politically: Some rulers (especially the Germans) began to challenge the church’s political power
• economically: northern merchants resented paying church taxes to Rome
• What's wrong with the church?
• Corrupt leadership
• Renaissance-era popes spent extravagantly on personal pleasure
• Pope Alexander VI admitted that he fathered several children
• Many priests and monks were poorly educated
• Some priests broke there vows got married, and had children
• Some priests drank to access, many gambled
• Indulgences
• The selling of indulgences
• “Releases a sinner from performing the penalty a priest imposed for sins”
• Johann Tetzel was a monk who sold indulgences to help rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral
• A monk named Martin Luther objected to this practice 
• Martin Luther
• born in Germany 1483
• Studied in the Trivium (AP classes)-grammar, logic, and rhetoric
• Attends university of Erfurt (called it beerhouse and whorehouse)
• After getting his degree he enrolls in law school(Fathers wish)
• people die from the plague (they must have been sinful according to the church)
• Martin is on his way home and he almost gets struck by lightning
• He cries to St. Anne, and vows he will become a Monk
• Two weeks later, he drops out of school
• 1504- Joins Augustinian monastery (closed cloister)
• 1507- ordained a priest
• 1508- teaches theology at University of Wittenburg
• 1508- gets Bachelors degree; 1509- gets second degree
• 1512- becomes a doctor of theology
• Martin gets mad at the church
• Thought Tetzel was Deceiving
• He came up with 95 objectives, nailed them to the door of Wittenburg on Halloween
• the official title: "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences"
• Known as the 95 thesis
• The “95 Theses” document was copied and taken to a printer
• Within two weeks, it was all over Germany; within two months, all over Europe
• Example - Thesis 86: “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”
• He also objected to Tetzler saying:
•  “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory into heaven springs.”