Fragmentation from Christendom to the Protestant Reformation Was Not Research Paper

Fragmentation from Christendom to the Protestant Reformation Was Not Beneficial to the Evolution of European Culture - Research Paper Example Radically, the world shape had been altered; creating a fresh identity of European communities of what was once Catholic Christendom. Knowledge about their culture had been growing rapidly from thirteenth century (Hillerbrand 89). Across the Atlantic, a new world had been discovered and accurate knowledge of the oceans and the lands beyond Islam became widespread. This coincided with the fragmentation of the old idea of Christendom, replaced by a new geographical idea, Europe that included all people from different European cultures and who shared a common history. This included the protestant sects, Roman Catholicism, and those in the Orthodox. Whether or not protestant reformation comprised improvements in the lives of European communities is debatable, since there were negative and positive impacts in personal, cultural, social, theological, and political pragmatisms. The impacts of Fragmentation from Christendom to the protestant reformation on Culture and political thought Cultu rally, arts with an exception of architecture and music realized a loss of ecclesiastical support from protestant reforms, and more so, Luther reforms. The movement of reformers used vernacular as opposed to Latin and thus popular music was not as weakened as the Liturgical language used by the church. Consequently, this helped raise the music status since composers were free to develop pieces which were more appealing to people of a specific culture and language, thus encouraging diversity (MacCulloch, 75). Architecture remained exuberant and grand as the numerous denominations competed to put up worship houses. However, other arts lost denominational recognition by protestant restructurings. The patronage of visual arts and religious images were not supported by the protestant churches. At the beginning, struggles among reformers about iconoclasm resulted in conflicts over the images place in the sanctuary. For instance, the differences between Luther and Calvin’s hostility to visual images hampered the support given by churches for art. Culture was affected in such a way that, financing art needed a huge amount of resources, both in creation of the art and in supporting the artists. The Catholic Church drew funds and other resources from many churches diffused over continental Europe, while the Protestants had limited resource base. The situation was made more severe since the princes and the break-away churches were struggling to prevent their recap back to Christendom and the struggle for survival prioritized. This cultural insolvency led to a loss of visual arts for Protestants who would have otherwise gained a deep sense of pleasure and satisfaction from viewing art to reinforce their religious convictions. However, the vernacular Bible version such as the King James Version and Luther’s played a significant role in the development of modern English and German literature (Mitchell & Buss 67). Protestant revolution was not beneficial to the lives of European communities politically since autonomist groups gathered support via identifying with certain denominations. This led to breakup of Western Christianity despite the fact that, for a Christian to put more loyalty towards a political group or nation instead of their faith contradicts with the idea of brotherhood and Christian unity found in the Bible. The fragmentation of Christianity basing on nationalistic lines changed the