One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church from 33 AD (Pentecost) to 1054 AD (The Great Schism) then Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church & Roman Catholic Church from 1054 AD to 1517 AD, then the breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church ................
History of Protestantism
What is the Reformation?
The Protestant Reformation was the 16th-century schism (division) within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants.
The most common dating of the Protestant Reformation begins in Germany 1517, when Luther published The Ninety-Five Theses, and concludes in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia that ended years of European religious wars.
Self-described "reformers" objected ("protested") to the doctrines, rituals, leadership and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church which led to the creation of new national Protestant churches.
The Reformation was precipitated by earlier events within Europe, such as the Black Death (pandemic in Europe 1348-1350 killing 75 to 200 million) and the Great Schism, which eroded people's faith in the Catholic Church and the Papacy that governed it.
Together with many other factors, such as spread of Renaissance ideas and inventions, such as the invention of the printing press, and the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, contributed to the creation of Protestantism.
The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent (the most important ecumenical council since Nicaea II 800 years earlier) and spearheaded by the new order of the Society of Jesus (aka Jesuits) specifically organized to counter the Protestant movement.
In short, Northern Europe, with the exception of Ireland and pockets of Britain and the Netherlands, turned Protestant. Southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while fierce battles which turned into warfare took place in central Europe.
The largest of the new churches were the Lutherans (mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia) and the Reformed churches (mostly in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scotland). There were many smaller bodies as well.
What happened? 1517 A.D.
The Protestant Reformation began on 31 October 1517, in Wittenberg, Saxony (Germany), where Martin Luther (an Augustinian monk at the University of Wittenberg) nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Castle Church, in Wittenberg. The theses debated and criticized the Church and the Pope, but concentrated upon the selling of indulgences and doctrinal policies about purgatory, particular judgment (the authority to absolve sin and remit one from purgatory), Catholic devotion to Mary, "The Mother of God", the intercession of and devotion to the saints, most of the sacraments, the mandatory clerical celibacy, including monasticism, and the authority of the Pope. Other religious reformers, such as Ulrich Zwingli soon followed Martin Luther's example, started a movement in Switzerland.
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. 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.
In short, 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 the Antichrist.
Speed, Spread & Success of the Reformation
The Reformers made heavy use of inexpensive pamphlets (using the relatively new printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg at the time) so there was swift movement of both ideas and documents, including The Ninety-Five Theses.
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| Luther's 95 Theses |
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.
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 pre-Reformation styles, clichés, and stereotypes and changed items as needed for their own purposes.
Using the German vernacular they expressed the Apostles' Creed in simpler, more personal, Trinitarian language. Illustrations in the German Bible and in many tracts popularized Luther's ideas such as dramatizing Luther's views on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.
Luther’s Excommunication
Martin Luther was excommunicated on January 3, 1521 from the Catholic Church. This was one of the main causes for the Protestant Reformation.
Protestant Division
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 (an influential French theologian and pastor) were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere.
Even though Luther, Zwingli and Calvin had very similar theological teachings, the relationship between their followers turned quickly to conflict (first between Luther and Zwingli, later between Luther and John Calvin), divided on doctrinal differences.
One key doctrinal difference between Luther and Zwingli was that although Luther preached consubstantiation in the Eucharist over transubstantiation, he believed in the spiritual presence of Christ at the mass. Zwingli believed that the mass was only representative and memorial, Christ was not present.
This resulted in the establishment of different and rival Protestant Churches. Denominations, such as the Lutheran, the Reformed, the Puritans, and the Presbyterian. Elsewhere, the religious reformation causes, processes, and effects were different; Anglicanism arose in England with the English Reformation, and most Protestant denominations derive from the Germanic denominations.
Counter-Reformation by the Catholic Church led to a series of religious wars that culminated in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40% of its population. From 1618 to 1648 the Roman Catholic House of Habsburg and its allies fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, supported at various times by Denmark, Sweden and France.
The Habsburgs, who ruled Spain, Austria, the Spanish Netherlands and much of Germany and Italy, were staunch defenders of the Roman Catholic Church. Some historians believe that the era of the Reformation came to a close when Roman Catholic France allied itself, first in secret and later on the battlefields, with Protestant states against the Habsburg dynasty.
The Thirty Year’s War ended with the treaty “Peace of Westphalia”. All parties would now recognize the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, by which each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state, the options being Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and now Calvinism. Christians living in principalities where their denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to practice their faith in public during allotted hours and in private at their will.
The treaty also effectively ended the Pope's pan-European political power. Fully aware of the loss, Pope Innocent X declared the treaty "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all times." European sovereigns (both Roman Catholic and Protestant), ignored his verdict (national and political self-interests outweighing religious convictions).
Scandinavia
All of Scandinavia ultimately adopted Lutheranism over the course of the 16th century, as the monarchs of Denmark (who also ruled Norway and Iceland) and Sweden (who also ruled Finland) converted to that faith.
England
The separation of the Church of England (or Anglican Church) from Rome under Henry VIII, beginning in 1529 and completed in 1537, brought England alongside this broad Reformation movement. However, religious changes in the English national church proceeded more conservatively than elsewhere in Europe.
Reformers in the Church of England alternated, for centuries, between sympathies for ancient Catholic tradition and more Reformed principles, gradually developing into a tradition considered a middle way between the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions.
The different character of the English Reformation came rather from the fact that it was driven initially by the political necessities of Henry VIII. Henry had once been a sincere Roman Catholic and had even authored a book strongly criticizing Luther, but he later found it expedient and profitable to break with the Papacy. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, bore him only a single child that survived infancy, Mary. As England had recently gone through a lengthy dynastic conflict, Henry feared that his lack of a male heir might jeopardize his descendants' claim to the throne. Henry appealed to Pope Julius II to annul his marriage but was denied. When Julius II died, Henry tried again. However, Pope Clement VII, concentrating more on Charles V's sack of Rome, also denied his request for an annulment.
King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy made Henry the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. The veneration of some saints, certain pilgrimages and some pilgrim shrines were also attacked. Huge amounts of church land and property passed into the hands of the Crown and ultimately into those of the nobility and gentry. The vested interest thus created made for a powerful force in support of the dissolutions.
There were some notable opponents to the Henrician Reformation, such as St. Thomas More and Bishop St. John Fisher, who were executed for their opposition. There was also a growing party of reformers who were imbued with the Zwinglian and Calvinistic doctrines now current on the Continent. When Henry died he was succeeded by his Protestant son Edward VI, who, through his empowered councillors (with the King being only nine years old at his succession and not yet sixteen at his death) the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, ordered the destruction of images in churches, and the closing of the chantries. Under Edward VI the reform of the Church of England was established unequivocally in doctrinal terms.
Following a brief Roman Catholic restoration during the reign of Mary 1553–1558, a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I. This "Elizabethan Religious Settlement" largely formed Anglicanism into a distinctive church tradition. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on the one hand and Roman Catholicism on the other.
Scotland
The Reformation in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish reformation.
The Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, forbade the celebration of the mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (then also Queen of France).
The Scottish reformation decisively shaped the Church of Scotland and, through it, all other Presbyterian churches worldwide.
France
Protestantism also spread into France, where the Protestants were nicknamed Huguenots, and this eventually led to decades of civil warfare.
Though he was not personally interested in religious reform, King Francis I (1515–47) initially maintained an attitude of tolerance, arising from his interest in the humanist movement. This changed in 1534 with the Affair of the Placards. In this act, Protestants denounced the Catholic Mass in placards that appeared across France, even reaching the royal apartments. The issue of religious faith having been thrown into the arena of politics, Francis was prompted to view the movement as a threat to the kingdom's stability. This led to the first major phase of anti-Protestant persecution in France, in which the Chambre Ardente ("Burning Chamber") was established within the Parliament of Paris to deal with the rise in prosecutions for heresy. Several thousand French Protestants fled the country during this time, most notably John Calvin, who settled in Geneva.
Calvin continued to take an interest in the religious affairs of his native land and, from his base in Geneva, beyond the reach of the French king, regularly trained pastors to lead congregations in France. Despite heavy persecution by Henry II, the Reformed Church of France, largely Calvinist in direction, made steady progress across large sections of the nation, in the urban bourgeoisie and parts of the aristocracy, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment.
French Protestantism, though its appeal increased under persecution, came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the noble conversions of the 1550s. This had the effect of creating the preconditions for a series of destructive and intermittent conflicts, known as the Wars of Religion. The civil wars were helped along by the sudden death of Henry II in 1559, which began a prolonged period of weakness for the French crown. Atrocity and outrage became the defining characteristic of the time, illustrated at its most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Roman Catholic party annihilated between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France.
The wars only concluded when Henry IV, himself a former Huguenot, issued the Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Roman Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau—which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Roman Catholicism the sole legal religion of France.
In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam, giving free passage to Huguenot refugees, and tax-free status to them for ten years.
In the late 17th century, many Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the Cévennes region. A separate Protestant community, of the Lutheran faith, existed in the newly conquered province of Alsace, its status not affected by the Edict of Fontainebleau.
Netherlands
The Reformation in the Netherlands, unlike in many other countries, was not initiated by the rulers of the Seventeen Provinces, but instead by multiple popular movements, which in turn were bolstered by the arrival of Protestant refugees from other parts of the continent.
While the Anabaptist movement enjoyed popularity in the region in the early decades of the Reformation, Calvinism, in the form of the Dutch Reformed Church, became the dominant Protestant faith in the country from the 1560s onward.
Harsh persecution of Protestants by the Spanish government of Philip II contributed to a desire for independence in the provinces, which led to the Eighty Years' War and eventually, the separation of the largely Protestant Dutch Republic from the Roman Catholic-dominated Southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium).
Hungary
Much of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary adopted Protestantism during the 16th century. After the 1526 Battle of Mohács, the Hungarian people were disillusioned by the ability of the government to protect them and turned to the faith they felt would infuse them with the strength necessary to resist invasion.
They found this in the teaching of the Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. The spread of Protestantism in the country was aided by its large ethnic German minority, which could understand and translate the writings of Martin Luther. While Lutheranism gained a foothold among the German- and Slovak-speaking populations, Calvinism became widely accepted among ethnic Hungarians.
In the more independent northwest the rulers and priests, protected now by the Habsburg Monarchy, which had taken the field to fight the Turks, defended the old Roman Catholic faith. They dragged the Protestants to prison and the stake wherever they could. Such strong measures only fanned the flames of protest, however.
Protestants likely formed a majority of Hungary's population at the close of the 16th century, but Counter-Reformation efforts in the 17th century reconverted a majority of the kingdom to Roman Catholicism. A significant Protestant minority remained, most of it adhering to the Calvinist faith.
In 1558 the Transylvanian Diet of Turda declared free practice of both the Catholic and Lutheran religions, but prohibited Calvinism. Ten years later, in 1568, the Diet extended this freedom, declaring that "It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expelling for his religion". Four religions (Unitarianism became official in 1583, following the faith of the only Unitarian King John II Sigismund Zápolya 1541-1571) were declared as accepted religions, while Orthodox Christianity was "tolerated" (though the building of stone Orthodox churches was forbidden). During the Thirty Years' War, Royal (Habsburg) Hungary joined the Roman Catholic side, until Transylvania joined the Protestant side.
There were a series of other successful and unsuccessful anti-Habsburg (requiring equal rights and freedom for all Christian religions) uprisings between 1604 and 1711; the uprisings were usually organized from Transylvania. The constrained Habsburg Counter-Reformation efforts in the 17th century reconverted the majority of the kingdom to Roman Catholicism.
Ireland
The Reformation in Ireland was a movement for the reform of religious life and institutions that was introduced into Ireland by the English administration at the behest of King Henry VIII of England. By 1541, the Irish Parliament had agreed to the change in status of the country from that of a Lordship to that of Kingdom of Ireland.
Unlike similar movements for religious reform on the continent of Europe, the various phases of the English Reformation as it developed in Ireland were largely driven by changes in government policy, to which public opinion in England gradually accommodated itself. However, a number of factors complicated the adoption of the religious innovations in Ireland; the majority of the population there adhered to the Roman Catholic Church.
Italy
The Reformation spread to the Italian states in the 1520s, and quickly collapsed at the beginning of the 17th century. Its development was hindered by the Inquisition and also popular disdain. In Italy, the Reformation exerted almost no lasting influence, except for strengthening the Roman Catholic Church, unlike the essential impact it had on other European countries.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
In the first half of the 16th century, the enormous Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a country of many creeds, but Roman Catholic Church remained the dominating religion. Reformation reached Poland in the 1520s, and quickly gained popularity among mostly German-speaking inhabitants of such major cities, as Gdańsk, Toruń and Elbląg. In Koenigsberg, in 1530, Polish-language edition of Luther's Small Catechism was published. The Duchy of Prussia, which was a Polish fief, emerged as key center of the movement, with numerous publishing houses issuing not only Bibles, but also catechisms, in German, Polish and Lithuanian.
Lutheranism gained popularity in northern part of the country, while Calvinism caught the interest of polish nobles, mainly in Lesser Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The 16th century Commonwealth was unique in Europe, because of widespread tolerance, confirmed by the Warsaw Confederation. In 1563, the Brest Bible was published (see also Bible translations into Polish). The period of tolerance ended during the reign of King Sigismund III Vasa, who was under strong influence of Piotr Skarga and other Jesuits. After the Deluge, and other wars of the mid-17th century, in which all enemies of Poland were either Protestant or Orthodox Christians, the attitude of Poles changed. Counter-Reformation prevailed, in 1658 Polish Brethren were forced to leave the country, and in 1666, the Sejm banned apostasy from Catholicism to any other religion, under punishment of death. Finally, in 1717, the Silent Sejm banned non-Catholics from becoming deputies of the Parliament.
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