Week 8, Lecture 8 HISA04 Themes in World History I Mon 29 Octh
2012
Sacred Spaces: Religious Buildings and Early Modern Connections
- Protestants burnt statues and paintings at the stake, decapitated statues, and stripped
churches of pictures of Saints.
- Anything not Christian was usually burnt at the stake, and Protestants used it against the
Catholics to show that the Catholics were being heretics.
- Protestants felt images of Saints invited idolatry.
- Instead of attention directed at important things, it was directed towards Saints.
- Protestants felt it was more important with God and them as opposed to through the
Church, bishops, popes, and etc. like the Catholics did.
- John Calvin = prominent theologian; declared that ‘God forbade…the making of any
images representing Him.’
Key Words for Protestantism (Protestant Dutch Reform Church, 1649)
- Modest.
- Plain.
- Purity.
- Humility.
Key Words for Catholicism (Baroque Catholic Church, constructed around 1700)
- Elaborate; in sense of decoration, sitting in pews.
- All facing alter.
- Wealthy interior.
Differences
- Protestant churches face different ways while Catholic churches are all facing in one
direction at the priest and all these different ornaments, decorations, representations, and
alter.
- Catholic Church attempts to re-create heaven at the back of the alter.
- Protestant focussed on sacredness of the church because it was a place to exercise their
relationship with God, Catholics emphasized churches’ sacredness because of the temple
itself—it was God’s house.
- Martin Luther was really against the purchasing power of spiritual things, like buying
their way out of purgatory.
Luther and the Protestant Reformation
- Martin Luther – 1483-1546; German Monk.
- 95 theses, presented in 1517. Week 8, Lecture 8 HISA04 Themes in World History I Mon 29 Octth
2012
- Criticized church’s corruption:
• Sale o
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