Protestant Reformation
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
The Protestant Reformation is what people call a series of events that happened in the 16th century. Some people saw a need to change the way the Catholic church worked. The central points of criticism were the following:
- The church sold letters of absolution (forgiveness) from sins for money. This suggested that the rich could buy their way into Heaven while the poor could not - quite the opposite of what the Bible says.
- Most people did not understand the sermon, because it was in Latin. The sermon is what priests tell in church. Different priests told different things. Some of those things had little to do with what was written in the Bible (The Holy Book of Christianity). Only priests were allowed to read the bible, so ordinary people did not know very much about Christianity.
People like Erasmus, Martin Luther and Chauvin saw this, and acted against it. This led to a split of the church, into Catholic church (what was there before) and a number of Protestant churches.
Martin Luther was the first to translate the Bible into German. He could even print some copies, because Johannes Gutenberg had invented a way to print a small number of copies (approximately 50-100) at a relatively low price. The Protestant reformation triggered the Catholic reformation.
