From one angle, to even discuss the Reformation as a religious conflict is almost too flattering to Luther’s opposition. Pope Leo X was essentially a loyal member of a crime family who was chosen to cover that part of the family fortune–milking the papacy.
Learning the truth, as some devout persons must have done, was undoubtedly quite an experience for Roman Catholic or Protestant alike. (For the Protestant: it is one thing to be at war with the Antichrist, but quite another to realize your just the opposition in an Italian soap opera.)
And that must have hurt. To realize that the majesty and glory of the Church was pretty much a line item in a the Medici account books. To realize that these people were simply fighting for their tribe with only accidental interest in dogmas. To realize they had the power to attract a group of professional apologists to make their family loyalty look like something grander.
Of course, ultimately, it was religious, even if it was also really crass.
And I think you can say this without “trivializing” the very serious theological matters that were at stake. Reading the book of Revelation, one doesn’t get the impression that the crassly materialistic and the heretical are really disjoint categories, but often travel quite close together. Babylon was called a whore for the way she used her charms to increase her wealth, as well as for her idolatry. The pattern repeats frequently through history, both biblical and extra-biblical.
Thanks, Mark!
This will seed itself with other such writing, and flower.
Perhaps it is the end of one decreative sequence, societally, that begets a new creative sequence?
Pax Christi,
Chuck