male narrator: One of the most powerful men on Earth
holds a position that has existed
for nearly 2,000 years.
As the world changes and faith evolves,
his authority remains.
What began with one apostle
has become 1.2 billion followers
under one man.
He is the head of the Catholic Church,
the pope,
and this is his path to power.
In this episode, never-before-seen orders
from Pope Leo X and Henry VIII
sever Protestants from the Catholic Church...
And the corruption of Renaissance popes
push three men to ignite a revolution
that transforms Christianity forever.
narrator: In 2016, Pope Francis kicks off
the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation...
A spiritual revolution that splinters
the once universal Catholic Church.
- The Reformation, it's incredibly pivotal
in the development of Christianity.
- The Reformation could have been
one of the big tragedies of Christianity,
but rather, you get the emergence
of a much more individualized or personal faith.
- The beginnings of the Reformation
are all about this pushback
against what is seen as excess in Rome.
narrator: In the 16th century, many Catholics are disturbed
by the church's pervasive materialism and corruption.
As a result, new denominations of Christianity
begin to form and break ties with the Vatican.
- The Reformation is an anonymous bomb
dropped on the theological landscape.
- All great religions of the world
which are successful change,
and Christianity is no exception to that rule.
narrator: The umbrella of modern Christianity
includes over 800 million Protestants
and 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide.
But in the 16th century,
Catholicism is the law of the land.
- There is a ferment of devotion,
deep, deep piety in Europe.
Everyone went to church out of conviction.
narrator: Almost the entire population of Europe
devoutly follows Rome's Catholic doctrine...
and the pope is at the head of it all.
- In the 16th century, there had been a series
of very worldly popes who loved power.
- All earthly institutions are flawed,
and the Renaissance popes got caught up with power.
- It's not surprising that people who loved power...
took it.
narrator: But as papal power swells,
so does a culture of greed and corruption.
The tenets of Christ begin to fall by the wayside
as popes spend exorbitant amounts of money
in the name of luxury, excess, and absolute power.
- Popes during the Renaissance bring a sense of majesty
into the papacy that had not existed before,
even though we would probably say
that their methods were a little bit ruthless.
narrator: And in 1513, Pope Leo X takes
the overindulgence to new heights.
- Leo X was an extravagant pope.
Very interested in architecture
and the glories of the city of Rome,
and spent a lot of money in pursuits of that kind.
- The church has become one of the key commissioners
of this huge, exciting cultural explosion
which is the Renaissance.
narrator: Pope Leo X throws lavish parties
and hires Raphael to paint elaborate frescoes
throughout the Vatican.
He spends a small fortune on the palatial expansion
of St. Peter's Basilica.
- During the Renaissance, you had lots of art,
lots of patronage,
but in another way, it's dire for the church
because they were actually breaking the church.
- That art, that sculpture,
all of that fabulous beauty has to be paid for.
narrator: Pope Leo X pays for his opulent lifestyle
by selling positions within his administration.
- He says, "These offices will cost this much.
If you want this one, you'll have to pay this much."
- All kinds of horrible things are happening in the church.
They're selling their bishoprics.
They're putting their illegitimate kids
into offices-- basically embezzlement.
- This is a time the Catholic Church
is really pretty profoundly corrupt.
narrator: But the payoffs are still not enough
to keep up with Leo's spending.
- It's put a strain on local churches and parishes.
People are giving up lots of money during this time period,
and they're feeling pressed.
narrator: Only two years into Leo X's papacy,
the Vatican is on the verge of bankruptcy.
In order to save the church from financial ruin,
he charges his clergy with selling indulgences
throughout all of Europe.
- Indulgence-- the forgiveness of sins
in return for cash payments.
- Indulgences started way back in the Crusades,
and the idea was that
you've got these soldiers fighting for Christ,
and they're likely to be killed at any moment...
and so what the church did was to give them
a "get out of purgatory free" card.
So the indulgence was a way of rewarding people
who were doing something good for God,
but their trouble was that the system grew,
and very soon, people were being offered
indulgences for sale.
narrator: Leo X realizes
not only will the sale of indulgences
deepen the pockets of the Catholic Church...
but it will also fund the expensive construction
of St. Peter's Basilica.
- People go to St. Peter's now, and they think about,
how did they get all the money to build this?
Well, they were taxing people with indulgences.
- The whole thing about the St. Peter's indulgence
was that it was applicable to your dead relatives,
so you could get your relatives
out of purgatory by paying for an indulgence.
- It's a very seductive idea, a very successful idea.
narrator: But as word of the pope's campaign
for indulgence sales spreads throughout Europe,
it triggers a reaction
from a fundamentalist professor in Germany.
- Martin Luther heard about this
and found it obscene.
narrator: Martin Luther, a 33-year-old friar
deeply devoted to the Bible,
is appalled by the exploitive nature of indulgences.
- Martin Luther felt that this was selling
God's salvation for money,
and you can't do that.
- It's the notion of indulgences
that finally bring the church down.
narrator: As Vatican culture sinks deeper
into the pits of corruption,
Martin Luther begins to ignite an extraordinary revolution.
narrator: In 1517, despite the deep piety
of European Catholics,
materialism and corruption run rampant
inside the Vatican walls.
But in Germany, one man decides that it's time
to take a stand against the sins of the pope.
- Martin Luther was a member of an order of friars
called the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine.
- Luther was a professor of scripture.
He'd become a monk out of fear.
He'd made a vow to St. Anne during a thunderstorm.
- Early in his career, Martin Luther was sent off
to Rome by his religious order,
and he was shocked by Rome.
narrator: A deeply religious scholar,
Martin Luther is horrified by the hedonism
he sees funded by indulgences.
He is outraged by the fact that the pope
is exploiting his followers' fear of damnation
for financial gain.
- Martin Luther felt that the God he found
in the works of Augustine forgave sin
and didn't actually consider individual sins.
He made a free, merciful decision
to forgive those who loved him.
Luther found that God loved him,
and he wanted to spread this message of God's love
as well as the message that you and I,
people like us, human beings, are all sinful.
There's nothing we can do about that.
- For Luther, the sale of indulgences
was exactly the antithesis of this sense of Christianity
as a liberating mode, salvation not as free gift
but as something you have to stump up money for.
- Martin Luther thought it was all a sham.
He decided to hold a seminar about indulgences.
And he would issue 95 things
to be discussed in this seminar.
The seminar never happened, but the Ninety-five Theses,
the 95 ideas to be discussed, were there.
narrator: Martin Luther sends his Ninety-five Theses
to the archbishop of Mainz, Germany,
who then sends it to the pope.
In his theses,
Luther questions the indulgences
and whether the pope should have power
over who goes to heaven or hell.
- The "Theses" are a series of technical questions
about whether or not, for example,
the pope or any priest has jurisdiction in the afterlife.
There were a lot of Catholic theologians
who thought the afterlife was in God's world
and papal authority was for this world.
- It's often said that he nailed the document
with these 95 theses
to the castle church door in Wittenberg.
- This was not the first time
that these ideas had been put out.
Far from it.
But the difference between
1517 and the 14th century
is the printing press.
The "Ninety-five Theses" were printed,
and they were widely distributed.
- Martin Luther had become a celebrity in all Europe.
He was producing books and finding a real talent.
He's one of the first great bestseller writers in print.
- Luther was a master of popular media.
narrator: Previously, the printing press
had only been used to circulate scripture
and official documents.
Martin Luther is the first to use it
to spread a subversive message.
- Martin Luther's revolution was fueled
by the printing press, and he used it with genius,
but that brought a real problem.
Now he was the symbol of all sorts of different discontents,
and he'd aroused passions which he couldn't control
all through Europe, and now Europe was split.
narrator: Martin Luther's statements
against the sale of indulgences
put him in direct opposition to Pope Leo X,
who was frantically selling them to cover his debts.
- Church leaders were now saying to Luther,
"You must obey the pope,
and to obey, you must keep quiet."
And Luther could not keep quiet.
If you were the enemy of the church,
that would mean you could be called a heretic,
so Martin Luther was putting himself
in very dangerous territory now.
narrator: Deep within the Vatican secret archive...
Lies the document that split
the once universal Catholic Church.
It has never before been seen on camera.
On January the 3rd, 1521,
Pope Leo X issues a papal order
excommunicating the German preacher.
- All Germany was in uproar,
and this was very bad news
for the overall ruler of Germany,
the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
narrator: Acutely aware of the fervor
Luther has ignited in Germany,
Charles V worries his excommunication
might start a revolt.
- And what he did was to summon Martin Luther
to a meeting of the parliament of the Empire.
It's called a diet,
and it was meeting that year
in the city of Worms.
What the emperor was going to do
was to order him
to be obedient to the church,
so imagine this great set piece.
All the great figures of the Holy Roman Empire
are there-- bishops, princes,
a vast crowd in attendance,
and there the emperor told Luther
to be obedient to the church.
Luther said he could not be obedient.
He must be obedient to the Bible,
the scripture.
- Rather than being willing to investigate these ideas,
the Catholic Church took a turn in the other direction
and erected walls.
Martin Luther is officially marked as being
outside of the tradition of the Catholic Church.
It was seen as an act of disloyalty.
To be Protestant meant that you weren't loyal to the pope.
narrator: After Luther's defiance of King Charles
and the pope at the Diet of Worms,
a hard line is drawn among Christians.
- The foundation of the Reformation
is that the church is the invisible gathering
of all of those who confess to Christ
in every time and in every place,
and because this is not a temporal group of people,
there's no way there can be a temporal head of it.
narrator: Those aligned with Martin Luther
protest the pope's divine claim
to leading the Catholic Church
and become known as Protestants.
They build Lutheran churches
throughout Germany and Scandinavia,
focusing their teachings on scripture
instead of loyalty to the pope.
- In the past, when people don't want
to receive Catholicism,
people could be burned for heresy.
You could be tortured.
You could be imprisoned.
Martin Luther's not the first person
that challenged the church, but he's probably
the first person to live to tell about it.
narrator: Martin Luther goes into hiding,
and the Protestant Reformation continues to grow.
In 1523, two years after the Diet of Worms,
a new pope, Clement VII, is elected.
Unlike Leo X, Clement VII agrees
with many of Luther's ideas about reform,
posing a threat to the wealthy monarchs
who benefit from church corruption.
narrator: After Martin Luther denounces the pope in 1521...
European Christians are split in two.
Lutherans develop their own church founded on the belief
that salvation is achieved through faith alone...
While Catholics continue to practice obedience
to the Vatican.
But the abandonment of Catholicism
by half of Europe
presents Pope Clement VII
with a dilemma.
- Clement VII... must have been sorry
he was ever elected pope,
because his whole reign was a calamity.
- He was chronically indecisive.
He would go to bed for days with headaches and stomachaches
rather than make a serious decision.
narrator: Not only is Pope Clement VII
faced with a church
that Martin Luther has splintered,
but he is also caught in the middle
of territory disputes between kings.
- The papacy functions politically as one element
in the cockpit of Europe, where, all around it,
dynastic politics are being worked out.
narrator: In 1527, the Vatican is still aligned
with the King of Germany, Charles V,
who stood with Pope Leo X against Luther
just six years earlier.
- Charles V was a very unusual person.
He was the King of Germany.
He ruled the north of Italy.
He was the Holy Roman Emperor,
but he had also inherited the rule of Spain,
so he had more power than, at this point,
any temporal monarch had ever had at any point.
He was a very alarming monarch to many people.
- He wants Italy at the same time
that the French want Italy.
narrator: In an attempt to balance the power
in Europe, Pope Clement VII abandons
his alliance with Charles
and makes a secret treaty with France
called the League of Cognac.
- As if the pope hadn't got enough problems
by the late 1520s, he found himself at war
with the greatest Catholic in Europe...
Charles V,
the very man who'd challenged Luther.
- There is one ruler, the King of France,
who's behind the pope,
and then the King of Germany is against the pope,
so there's this war between the church and Germany,
but it's really between the King of Germany
and the King of France.
- Now Charles V invaded Italy and invaded Rome.
Rome was sacked by the imperial troops,
many of whom were Lutherans and hated the pope,
and so for weeks on end, Rome faced terror.
It's the most extraordinary irony that it was a Catholic
who did as much harm to the pope as a Protestant.
narrator: In May of 1527,
the German army storms the churches, monasteries,
and palaces in Rome.
By the end of that spring,
more than 8,000 Romans are slaughtered.
Horrified by the carnage...
Pope Clement VII flees the Vatican and seeks safety.
- He gets away by sneaking out of the city.
narrator: The pope hides out in a castle outside of Rome
for five weeks, but eventually,
the German army surrounds his refuge.
Clement VII is forced to surrender
to King Charles V.
- There was certainly no intention of killing the pope.
Why would you do that to the Holy Father?
But what the emperor wanted was to make the pope helpless,
and he did so.
And now the emperor had him at his mercy.
narrator: After Clement VII yields
significant papal territory to Charles V,
he retreats to a deserted palace
in Orvieto, Italy.
Church business slowly resumes...
until the pope finds himself clashing
with another powerful monarch in a feud
that will change the reach
of the Catholic Church forever.
narrator: After King Charles of Germany
attacks Rome in 1527...
The city is in ruins.
- After that, it took half a century
to rebuild Rome.
narrator: Though Rome is destroyed
and half of Europe has abandoned Catholicism
for Lutheranism, the pope is determined
to strengthen what's left of the Catholic empire.
But despite his best efforts
to revive the splintering church,
another threat to papal power brews in England.
- Henry VIII was a fascinating,
extremely complicated individual.
- Henry VIII had the biggest ego
in the kingdom of England.
He was also a clever man, talented,
good-looking when he was young,
and like many teenagers,
he never quite coped with growing up.
narrator: Henry VIII has ruled England
since he was 18 years old,
and as a young, charismatic monarch...
he is used to getting what he wants.
- Henry was married to the daughter
of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
- The wife was a Spanish princess.
narrator: Henry VIII's marriage
to Catherine of Aragon
is the foundation of many
important political alliances...
but despite the advantages attached to their union,
Henry finds his marriage to Catherine problematic.
- They'd been together for 20 years,
and she had managed to produce one living daughter.
- He was very sensitive to the fact
that he hadn't got a son to take over when he died,
and that was fatal in the politics
of a kingdom at the time.
narrator: Not only does Henry want a son
that his wife cannot give him,
but he also has a mistress that he'd like to marry.
- If you want to marry somebody else,
there is no divorce.
You need the pope to annul your marriage.
- He wants the pope to say that he can marry Anne Boleyn.
- He needs a declaration that his marriage
to Catherine was never valid.
narrator: The Vatican archives contain the letter
Henry VIII sent to Pope Clement VII
requesting the annulment of his marriage
to Catherine of Aragon in 1530.
His request is signed by 81 members of Parliament.
But the pope's response is complicated
by his political alliances.
- The Pope was effectively the prisoner
of the Emperor Charles V,
who, as it happens, was the nephew
of Queen Catherine of England.
narrator: Clement VII does not want to jeopardize
his fragile truce with Charles V
by agreeing to his aunt's annulment...
but King Henry threatens to withdraw all of England
from the Catholic Church if he does not get his way.
- So on the one hand,
there was the King of England saying,
"Declare my marriage null,
"or the church will suffer for it,
"because the stream of money from England
to the papacy will be cut off,"
and on the other hand
was the Emperor Charles V, who says,
"If you divorce my auntie, you will suffer for it."
narrator: Pope Clement is in a precarious position
and finds himself paralyzed with indecision,
but King Henry VIII is not known for his patience.
- Clement used various little tricks,
delaying tactics,
and the thing just dragged on and on and on.
Henry finally just got fed up with it and said,
"I'm just doing this on my own."
narrator: In the decade after Martin Luther's revolution,
a school of thought circulates around Europe,
doubting the pope's divine right to power.
- Henry VIII availed himself of this very strong current
of Reformation thought that said
the pope is not the head of the Christian church.
The Christian church is invisible.
The Christian church is all believers everywhere,
and the pope has no particular claim to be the leader.
He took that Reformation thought,
and then he entirely corrupted it by saying,
"The Pope is not the leader of the Christian church, I am."
Which was not at all what the Reformers had in mind.
- Henry VIII says, "I'm gonna do
"an act of supremacy, and I'm gonna declare myself
over the church."
- Henry says, "I'm not a king, I'm an emperor,
and emperors are accountable to nobody."
narrator: In 1534, four years after
Henry VIII's initial request for an annulment,
he denounces the papacy,
removing himself and his country
from the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church.
He proclaims himself the leader of a new church...
the Church of England.
- Henry says, "I decide
that I'm not married to Catherine."
- He divorces his nice Catholic wife,
he marries Anne Boleyn,
and now he's the head of a church.
So he can take down Catholic priests.
He can put down people who don't follow
his particular faith, the Anglican faith,
and as a result, it ends up destroying
the Catholic Church for a time in England.
- He tore the kingdom apart with his break from Rome.
- We have wars of religion within England.
We have wars of religion between France and England,
with France being more loyal to the pope,
England more loyal to Henry.
The entire religious landscape becomes weaponized.
- And then Henry VIII begins to take the church's wealth.
narrator: As head of the Church of England,
Henry VIII seizes property
that belongs to the Catholic Church.
- He begins to strip all the altars in England.
He takes that wealth for himself.
narrator: He dissolves the monasteries and convents,
stripping over 12,000 monks,
nuns, and priests of their homes and assets.
- Henry's very puzzling in terms of religion.
- Henry VIII had the alliances.
He had the wealth to be able to disregard the pope...
To be able to say, "No, I don't care
if you put my entire country under interdict,"
meaning that everybody's excommunicated.
"This makes no difference to me."
Essentially, he stripped away
the authority of the papacy
and, originally, at least, kept almost everything else,
simply establishing a new church
with a different head, and that authority
was what he was most interested in,
who was at the head of it.
narrator: In the face of spiritual revolutionaries
and power-hungry monarchs,
the once almighty pope sees the power of the office
dwindle for the first time in nearly 800 years.
By the middle of the 16th century,
it looks as if the reign of the Roman Catholic Church
is finally coming to an end.
narrator: By the end of Pope Clement VII's reign in 1534,
the once all-powerful Catholic Church
is beginning to splinter.
The new pope, Paul III,
inherits a papacy swelling with uncertainties.
- Just at the moment when the church
seemed in real trouble,
a particular champion came along.
And called himself Ignatius.
Ignatius Loyola.
- They were a group of French, Spanish,
and Portuguese students at the University of Paris.
They came under the influence of Ignatius.
narrator: At the University of Paris,
Ignatius and his followers initiate a new way of praying
based on meditation.
In the past, Catholic prayer had consisted
of standard recitations,
but Ignatius promotes a more personalized practice.
- He had developed a way of praying and focusing
that was very attractive to these young men,
so they all came together, and they took vows together.
- They called this society the Society of Jesus,
later known as the Jesuits.
narrator: Like Martin Luther, Ignatius and the Jesuits
believe that every man, not just clergy,
should have an individual relationship with God.
But unlike Martin Luther,
they do not pose a direct threat to the church.
- He had a lot in common with Luther.
Ignatius was a man who believed
that a direct communication with God
was not only possible
but was absolutely essential for the soul to prosper.
Too often, I think we tend to break down
Catholic and Protestant,
especially during the Reformation, into,
Catholics thought that people needed a mediator
between God and man, and Protestants say,
"No, you can speak directly to God."
Ignatius was a Catholic who believed
that the direct experience of God
was one of the most important experiences
that the church could steer you towards.
- They begin trying to rehabilitate fallen women,
sex workers.
They show great concern for the poor.
Eventually, they go to Rome
with this new idea for a new order,
and they place themselves at the disposition of the pope.
narrator: Ignatius presents the Jesuits' ideas
to Pope Paul III as a means of Catholic reform,
but in 1540, few had challenged
the Catholic Church and remained
in the good graces of the pope.
- The church hierarchy was feeling its way forward.
This was an unknown, new development.
It was a new threat.
Even though Luther's thought was condemned,
within the Catholic Church, there was also this recognition
that yes, there were reforms that needed to be made.
- The Pope allowed them to become
a formal religious order.
narrator: In an unprecedented act,
Pope Paul III endorses Ignatius's challenges
to the church.
He permits the Jesuit order to flourish
within Catholicism.
- Ignatius knew how to play the Vatican's politics.
The Society's always carefully cherished its independence
and done so and protected that independence
by talking about its loyalty to the pope.
- They become the largest religious order in the church.
narrator: The Jesuits make a name for themselves
by shifting their focus... to universal education.
- The Jesuits focus on education
for all classes of society.
- They provided a first-class education,
and people rushed to get that education.
That's what spread the Catholic faith back into areas
where Protestantism had made great strides.
- Ignatius had 16 more years to live,
and during that period, the Jesuits mushroomed.
They took in more and more and more people.
- They began to spread out through the new world
and also into Japan and India and other places.
narrator: Inspired by the Jesuits,
Pope Paul III calls for Catholic unity
to fight against the ever-growing
Protestant movement.
- There's tremendous turmoil that is going on
in the church, and so this becomes a time
in which the church has to look to rebuild,
and how does the church rebuild?
What do they do?
How do they bring themselves together?
narrator: In 1545, the pope assembles
the Council of Trent
to reexamine the Catholic institution.
A counter-reformation is born.
- A council is called to start to do reforms in the church
that they believe must be done
in order to hold on to the church
and the ways in which they can push back against Luther
and these other Reformation movements.
- Paul III, he's a great reforming pope.
He makes a series of magnificent appointments
to the cardinalate, and these men become
the leaders of the renewal of Catholicism
in the mid-16th century... and they're his men.
narrator: A transformation begins.
In 1567, the sale of indulgences
is outlawed, and a culture of change
and growth is initiated in the church...
setting the stage for the first Jesuit pope
and perhaps the greatest reformer of the modern era,
Pope Francis.
narrator: Nearly 600 years after the Reformation
ignites in Europe,
Pope Francis becomes the first Jesuit pope...
a leader who calls on Christians
to be missionaries of hope.
- A Jesuit is the last person you would ever think
was gonna become pope.
- Right from the start, the Society of Jesus
set its face against any member of the society becoming pope.
- They are not supposed to seek ecclesiastical benefits.
They should not want to be bishops or cardinals
or things like that.
- Why now, for the very first time
in the church's history, a Jesuit pope?
narrator: The unprecedented election of a Jesuit pope
signifies a real shift
in the nature of the 2,000-year-old office.
- Pope Francis positions himself
not just the leader of the Catholic Church
and the papacy but as a moral leader.
- The Jesuits are the great success story
of the Catholic reform.
Jesuits are flexible thinkers.
They understand that there are different sides to a question.
They tend to be more lenient in their moral judgments.
They tend to be more encouraging.
So the impact of having a Jesuit pope is interesting.
- It almost suggests the Society felt that,
"Jesuits to the rescue."
The church was in trouble,
and so they'd send one of their own in.
narrator: Pope Francis's election in 2013
comes during a turbulent time for Catholicism.
The Vatican faces scrutiny
for sexual and financial scandals,
while both church and seminary attendance
are on the decline the world over.
- Change happens in the Catholic Church
in a way that it doesn't happen
in other places.
It never happens directly.
Emphasis gets changed.
Certain things are dropped from attention,
and they pivot.
- Pope Francis asked me
to take on this job in Culture
about a year and a half ago,
and he spoke to me about what he wanted me to do.
Pope Francis said,
"Look, there are things changing in our world.
"There are things emerging that have potential
to shape our future very differently."
He said, "I want you to get out there.
"I want you to meet the people
who are forging the future of the world."
narrator: The changes initiated
during the Reformation have become
part of the fabric of modern Christianity.
More than 900 million Protestants around the world
can trace their spiritual roots
back to the revolution started in the 1500s.
- The shattering of the unity of Christendom was a tragedy,
but it also, of course,
created a new kind of urgency
for Catholic reform.
narrator: After 2,000 years of threats,
transformations, and revolutionaries,
the pope still maintains a following
of 1.2 billion people around the world.
The capacity of the Catholic Church to accept change
has been central to its ability
to remain relevant.
- Reforming helped to bring about
a renewal of the papacy
and of the wider church.
- We can see how the papacy first changes,
but secondarily, how it has to change
with the time that it's in.
Where there might have been a time
that, you know, "Science is bad,
and it's all terrible,"
Pope Francis has been able to speak
about things like homosexuality,
the environment, in ways in which
other popes have not.
We're now in a time where somebody
like Pope Francis is saying,
"Climate change is real.
We need to take care of the earth."
So I think that's a tremendous way
to sort of look at the papacy
to see how it has to develop over time,
not just about the faith,
but about the world in which its dealing with.
narrator: As long as the church has existed,
the world around it has been in flux...
But throughout centuries of change and challenges...
The pope still remains
one of the most powerful men on earth.