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Late Mediaeval Piety, Humanism and Luther’s Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

George Yule
George Yule*
Affiliation:
King’s College Aberdeen
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Extract

In his essay The origins of the French Reformation, Lucien Febvre exposes a number of weaknesses in common interpretations of the Reformation—that it had been brought about because of abuses in the church and especially because of Luther’s anger at these abuses. But what, asked Febvre, does one then make of those independently of Luther, who like Briconnet, bishop of Meaux, worked for reforms, often of a different kind to those advocated by Luther, or more especially of Lefèvre d’Étaples a mystical catholic whose biblical studies says Febvre ‘contained some very bold things’. So Febvre asked could this many sided movement ‘spring from nothing more than a revolt of healthy and honest minds and consciences against the nasty people and wicked spectacles around them?’ Why could not the ‘many pious Christians often supported by their princes and the officers of the princes put an end to the excesses which everyone deplored? No one noticed that if the Reformation in France had originated with Lefèvre and not with Luther the abuses theory would no longer be valid ... for Lefèvre had never campaigned against the morals of the clergy’. Febvre then went on to point out the evidence for the deep and increasing piety of the early sixteenth century in northern Europe—the many new churches and oratories, the deep sentiment attached to the Christ of the Passion and the Virgin of the Rosary.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 17: Religion and Humanism , 1981 , pp. 167 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1981

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References

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19 The term is inevitably imprecise. Almost all the humanists were Christian but had other major preoccupations. So the term should be applied to those humanists who saw Christianity as the key stone for interpreting the life of man.

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