kwaw
frelkins said:Why this insistence on the Reformation? France remained a rigidly old-fashioned Catholic country until the Revolution, and after the restoration of the monarchy, reverted back to a strong Catholic foundation.
At one time the Church in France formed its own separate government, certainly wealthier and more powerful than the King. (see Richelieu, for example).
The Reformation had little lasting power in France and of course even less in Italy.Please enlighten me. I hesitate to speculate but I would think the lightning strike is what happens to the rich merchants and their money in the fortress counting house if they *don't* endow the maison dieu.
Even if the Church is one of merchant priests; as if Christ did not throw out the traders from the temple?
The question of the role of 'good works' in Chrisitian salvation is a complex one with a variety of sectarian viewpoints, from those who give it a primary role to the extremes of some that deny it any role at all (salvation depending upon God's grace, man contanimated by original sin cannot cleanse or atone for himself through good work , his salvation is soley dependent upon and a manifestation of God's love).
Calls for reform within the Catholic church existed long before, and after, Luther. See Dante, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Langley. We can find the same calls for reform against clerical corruption, argument for the marriage of priests, for the availability of scripture in the vernacular and the primary authority of scripture above church, as much in the 12th century as we can in the 16th; themes such as pope as antichrist existed prior to the later extreme polemics of the protestants that exploited an existing and widespread concept.
The TdM appears to us c.1650 on in a Europe in schism the effects of which included France; that France remained Catholic does not mean it did so without being effected or involved in a hundred years of religious war, massacres and mass migration; many card manufacturers were in areas where the Heugenots were strong; block out on a map of Calvin controlled areas on the map and several of our card makers appear on its borders; several known cardmakers are known to have migrated to the netherlands, to england and the swiss cantons, (and several later on move back again).
And the issues of reform remained to be tackled, commentated upon (and satirised) from with the Catholic church itself, and was not the sole domain of its opponents in schism.
Kwaw
For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? I Peter 4:17
