INTERNATIONAL REFORMATION MUSEUM – GENEVA
500 Years of Swiss Influence on Protestant Europe and America
We’re coming up on 500th birthday of Martin Luther. While the Reformation effectually began when the monastic cleric from Wittenberg nailed his 95 thesis questions on the door of the church in Germany, much of the shape of the Protestant religion we know today comes from the religious figures from Switzerland. The International Museum of the Reformation in Geneva retraces the history of the Reformation movement begun by Martin Luther and shaped by John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and others, told through artifact objects, books, manuscripts, paintings, etchings and state-of-the-art audio visual exhibits, in a series of themed rooms following the trail of protestant religious movements from the 16th Century forward, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King.
The Reformation in Europe began with a confluence of events and forces. The rise of the Borgias and corruptions of wealth in the Catholic Church in Rome, leading to Martin Luther’s objection to the excesses of the Catholic Church’s essentially selling of salvation through indulgences, and the invention of Gutenberg’s moveable type (see Gutenberg Museum Fribourg). It was Luther’s translation of the Bible in common language which spread the Reformation from the printing press, but the first German translation was actually completed in Zurich 5 years before Luther finished his Wittenberg Bible (see Bodmer Library). The Christian religion had been torn between two ideas since its earliest origins, the struggle between pure faith and the physical representation of faith. While Martin Luther accepted most of the practices of Catholicism, it was his idea that salvation could not be attained by works and acts, but through faith alone. But it was from Switzerland where much of the faith traditions brought to Colonial America, saw their origins.
John (Jean) Calvin sought refuge in Geneva from France and preached his concepts of Preordination which influenced the Pilgrims and the Dutch reformed Church which settled early New England, and the Anabaptist movement which promulgated the idea that to seek salvation the faithful must be baptized as an adult, or reborn which spread throughout Europe following the devastations of the 30 Years War, and then emigrated to North America in the mid-Atlantic and western expansion (see Wandering Immigrants). The ideas of the Reformation continued to evolve across Europe through the next three centuries. Where the Renaissance and Catholicism produced images of religious art, the Protestant Reformation found its artistic representation more in music, through hymns and chorales and inspiring the great composers of Baroque age. The 19th and 20th Centuries saw the development of Pentecostal movement in America growing into the modern megachurch.
The International Museum of the Reformation is located in the heart of Geneva’s old town in the historic Maison Mallet, dating from the 18th Century on the former site of the cloisters of Geneva’s Saint-Pierre Cathedral, and the location where Geneva formally voted to convert to the Reformation in 1536. The cathedral towers, the museum and an underground tunnel connecting the museum to the archeological foundation under the cathedral have been combined into a cultural attraction called the Espace Saint-Pierre. © Bargain
Travel Europe
Find best hotel and travel deals for Geneva at TripAdvisor
Web Info
Museum of Reformation
These
articles are copyrighted and the sole property of Bargain Travel
Europe and WLPV, LLC. and
may not be copied or reprinted without permission. Photos courtesy International Reformation Museum.
SEE
ALSO:
WATCHMAKING MUSEUM – LA CHAUX-DE-FONDS
CHÂTEAU
DE COPPET - LAKE GENEVA
CERN
- HADRON SUPER COLLIDER TOUR
