However, with the Reformation initiated by Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century, these practices suffered a setback because the new Protestants in northern Europe became unwilling to engage in them and opted for new practices that led to salvation. Requests for salvation thus found their fulfillment in the medieval practices of the Church through confession and absolution, as well as pilgrimage rites.
They would regularly acknowledge their mistakes and sins, while the priests would absolve them of these sins.
Indeed, reconciling religion and life in this world was easy for Catholics because of the “confessions” they made to the clergy. He thus put forward another element, ideas, especially religious ones, Protestantism to be more specific, and Calvinism to be exact. The fact is that Weber, in his explanation of this phenomenon, was not satisfied with the traditional view that attributed capitalism to technical factors, especially the evolution of steam power. However, it reinforced a sense of self-exaltation among other Catholics who saw it as confirming a preconceived notion of theirs: Protestants, unlike them, dedicated their lives to making money. With its publication in 1905, his thesis has engendered indignation among Catholics, who saw that nothing but the “conceit of the northerners” could make them associate Protestantism with capitalism and progress while associating southern European Catholicism with backwardness. In his analysis of these phenomena, especially the origins and fundamentals of capitalism, which he had immersed himself in for a long time, he concluded his famous link between its “spirit” and “the Protestant ethic.” He got a sense, early on, of its implications, seeing them in the expansion of cities, the formation of large corporations, and the emergence of an administrative elite that replaced the old aristocracy. Since he was a youth, the industrial revolution that was making its way through Europe had taken took hold of the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920).
0 kommentar(er)
