Protestant Reformation

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"Reformation" redirects here. For other uses, see Reformation (disambiguation).

Protestant
Reformation

Precursors

Waldensians
Arnoldists
Girolamo Savonarola
Avignon Papacy
Lollards
Western Schism
Hussites
Northern Renaissance
German mysticism

Start of the
Reformation

95 Theses German Peasants'

War Schmalkaldic
League Magisterials Radicals
Counter-Reformation

Main Reformers

Luther Melanchthon M
ntzer Zwingli Simons
Bucer Olaus /Laurentius
Petri Berquin Calvin K
arlstadt Knox Trubar
Arminius

Other Reformers

By location

Czech lands Denmark

Norway /
Holstein England Germany It
aly Netherlands PolandLithuania Scotland Sweden F
rance Switzerland

Protestantism

The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation, was

a schism from the Roman Catholic Churchinitiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych
Zwingli and other early Protestant Reformers in the 16th century Europe.
Although there had been significant earlier attempts to reform the Roman Catholic
Church before Luther such as those of Jan Hus, Peter Waldo, and John Wycliffe it is
Martin Luther who is widely acknowledged to have started the Reformation with his 1517
work The Ninety-Five Theses. Luther began by criticizing the selling of indulgences, insisting
that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of
the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The Protestant position, however, would come to
incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura and sola fide. The core motivation

behind these changes was theological, though many other factors played a part, including
the rise of nationalism, the Western Schism which eroded people's faith in the Papacy, the
perceived corruption of the Roman Curia, the impact of humanism and the new learning of
the Renaissance which questioned much of the traditional thought.
The initial movement within Germany diversified almost right then and there, and other
reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenberg's printing
press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular.
The largest groupings were the Lutherans and Calvinists. Lutheran churches were founded
mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in
Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced
the Church of England decisively after 1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, although the
national church had been made independent under Henry VIII in the early 1530s for political
rather than religious reasons.
There were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as
the Radical Reformation, which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian, and
other Pietistic movements. Radical Reformers, besides forming communities outside state
sanction, often employed more extreme doctrinal change, such as the rejection of tenets of
the councils of Nicaea andChalcedon.
The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council
of Trent. Much work in battlingProtestantism was done by the well-organized new order of
the Jesuits. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, came under
the influence of Protestantism. Southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central
Europe was a site of a fierce conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years' War, which left it
massively devastated.
Contents
[hide]

1History and origins

o

1.1Earlier schisms

1.2Early Reformation in Germany

1.3Magisterial Reformation

1.4Literacy

2Reformation outside Germany

2.1Switzerland

2.1.1Huldrych Zwingli

2.1.2John Calvin
2.2Scandinavia

2.3England

2.3.1Church of England

2.3.2Puritan movement

2.4Scotland

2.5France

2.6Spain

2.7Netherlands

2.8Hungary

2.9Ireland

2.10Italy

2.11Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth

2.12Slovene Lands

2.13Greece

3Conclusion and legacy

o

3.1Thirty Years' War: 161848

3.2End of the Reformation

3.3Impact on individual lives

3.4Historiography

4See also

5Notes

6Citations

7References

8Further reading

8.1Surveys

8.2Scholarly secondary resources

8.3Primary sources in translation

8.4Historiography
9External links

History and origins[edit]

See also: History of Protestantism

The oldest Protestant Churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum and Moravian Church, date
their origins to Jan Hus in the early 15th century. As it was led by a Bohemian noble majority,
and recognised, for a time, by the Basel Compacts, the Hussite Reformation was Europe's
first "Magisterial Reformation" because the ruling magistrates supported them; unlike the
"Radical Reformation", which the state did not support.
The later Protestant Churches generally date their doctrinal separation from the Roman
Catholic Church to the 16th century. The Reformation began as an attempt to reform the
Roman Catholic Church, by priests who opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and
ecclesiastic malpracticeespecially the teaching and the sale of indulgences or the abuses
thereof, and simony, the selling and buying of clerical officesthat the reformers saw as
evidence of the systemic corruption of theChurch's hierarchy, which included the pope.

Earlier schisms[edit]
See also: Bohemian Reformation

Execution of Jan Hus, an important Reformation precursor, in 1415.

Unrest due to the Great Schism of Western Christianity (13781416) excited wars between
princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the
church. New perspectives came from John Wycliff at Oxford University and from Jan Hus at
the Charles University in Prague. Hus objected to some of the practices of the Roman
Catholic Church and wanted to return the church in Bohemia and Moravia to early Byzantineinspired practices: liturgy in the language of the people (i.e. Czech), having lay people
receive communion in both kinds (bread and wine that is, in Latin, communio sub utraque
specie), married priests, and eliminatingindulgences and the idea of Purgatory.
Hus
rejected indulgences and adopted a doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone.
The Roman Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of
Constance (14141417). The conclave condemned Hus, who was executed by burning
[citation needed]

[citation

needed]

despite a promise of safe-conduct. Wycliffe was posthumously condemned as a heretic and

his corpse exhumed and burned in 1428.
[1]

[2]

The Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of
church and empire. It did not address the national tensions, or the theological tensions
stirred up during the previous century. The council could not prevent schism and theHussite
Wars in Bohemia.
[3][better source needed]

Pope Sixtus IV (14711484) established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to

the dead, thereby establishing a new stream of revenue with agents across Europe.
Pope Alexander VI (14921503) was one of the most controversial of
the Renaissance popes. He was the father of seven children, including Lucrezia and Cesare
Borgia.
In response to papal corruption, particularly the sale of indulgences, Luther
wrote The Ninety-Five Theses.
[4]

[5][better source needed]

[6][better source needed]

Early Reformation in Germany[edit]

Martin Luther, shown in a portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder, initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517.

The protests against the corruption emanating from Rome began in Germany when
reformation ideals developed in 15171521 withMartin Luther expressing doubts over the
legitimacy of indulgences and the plenitudo potestatis of the pope. The Reformation was
born of Luther's dual declaration first, the discovering of Jesus and salvation by faith alone;
and second, identifying the papacy as theAntichrist. The highly educated Reformation
leaders used prophecies of the Bible as their most powerful weapon in appealing to
committed believers to break from the church, which they perceived as the new Babylon,
and to convince them that the popes were the Antichrist who had assumed the place of God.
The Protestant reformers were unanimous in agreement and this understanding of
prophecy furnished importance to their deeds. It was the rallying point and the battle cry that
made the Reformation nearly unassailable.
[7]

[8]

[7]

[7]

The Reformation is often dated to 31 October 1517 in Wittenberg, Saxony, where Luther
nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of
the Castle Church. The theses debated and criticised the Church and the papacy, but
concentrated upon the selling of indulgences and doctrinal policies
about purgatory, particular judgment, and the authority of the pope. He would later in the
period 15171521 write works on the Catholic devotion to Virgin Mary, the intercession of
and devotion to the saints, the sacraments, mandatory clerical celibacy, monasticism, further
on the authority of the pope, the ecclesiastical law, censure and excommunication, the role
of secular rulers in religious matters, the relationship between Christianity and the law, good
works, and the sacraments.
[9]

Reformers made heavy use of inexpensive pamphlets as well as vernacular bibles using the
relatively new printing press, so there was swift movement of both ideas and documents.
[10][11]

Magisterial Reformation[edit]
Main article: Magisterial Reformation
Parallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership
of Ulrich Zwingli. These two movements quickly agreed on most issues, but some
unresolved differences kept them separate. Some followers of Zwingli believed that the
Reformation was too conservative, and moved independently toward more radical positions,
some of which survive among modern day Anabaptists. Other Protestant movements grew
up along lines of mysticism or humanism, sometimes breaking from Rome or from the
Protestants, or forming outside of the churches.

Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Thesesplaced in doubt and repudiated several of the Roman Catholic practices.

After this first stage of the Reformation, following the excommunication of Luther and
condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were
influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland,
Hungary, Germany and elsewhere.
The Reformation foundations engaged with Augustinianism; both Luther and Calvin thought
along lines linked with the theological teachings of Augustine of Hippo. The Augustinianism
of the reformers struggled against Pelagianism, a heresy that they perceived in the Roman

Catholic Church. In the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of
15241525 swept through the Bavarian, Thuringian and Swabian principalities, including
the Black Company of Florian Geier, a knight from Giebelstadt who joined the peasants in
the general outrage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Zwinglian and Lutheran ideas had
influence with preachers within the regions that the Peasants' War occurred and works such
as the Twelve Articles. Luther, however, condemned the revolt in writings such as Against
the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants; Zwingli and Luther's ally Philipp
Melanchthon also did not condone the uprising. Some 100,000 peasants were killed by the
end of the war.
[12]

[13][14]

[15]

Literacy[edit]

Martin Luther's 1534 Bibletranslated into German. Luther's translation influenced the development of the current Standard German.

The Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press. Luther's translation
of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as
well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward,
religious pamphlets flooded Germany and much of Europe.
[16][a]

[18][b]

By 1530, over 10,000 publications are known, with a total of ten million copies. The
Reformation was thus a media revolution. Luther strengthened his attacks on Rome by
depicting a "good" against "bad" church. From there, it became clear that print could be used
for propaganda in the Reformation for particular agendas. Reform writers used preReformation styles, clichs, and stereotypes and changed items as needed for their own
purposes. Especially effective were writings in German, including Luther's translation of the
Bible, his Smaller Catechism for parents teaching their children, and his Larger Catechism,
for pastors.
[18]