The Farts

The Farts

The Reformation had dozens of factors that were all key to its success; from Gutenberg and the
printing press to Protestant leaders such as Luther and Calvin. When trying to find the three most crucial
factors of the Reformation one must look at how they all fit together; which causes depend on which?
Looking at all the immediate causes, it becomes clear that most of them would have been quite useless
to the Reformation or would not have taken off had they not been in the social context of the time
(Gustavson) . The most important factor, then, is the social factor, and each class’ motivations and
position. The religious and social oppression of the lower class, the economic and materialist desire for
autonomy in the middle class, and the political and nationalist pursuit of power in the ruling class were
all the most important factors of the Reformation because they allowed the more immediate causes to
take root and, subsequently, to bloom.

The ideas of people such as Luther would not have spread like they did—even with the
invention of the printing press—if they did not resonate with the people. The only reason Luther’s
relatively unoriginal ideas were so popular was because the social conditions of the lower class were so
bad, what with the taxes , plagues, executions, intolerance; and they were beginning to realize it was
the Church’s fault (Darby). The Church had for over a millennium controlled every aspect of the
commoner’s life until the Renaissance when general knowledge began to grow and peasants gained
more freedoms(Welsh),. They could conceive that the Church was corrupt and deluding them with
indulgences, taxes, and arbitrary ceremonies, and were further irritated by the fact that all profits from
these exploits went to Rome (Gustavson).   The Church was crumbling as the pillar of the community,
slowly suppressing the peasants so that they had to move out from under the feudal structure of it...