It aided them through disease, famine, and hardships. The Christians are taught that if they believe in the Holy Spirit, they will live better lives for the present and their afterlives, many poor people in the sixteenth century believed that if they devoted their lives toward God, their lives will take the turn for the better. “Some historians have identified a kind of bookkeeping mentality – an arithmetic of salvation – in the attempts of late medieval clerics and laypeople to try to calculate just how much punishment various sins might entail. At the same time, the church attempted to ease the burden of penance by increasingly allowing people the option of substituting cash payments for acts of reparation, such as going on pilgrimage or reciting certain prayers.” They could be forgiven by the church and god if they paid the church dues for the sin they have committed. They practically brainwashed the people into believing that they could do anything within reason and pay their way out of it. It was a way of getting what the church wanted, money, and it made the people of the church very happy. “Martin Luther’s challenge to this practice, known as the ‘sale of indulgences’, began the Protestant Reformation that ended up dividing the Western …show more content…
Luther was prosecuted and escaped the punishment of burning to death. Others were intrigued and began following this practice after they heard about it.
At the University of Paris, they disapproved the teachings by Luther. John Calvin was on the committee and was interested in Luther’s teachings. Calvin fled France when it became too dangerous and went to Switzerland and the Holy Roman Empire. “Organizing the new church, negotiating relations with secular authorities, and elaborating a systematic Reformed theology took a lot of Calvin’s energy during the years that followed, but he never lost sight of his goal dear to his heart: to convert his native France to a Reformed