Starting roughly with Luther’s theses and ending arguably not until Britain restored full civil rights for Catholics, the Protestant movement touched off centuries of war and political upheaval. Obviously this wasn’t over i.e. if people should fish on Friday or not. What was really at stake in terms of power politics that made this controversy so bitterly fought?
Who was in charge. Was it the Pope, was it kings, was it local princes and merchants?
There’s a ton more to it of course, but the biggest political stake was that.
Also, “What will make God happy” is a bigger question than “Should we eat fish on Friday?”. It’s easy to dismiss beliefs you don’t share, but I think it’s entirely plausible that for a great many people, a significant part of their motivation was a sincere belief that God Wanted It This Way.
Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were his reasons for questioning the actions of the Pope. Questioning the Pope was a groundbreaking sort of thing. Posting them on the door of the cathedral wasn’t the blatant public display one might think. Generally such written works were shared in that way by clerics inclined to to seek opinions of other clerics. Hardly anyone other than that read such “publications.”
The sale of indulgences, threats of interdictions on sacraments, and the political influence by the church on matters of national sovereignty were the things that amplified the interest of different elements of society to the consequence of commoners even having opinions about who should decide what God wanted done in the “modern” world of multinational politics.
The doctrine of the divine right of kings was a handy thing for kings to have. It meant you didn’t have to actually slaughter your workforce to maintain control. All you had to do was maintain influence in the Papal court, and the college of cardinals. It was expensive, but cheaper than putting down rebellions.
Tris
Faith is about me, doing what I know is right. Religion is about getting you to do what I know is right.
The stock answers are simple and obvious -
The church like any large organization was perpetually short of money. That the upper echelons lived in luxury didn’t help; the grandiose works that the church built also consumed a lot of money, a did the prodigious number of staff to make the organization run. One of the things they did to raise money (that irritated Luther) was to sell indulgences - “Give me 100 ducats today and all your sins for the last decade will be forgiven when you reach heaven.” In any day and age, there are those who take religion seriously, and would be offended at what seems to be a simple shake-down of the gullible in the name of God.
The spread of education, the easy availability of bibles due to printing press, etc. reduced the ability of the church hierarchy to tell the rest what their interpretation of the bible really was. People could read it for themselves and decide whether they believed the church party line.
The improved communication and expansion of political empires - France, Spain, etc. - dragged the pope into continental politics more than before. Henry VIII was a staunch defender of the faith until he decided that the church refused to give him what was normally a standard annulment because the King of Spain had control of the pope. (This is a symptom of an ongoing problem. Many monarchs disagreed with Rome over issues like who go to name the local bishops and cardinals; kings chafed at the idea that the pope could overrule or ignore them when the church was a big part of the political structure. Plus there’s the issue of clerical courts, where members of the clergy would be tried and sentenced by the church rather than the secular government.)
Money again is at the heart of it. The church in its various guises owned about 10% of England before Henry came along. Dissolving al the monasteries and taking their lands and assets no doubt was an additional motivation for solving his problem with Rome. It also allowed Henry to consolidate support on his side, by bribing the nobles with their share of the loot. I assume something similar happened in other countries. All those tithes and offerings went to the local ruler instead of to Rome.
Also, a good analogy - after the split the attitude toward Catholics in places like England and the Netherlands, especially - consider it like the attitude toward communists in the USA. The Americans saw them not as naïve believers in future enlightenment, but as tools of an evil foreign leader bent on taking control of their country, which pretty much describes the almost fanatical adherence to the Stalin party line of those days. Similarly Catholics centuries ago were seen as working to put the country under the domination of a foreign pope who was at best a puppet of the country’s rivals - Spain and France. That they tended - like communists last century - to proselytize and try to convert the masses was perceived as deliberately undermining the state for the benefit of a foreign power.
I wouldn’t characterize the Catholic Church as “poor”. “Greedy” would be a better word.
As md2000 mentioned, the Church owned a lot of land all over. And in those times land = wealth. The Church generally didn’t go around selling those lands or anything. So their real estate portfolio just kept getting bigger and bigger.
People were leaving the Church a lot of land over the centuries. Gifts, in wills, etc. The Church put peasants (virtually slaves) on the lands and farmed them. This in turn brought in wealth. Plus it’s all tax free and hopefully (but not always) free from being sacked during wars which gave them a big leg up over the noble landowners.
But it was also inefficient in many places. So great land wasn’t as productive as it should be. Too many religious orders had people sitting around doing nothing but had to be fed, sheltered, clothed, etc.
Rulers, seeing more and more land going into this econimically draining system were fodder for people who thought of a better religious system that gave them more control.
Keep in mind that being an ordinary religious zealot who wants to upend the Catholic Church was very dangerous if the local ruler wasn’t keen on your ideas. You had to find a friendly ear if you wanted to stay alive. Economics made some ears friendly.
Note that on the flip side in places like present-day Germany with all the little sub-states, aligning yourself with the Pope to fight the heretics was sometimes a really good idea. You got a chance to expand your petty kingdom. Some people just needed an excuse, any excuse to attack someone and grab some land.
Yes and no. Just because the church had a high total income and yuge assets does not mean it was swimming in money. It also had a lot of fixed expenses. The story of every government, and the church is no different, is that there was always not quite enough money to do what they thought they needed to do.
The reformation started with Luther objecting to the selling of indulgences. (Magna Carta was over taxes. Henry VIII took the monasteries for the money. Charles I lost his head over taxes. The American revolution was about taxes, The French revolution was about taxes… and so on.)