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Lucas Cranach
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When the Protestants, who were led by Martin Luther (1483-1546), broke
away from the Catholic Church in the first half of the sixteenth century,
they attacked not only the authority of the Pope but his financial power
base as well. The Protestants, therefore, confiscated church lands
which resulted in less revenue being directed to Rome from northern Europe.
As a result, the papacy was forced to depend financially more on the Papal
State in central Italy as its tax base.
Simultaneously, during the Renaissance the papacy became an ever less important player on the European stage. The brutal Sack of Rome in 1527 by the troops of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (1500-58), made a mockery of papal claims to world dominion. So did repeated raids in Italy and Eastern Europe by the Turks, and that power's increasing domination of the Mediterranean after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. |
Lucas Cranach's painting above of Martin Luther shows him at the center of the composition defiantly surrounded by his theological supporters. His moral authority seems to be suggested not only by subtle gestures (e.g., the figure at the right points toward Heaven), but also by the more patent symbol of the infant angel in the left foreground. What do you think the detail in the right background suggests about the Protestants' position toward the Catholic Church?