Benefit Of The Protestant Reformation example essay topic

The protestant reformation was both beneficial and a disaster simultaneously. It depended entirely on where it spread. The birth of Protestantism began with the ideas and concepts of Martin Luther. He was an Augustinian friar who deeply desired to change the ways of the Christian church. One of his ideas that spread rapidly was the concept to sell indulgences.

An indulgence was basically a supposed way to free yourself of all your sins. For example, if you stole you would need to return the stolen goods, perform a task, usually prayer, and then purchase an indulgence, which would then set u free from your previous sins. Another one of his major ideas was that women would be allowed to be a part of church activities. Before his time, women were supposed to stay home and be a housewife.

However, not all believed that Luther's idea were good and in fact a lot of people thought he was insane. This led to both beneficial and disastrous situations. The reformation had many benefits for the protestant people. For one, it gave them the right to exist and hold their beliefs without being excommunicated or worse.

This in turn lead to more freedom of religion which gave more and more people the right to express their own personal beliefs on matters that before they could not speak of or they would be risking death. With the spread of Protestantism, less and less people were Catholics. Now all of a sudden the Catholics were beginning to fight the spread of Protestantism with their own reformation, which we know of today as the Catholic Reformation. Another benefit of the protestant reformation was the Concordat of Bologna. The French and all of Europe were focused entirely around the church. But with the reformation, governments begin to arise.

Pretty soon the church would fall just behind the government. This lead to the French becoming completely independent from the church's control. As well as all the benefits of the Protestant Reformation, there were many disasters as well. In the eyes of the Catholics, all man should revolve around the same religion and everyone should believe the same thing. However, the Protestant ideas brought about religious disunity, which was seen as a sin. Another non-benefit was that the ideas of Protestantism didn't even include peasants.

More and more peasants realized this and they came together and began to revolt. With revolt came wars and the peasant's revolt escalade d into what we know of as the thirty years war. As we know, war is expensive and not fought in certain areas. This would end up leaving farms and houses burnt to the ground leaving commoners alone to suffer. This war would go ahead to delay Germany's unification for almost 300 years after.

Over all, the Protestant Reformation was both a benefit and a disaster. Religion started with just two branches, Christianity and Catholicism. From there the amount would escalade into hundreds and hundreds more. In the end it was good to some, but bad to others and it would all lead to the world we have today.