Religion in the Renaissance

2007-05-02T00:55:54Z

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== Before the fifteenth century ==

With the establishment of the Benedictine bitch Rule in 480 it seems fairly safe to state that the [[Christian]] faith, particularly as taught by the [[Catholic]] church, was becoming the most widely-held belief across [[Europe]]. The Catholic church would maintain its supremacy as the spiritual authority until the monk, [[Martin Luther]], rebelled against practices and teachings which he believed were not in agreement with biblical doctrine.

The church masses were conducted in [[latin]], a language not known to the common people, who relied on the [[priests]] to provide spiritual counsel. The majority of peasant folk and less well-educated people probably believed a mixture of Christian doctrine and older pre-Christian ideas.

== New beginnings ==

During the thirteenth century thinking men began exploring the written knowledge that had been preserved in [[monastic]] libraries, but which had not been actively disseminated. One of the goals of these intellectual explorers seems to have been to rediscover the culture of the classical, pre-Christian period, perhaps in search of something that they believed had been lost or suppressed by the church.

In the visual arts, the painter [http://www.wga.hu/html/g/giotto/index.html Giotto Bondone] worked to develop a more natural style of visual representation than the stylised images which had become the norm.

As the intellectual climate of Europe changed, fuelled by the development of [[printing]] with movable type and a printing press, Martin Luther worked to make available translations in the language of his own people, the Germans, of the [[Bible]], the mass and other texts for doctrinal instruction.

With the spread of the reformatory ideas promoted by Luther, a new movement of protestation against the Catholic church became established. Fundamental principles of the protestant movement included rejection of papal authority, that all Christian believers have direct communion with [[God]] obviating the need for an intermediate priesthood, and that a Christian believer is absolved from sin by belief without the need for ''post-mortem'' purification in purgatory.

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Religion in the Renaissance