Protestant reformation
The Protestant Reformation —or simply the Reformation— is known as the Christian religious movement that began in Germany in the 19th century XVI by Martin Luther, which led to a schism in the Catholic Church to give rise to numerous churches and religious currents grouped under the name of Protestantism.
Another name used for this movement by some historians such as Ricardo García Villoslada is the "Protestant revolution".
The Reformation had its origin in the criticisms and proposals with which various European religious, thinkers and politicians sought to provoke a deep and general change in the uses and customs of the Catholic Church, in addition to denying the jurisdiction of the Pope over the entire Christendom; for Protestants the pope is just the "bishop of Rome" and the religious doctrines of him will be known as papism and the political ones as caesaropapism. The movement will later receive the name Protestant Reformation, due to its initial intention to reform Catholicism in order to return to a primitive or pure Christianity, and due to the importance it there was the Speyer Protest, presented by some German princes and cities in 1529 against an edict of Emperor Charles V to repeal the religious tolerance that had previously been granted to the German principalities.
This movement was rooted in elements of the medieval Catholic tradition, such as the Alumbrados and the Cardenal Cisneros reform in Spain, and also the modern Devotion / Devotio moderna movement in Germany and the Netherlands, which was an anti-Church, Christ-centered secular piety. Furthermore, the second generation of humanism largely followed it. It began with the preaching of the Augustinian priest Martin Luther, who revised the doctrine of the Catholic Church according to the criteria of its conformity to the Holy Scriptures. In particular, he rejected the Catholic sacramental theology that, according to Luther, allowed and justified practices such as the "sale of indulgences", considered a hijacking of the Gospel, which should be freely preached and not sold.
The Protestant Reformation depended on the political support of some princes and monarchs to be able to form state-level Christian churches (later national churches). The main exponents of the Protestant Reformation were Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Protestantism has come to constitute the second great branch of Christianity, with a group of faithful that currently exceeds 900 million.
Precursors of the Protestant Reformation. Waldenses, Lollards and Hussites
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In the 16th century there was a great crisis in the Catholic Church in Western Europe, due to numerous accusations of ecclesiastical corruption, simony and religious lack of piety which were aired by the printing press, and many wars of religion originated, which finally ceased in 1648. However, this great crisis had deep roots in the past.
After many previous attempts, the specific event that triggered the Reformation was the sale of bulls of indulgences to finance the construction of the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome (in 1517, Pope Leo X had offered some indulgences that the monk The Dominican Johann Tetzel had peddled such terrifying and insolent marketing for Germany that it motivated Martin Luther to write his Ninety-five Theses), as well as the ensuing theological disputes over the doctrine of justification by faith or by works, which gave rise to the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which would eventually cause Western Christianity to split into two: one, located in southern Europe, was led by the Catholic Church, which, after the Council of Trent, claimed itself as the true heir of Western Christianity, expelling any dissent and subjecting itself to the jurisdiction of the Pope, called by Protestants Bishop of Rome.
The other half, to the north, founded several of their own ecclesial communities, generally national in character, for the most part rejecting the medieval Christian heritage and seeking the restoration of an idealized primitive Christianity founded on faith rather than works and in the free interpretation of the Scriptures by each one, in line with the modern individualism of anthropocentrism in the Renaissance, for which reason the Bible had to be translated into the vulgar language.
This left Europe divided between a number of countries that recognized the pope as God's Vicar on Earth and the highest authority or pontiff of the Catholic Church, and countries that rejected Catholic theology and the authority of Rome, who received the common name of Protestants, and who in their various internal divisions recognized the people's need for more direct access and in their language to the faith and various degrees of authority: the Congregationalists, who only admit the collective interpretation of the group of Bible scholars; those who recognize pastors (Presbyterian priests) for this purpose; the Episcopalians, who admit the maximum superior authority of the bishops in that interpretation, and so on.
This division led to a series of religious wars in Europe, especially between the Catholic Church and the allied Protestant churches; for example, the eight different wars in France between Catholics and Huguenots between 1562 and 1598, plus the conflicts of the Catholic Emperor Charles V against the reformed part of the German princes, the so-called League of Smalkalda (1531-1547), the subsequent War of Esmalcalda (1546-1547) and the Uprising of the lords; or the Kappel wars in Switzerland (1529 and 1531), or the various disturbances in the reformed England of Henry VIII (Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536) and Elizabeth I (Rising of the North, 1569), or the wars between the Catholic Felipe II and the rebellion of his Protestant Netherlands led by William of Orange, known as the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). The last of these violent European religious disputes, as early as the 17th century, was the Thirty Years' War 1618-1648, that involved almost all European nations and caused enormous material and human destruction, even though there were also bloody wars between different factions or sects of the new Protestantism, such as the one waged by the Lutherans against the Anabaptists (Peasants' War 1524-1525: Münster Rebellion, 1534-1535), apart from a more dispersed violence expressed in executions by different forms of Inquisition on one side or the other. In any case, after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), a consensus was reached that there would be no more religious wars in Europe and there were no more disputes on this matter.
The Protestant Reformation began in Germany and is largely explained by the economic and social conditions of the Holy Roman Empire. Many cities were very rich thanks to the trade developed by the Hanseatic League between the countries bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea; In addition, the bourgeois were supporters of humanism and to eliminate the prevailing corruption in the Catholic Church. But the most important group in Germany was the high nobility; the great nobles of the small German states were almost independent, lords of numerous lands and peasant vassals, and they were always conspiring against the authority of the Germanic emperor, who had little power over them. But along with this high nobility there was a small nobility made up of the poorest nobles and the second-in-command of the great noble houses.
In the early 15th century, this gentry was completely bankrupt, and to recoup their income, the petty nobles sought an opportunity to seize the assets and unproductive lands of the Catholic Church, much of which was not cultivated and was unproductive or dead handed. The petty nobility took advantage of the ideas of the humanists who criticized the excessive wealth, pomp and pageantry of the Catholic Church to proclaim that she had no need for property and temporal goods and to try to appropriate her vast wealth. For this reason, the petty nobility was the first to support and take advantage of the reforming convulsions.
In addition, there was the figure of the elective emperor of the Holy Empire, one of the universal powers forged in mutual competition during the Middle Ages (the other was the Papacy), whose effective power depended on his ability to be obeyed in each of the territories, practically independent, and, prior to this, to be chosen by the electing princes, some secular and other ecclesiastical. He also had functions of an undoubted religious dimension, which allowed him to even convene Diets with organizational and even doctrinal content, as Carlos I of Spain did in fact throughout the entire process of the Protestant Reformation. For some authors, the suspicious position of the Germanic peoples since the early Middle Ages (Council of Frankfurt, 794, against the Council of Nicaea II, 787) had also been expressed in those struggles between pontificate and empire, in a way even proto-nationalist, in which Rome was seen as
«... the last of the pagan empires of prophecy and representation of the earthly kingdom, while the Franciscan monarchy, for example, possessed the superior dignity of rector and guide of the people of God».
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The founder of the Protestant Reformation was the German Augustinian Catholic monk Martin Luther, who joined the Augustinian religious order in 1505.
In the Catholic convent, Luther continued his studies and became an expert on the Bible and medieval Christian authors; He eventually graduated with a doctorate in Theology and was hired to teach at the new University of Wittenberg, which was then the capital of the Duchy of Saxony. Since the revitalization of the Holy Roman Empire since Otto I the Great became German Emperor in 962, popes and emperors have been engaged in a continuous power struggle for supremacy in spiritual and temporal affairs..
This conflict concluded, broadly speaking, with the victory of the Papacy, but it created deep antagonisms and disagreements (observed with great attention by other European monarchs short of funds, such as that of England) between Rome and the Germanic Empire, which increased very much during the 14th and centuries XV: in the kingdom of Bohemia, Jan Hus (1370-1415) already proposed a reform inspired by the principles of the Englishman John Wiclef or Wycliffe (1320-1384), who had also translated the Bible into English; both created two pre-Protestant Christian movements: the Hussites and the Lollards, inspired in turn by an earlier critical movement, that of the Waldenses, which had been active since its beginnings in the XII inspired by the doctrine of its leader Pedro Valdo. The Hussite wars (1419-1434) developed in which the Catholics fought against the different factions, at the moment united, Hussism: the Utraquists, Taborites and Orebites. When the Huistas won, they created the Moravian Brotherhood, the oldest pre-Lutheran evangelical church in Europe after the Waldensian Evangelical Church. It was established in the Czech Kingdom from the year 1415.
The animosity provoked by papal taxes and submission to papal delegates spread to other parts of Europe, particularly England. The beginning of the movement to achieve absolute independence from papal jurisdiction began with the promulgation of various statutes: the two Statutes of Mortmain or Statutes of dead hands (1279 and 1290), the work of Edward I of England With them the monarch tried to preserve the income of the kingdom by preventing the ownership of allodial lands from passing into the hands of the Church. The Statute of Provisors (1351), established legal procedures against the unpopular practice papal of making appointments to the benefices of the church in England; and the Statute of Praemunire (1353), two years later, forbade appeals to Rome in patronage disputes. The crown in practice thus had sufficient legal weapons available against the Pope's material interests that greatly reduced the power of the Catholic Church in civil government control over land, in the appointment of ecclesiastical offices, and in the exercise of of authority. Moreover, Edward III of England had already formally repudiated (1366) the feudal supremacy over England that the papacy still claimed.
Indulgences
At this time, a great scandal broke out in Germany because of the issue of bulls of indulgences, a concept of Catholic theology consisting of certain consequences of sin, such as its temporal penalty, can be subject to a remission or indulgence granted by certain representatives of the Church and under certain conditions, but paying for it; this referral materialized in a document-invoice called bull of indulgences. This institution dates back to ancient Christianity and both its practice and its formulation have evolved over time.
Many considered this practice a scandalous abuse and the culmination of a series of anti-Christian practices promoted by the Catholic clergy, but the Augustinian friar and theologian from the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, will be the first to publicly expose his opinion contrary to the doctrine of indulgences.
For Luther, irritated by the simony and excesses of the Dominican preacher and bull seller Johann Tetzel, indulgences were a scam and a deception to believers regarding the salvation of their souls. According to tradition, on October 31, 1517, Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the Wittenberg church, in which he attacked indulgences and outlined what would become his doctrine of salvation by faith alone. and not by works. This document is known as the Wittenberg Ninety-Five Theses and was considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. But the central theological problem that divided Catholicism and Lutheranism was essentially the Doctrine of Justification.
The Ninety-Five Theses spread rapidly throughout Germany thanks to Gutenberg's newly invented movable-type printing press, and Luther became a hero to all who wanted a reform of the Catholic Church. In some places they even began assaults on buildings and properties belonging to the Catholic Church itself. Through his ninety-five theses, Luther had become the symbol of Germany's rebellion against what they considered the arrogance of the Catholic Church. Luther also risked his life, since he could be declared a heretic by the ecclesiastical hierarchy and be sentenced to be burned at the stake.
The Lutheran Reformation. The Anabaptist split
At first, the Catholic Church did not give too much importance to Luther's ideas, nor to his attacks against the doctrine of salvation by works, but very soon it had to react to the news that came from Germany, that a large part of the people were challenging the authority of the pope.
Luther continued to attack indulgences and the doctrine behind them through writings that the printing press spread throughout Germany. This body of doctrine consisted mainly of the Luther's Shorter Catechism (1529), the Luther's Larger Catechism (1529), the Augsburg Confessions (1530), the Apology for the Augsburg Confession (1531) and the Smalkaldic Articles (1537). Luther called on the German nobility to deny allegiance to the pope and support the formation of a German Church; He also affirmed that, according to the Bible, all Christians were priests without the need for any special ordination and denied the supreme jurisdiction of the Pope over universal Christianity. Luther also criticized the sacraments of the Catholic Church, reducing them to just two, which he thought were biblically based, and also affirmed that civil powers should have full political authority over the Catholic Church. This went beyond the doctrine of salvation by faith and posed a real threat to Catholicism. Finally, the Pope declared Luther a heretic and excommunicated him, that is, he declared him separated from the community of the Catholic Church.
In 1521, the newly elected German (Holy Roman) Emperor Charles V (king of Spain as Charles I) convened a Diet (assembly of all the authorities of the empire) in the city of Worms and invited Luther to attend it to explain his position.
Many warned Luther that it would be a trap, but Luther was determined to go despite all the dangers. The Diet was held and Luther exposed his doctrine before Carlos V himself, but he was not convinced by Luther and, instead, made a declaration of loyalty and fidelity to the principles of the Catholic Church. From then on, the Habsburg dynasty will become the first defender of the Catholic Church against the Protestants. As the Habsburgs were also kings of Spain, the defense of Catholicism would become one of the bases of Spanish identity, for centuries.
The Diet ended and Luther prepared to return to Wittenberg, but on the way back, he was kidnapped by agents of Frederick III of Saxony, who wanted to protect him and hid him under a false name in the Wartburg castle.
The duke wanted to save Luther from possible maneuvers by the Catholic Church, so Luther had to stay in the castle and used that time to make his first German translation of the Bible. While Luther was in hiding, his supporters began to interpret his doctrines, in a way Luther had not anticipated, as a product of Luther's doctrine of free interpretation of Scripture.
Several followers of Luther (soon to be rejected by Luther himself and dubbed "radical reformers") began to say that all religious paintings, statues, and images should be destroyed, that priests had a duty to marry, and not just They affirmed that the Christian Church should not have property, but that, according to the Bible, all Christians should have the same property and that, therefore, private property should be abolished and all assets distributed among the members of the Christian community. In this way, radical currents that supported all this, such as Anabaptism, were criticized by Luther and later opposed by Catholics and Protestants alike.
The high nobility assembled a large army that brutally defeated these radical Protestants who rose up in the German Peasants' War (1524-1525), at the Battle of Frankenhausen, although occasional small revolts continued years later and one even reached to power in the city of Münster (Münster Rebellion, 1534). The repression was harsh and thousands of Protestants were executed with extreme cruelty; among those executed was the most important leader of this radical reform, Thomas Müntzer. From this Anabaptism would be born divisions, denominations or sects such as the Amish, Hutterite, Mennonite, the Church of the Brothers and even Socinianism and Unitarianism, all of them persecuted by both Catholics and Lutherans, Calvinists and Anglicans.
Luther supported the nobility from the outset, since he thought that their authority was legitimate and that their support was essential for the triumph of the reform of the Christian Church. During these years, Carlos V could not intervene in Germany, since he had to continue his wars against France and his campaigns against the Turks, but in 1529 he achieved a period of peace with France that allowed him to deal with the religious situation in Germany.
In 1529, Charles V convened a Diet in the city of Speyer and in it he tried to convince the nobles who had converted to Lutheranism to submit to the jurisdiction of the Pope, but the Lutheran princes and lords refused and they protest in the convocation of the Diet, and because of this protest the Catholics will begin to call them with the name of Protestants.
In 1530, Charles V convened another Diet in the city of Augsburg and in it he tried to get Lutherans and Catholics to agree to accept a common Christian doctrine that would overcome the religious divide. Luther was again invited to attend, but refused and sent his disciple Philipp Melanchthon in his place. Charles V's efforts at the Diet were useless, as Melanchthon refused any agreement and instead the Protestants drafted the so-called Augsburg Confession, in which they systematically exposed the principles of their doctrine. The Catholics would soon follow his example, also writing their doctrinal compendium, so that Western Christianity had been irretrievably divided.
Luther died in 1546 while Charles V was preparing a campaign in Germany against the Schmalcald League, defender of Protestantism. Carlos V presented his campaign not as a war against the Protestants, but as a punishment against the nobles who had rebelled against his emperor; in his army there were, above all, Spanish troops, but also Protestant nobles who had not joined the league and who remained faithful to Charles V. Charles V's army defeated the League of Schmalcald in 1547 in the great battle from Muhlberg. It seemed that the triumph of Carlos V was complete and all of Saxony was occupied by the troops of the Germanic emperor.
Charles V now set out to find a solution to Germany's religious division, but his triumph had frightened all of Germany's nobles, Catholics and Protestants alike, into fearing that the emperor would become too powerful. All these nobles will later secretly form an alliance against Charles V, nullifying the advantages achieved by Mühlberg's victory.
At a time when Charles V was in Germany without Spanish troops, the German nobles rebel against him and the emperor had to flee to Italy, while his power and authority collapsed in Germany.
Charles V was forced to accept the conditions of the rebellious nobles and in 1555 signed the Peace of Augsburg. According to that peace, each German prince could profess the religion he wanted without the emperor being able to prevent it ( cuius regio eius religio ); however, all of a noble's vassals had to have the same religion. Thus ended the desire of Carlos V to maintain religious unity in his domain. Thus, while the Catholics reaffirmed their own theology in a process of Counter-Reformation initiated with the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Lutheran Protestants consolidated theirs in their Book of Concord (1580), a collection of writings that establishes the Lutheran doctrinal standard.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation
For about 20 years, the Catholic Church had seen much of its faithful fighting among themselves in Europe, and bishops who stopped recognizing the pope as Primus inter pares or as the highest pontiff of the Catholic Church, and separated from Rome even some cardinals, consequently, there were many Catholics who required a reaction from the Church that would improve customs, correcting the abuses that had fueled the Protestant Reformation. This reaction of the Catholic Church to Protestantism is generally known as the Catholic Counter-Reformation, although some historians consider the term "Catholic Reformation" more accurate.
Although many believed that it was necessary to reform, they did not know how to do it. Soon, the idea was reached that the best solution was to convene a Council where possible reforms could be discussed. Charles V also pressured the popes to convene this council in the hope that the Catholic Church would once again exist unified, but the popes distrusted the political claims of Charles V in Italy and did not convene this council until 1545, a meeting that would be known as the Council of Trent.
The sessions of the Council of Trent lasted almost 17 years, as they were interrupted many times. Several popes succeeded each other in Rome in that period and when said council ended, in 1562, Carlos V had already died.
The council was held without the participation of the adherents of the emerging Protestantism (although it was Luther who first proposed the need for a council, in 1518), because they themselves refused to participate, having already created new separate churches of Catholicism.
In the Council of Trent the previous abuses were reformed: the training of the bishops was taken care of, disciplinary measures were established for the priests and seminaries were created so that the new priests had an adequate religious preparation to be able to teach the Catholic faith.
All the points of the millennial Catholic doctrine were reaffirmed against the Protestants:
- I reject the idea of the Bible as a unique source of doctrine (the Holy Apostolic Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church are of equal importance, which together with the Bible are part of the only deposit of faith).
- Salvation is by the grace of God through faith and works together (Decree of Justification).
- The Eucharist was dogmatically defined as the consecration of bread in the body of Christ and wine in his blood, which renews mystical and sacramentally the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
- The veneration of iconographic images and relics, many of them linked to the Christian worship of Mary (mother of Jesus) as a virgin and the saints were confirmed as a Christian practice, together with the existence of Purgatory. This would have an enormous importance in the development of art in the European Catholic churches, the so-called Baroque art will be the artistic expression of the Catholic counter-reform, with great abundance of images to attract the common man to the Catholic faith.
- The rites of the Western Catholic Church were unified in one, the Tridentine Mass.
The Counter-Reformation fueled a revival in Catholicism, an impulse that manifested itself in the revival of ancient religious orders, such as the Order of the Discalced Carmelites, reformed in Spain by Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint John of the Cross, the two great mystical writers of the Iberian Peninsula.
But the religious order that gave the most help to the Catholic Counter-Reformation was the Society of Jesus, founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, from which various theologians who participated in the Council of Trent distinguished themselves.
The Protestant Reformation in England. Anglicanism and its divisions
It began with the spread on the island of the first writings of Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and other continental reformers. In addition, the tradition of John Wyclif, a medieval reformer theologian and translator of the Bible into English, probably still held sway in certain sections of the Church of England.
Henry VIII ascended the throne of England at a very young age and at first took no interest in government issues, leaving it in the hands of his favourite, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, whom he appointed Chancellor of England. Henry VIII was always a convinced Catholic, and an ardent supporter of the primacy of Rome over Christianity, which is why he was declared "Defender of the Faith" (Fidei Defensor) by Pope Leo X after publishing " The Defense of the Seven Sacraments" (1521), where he argued vehemently in favor of the prerogatives of the papacy. It is therefore curious that the Church of England split from the Catholic Church in the mid-16th century, not not by accepting or sharing the reforming ideas of Luther or other Protestants, but by the initiative of King Henry VIII. During his reign William Tyndale translated the Bible into English from Hebrew and Greek (the New Testament in 1525, the Pentateuch in 1530), but having done so without asking for royal permission, he was executed; Miles Coverdale made a new translation a little later, this time with the permission of Henry VIII, and it was the first authorized version, the so-called Biblia grande or Great Bible (1539) a because of its size; in fact it is almost Tyndale's text, but with the controversial passages according to the royal interpretation and with the rest of the Old Testament translated by Coverdale from the Latin Vulgate. It soon reached thirty editions. In 1568, the Great Bible was replaced by the authorized version of the Anglican Church: the so-called Bishops' Bible, but this time translating from the original language texts what Coverdale had borrowed from the Vulgate.
Henry VIII opposed, however, the reform of the Church of England after decreeing the Act of Supremacy in 1534, by which the king himself became head of the Church of England, and no modification was made substantive doctrinal or liturgical under his rule; Only English bishops and priests were prohibited from having any relationship with the Roman Curia and the surplus assets of the Catholic Church were expropriated for the benefit of the Royal Crown. From this emerged, in England, many sects.
When his son Edward succeeded him under the name of Edward VI, at barely 9 years old, the first effective advances in the reform of the Church of England took place, as it was written in the vernacular English (not spoken in all domains of the king) the first Book of Common Prayer, which introduced, thanks to the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, certain minor changes in the doctrine and especially in the way of celebrating the mass. This book was the first concrete expression of the reformation of the Church of England.
In 1553, Edward VI died at the age of 15, leaving Jane Gray (crowned 10 July 1553) as his successor, who ruled for only a few days. A brief war of succession ensued until the reign of Queen (with the support of the majority) was established by Mary I of England, who quickly abrogated the religious reforms introduced during the reign of Edward VI and brought the Church of England back under papal jurisdiction. England, in November 1554.
Catholicism was restored, the Act of Supremacy and the Common Prayer Book were suppressed and new bishops were appointed, supporters of the independence of the Church were persecuted of England (already known as Anglicans), and some of them ended up at the stake (not all were in favor of religious reform).
Mary died in 1558 at the age of 42 and childless, so her half-sister, Elizabeth I of England was proclaimed queen. Elizabeth assumed the throne of England trying to maintain national unity over religious differences, so she did not show initial support for either side in dispute (Protestants and Catholics); however, the hostile international policy of King Philip II of Spain and especially her conspiracies and rebellions made her offer more and more support to the Protestant side.
Isabel restored the Act of supremacy, for which the bishops who were supporters of papist Catholic theology were deposed and replaced; then proclaimed the Act of Uniformity which forced all parishes of the Church of England to use the Book of common prayer / Book of Common Prayer (with those small changes introduced by Thomas Cranmer) with its text in English and not in Latin. All this gave space for the dissemination of the ideas of the Protestant Reformation in England, despite the moderation that the Church of England generally continued to have by preserving its medieval tradition almost intact. Again the Bible was translated, this time at the impulse of his successor, the so-called Bible of King James (1611) in the so-called early modern English (Early Modern English ), version whose influence was enormous on all subsequent literature.
Different branches were born from the Anglican Church: the Episcopalian and Methodist churches, for example.
The Protestant Reformation in Switzerland. Calvinism and its divisions
Switzerland is also going to separate some territories from the Catholic Church; Luther's ideas reached Switzerland very soon and a series of preachers appeared who criticized the corruption of the Catholic Church and defended the creation of a different "Church". One of the first was Ulrich Zwingli or Zwingli, who, together with his friend Leo Jud, translated the Bible into the Swiss dialect of German three years before Luther himself, the so-called Zurich Bible, whose version It was printed in its entirety in 1531. Although he shared many of Luther's ideas, Zwingli wanted to give his new Christian "Church" greater freedom and rejected the subjection of Christians to the nobility as Luther advocated. In the end Luther himself criticized Zwingli and publicly rejoiced at his death in combat against the Swiss Catholics.
But the main focus of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland will be the city of Geneva, thanks to the actions of the French theologian John Calvin, who with Luther is the greatest figure of the Protestant Reformation.
In Geneva a series of reformers had stormed the churches and convents expelling the Catholic priests, but these reformers did not know how to organize the new "Church" they intended to create nor were they clear about what new doctrine they wanted to establish, so they called to a prestigious figure within the Protestant camp, who knew how to organize the new Church and gave a clear religious content, and they opted for John Calvin.
This was a Frenchman who had studied theology at several universities, including Paris; although he at first accepts some of the Lutheran ideas, he very soon thinks that Luther has kept too many things from the Catholic Church that should be suppressed. Calvin also believes that man must access faith through reading the Bible, but considers that all the sacraments of the Catholic Church should be eliminated, including the three that Luther had preserved. He was also an iconoclast: all the images in the churches committed the sin of idolatry and had to be removed from religious temples.
Calvin also thought that there should be neither priests nor bishops and that the religious leaders should be pastors chosen by the congregation; but the most important religious theory that Calvin preached, the product of his free examination and interpretation of the Bible, is predestination: according to this theory, man by himself cannot do anything to achieve salvation, neither by faith nor by works, but that before being born God has already chosen a man for damnation or salvation, and man can do nothing to change this divine design. However, in human society, the men chosen for their salvation can be distinguished in those who lead a virtuous, honest, hard-working and sinless life and in those who have wealth and material success in life, since wealth is a sign of God's protection.
Calvin began to present his ideas in Paris, but since France was Catholic, he had to flee the Kingdom and take refuge abroad. He was already beginning to be known among European Protestants as a firm and energetic man, a great theologian and a good organizer who knew how to lead men, and for this reason he was called upon by the Geneva Protestants.
When Calvin arrives in Geneva, he makes the decision that if he wants to impose a new "church" that adopts his religious views, he has to control the city government; he tries to give orders to the municipal council, which ends up expelling him from Geneva.
However, the situation in Geneva remained unclear, the city authorities were unable to organize a new "Church" and Calvin still had supporters in the city; these supporters convince the Geneva authorities to allow Calvino's return to Geneva on the promise that he will not meddle in the city's political governance. And the authorities authorize Calvin's return to Geneva in 1541.
Calvino has learned his lesson and has understood that he cannot openly express his desire to control the city politically; However, he did not renounce taking over the power of Geneva, which was essential for him to found his new Church. For twelve years Calvino will carry out a patient work to win supporters in the city government, increase his influence in Geneva until the day came when the government and all its institutions were under his control. When Calvino is about to control the government, the Spanish Miguel Servet is executed at the stake.
Miguel Servet was a typical Spanish humanist of the Renaissance period; he was curious about all subjects, from science to medicine, passing through philosophy and religion. Like many men of his time, he was dissatisfied with the Catholic Church and rejected the millennial Catholic doctrine. Servetus thus developed his own religious ideas and came to believe that Jesus Christ had not been the son of God and had only human nature, not divine; With this, he returned to adopting a position of the first centuries of Christianity, which the Catholic Church had condemned as heretical in the IV century. and that all the Protestants also rejected with scandal. Servetus went to study at the French universities and also at the one in Paris, where he met Calvino. There Calvino began to accumulate a deep hatred for that Spanish humanist and doctor, whom he considered a dangerous heretic. Calvin had written an Institutio religionis Christianae / Institution of the Christian Religion (1536) which Servetus read and annotated with criticisms of various passages that angered Calvin.
Because of his opinions, Miguel Servet had to escape from Paris, changed his name and settled as a doctor in Vienne de Isère, a town near the border with Switzerland; he was successful as a doctor and came to acquire a respectable financial situation; It was in those years that he discovered the pulmonary circulation of blood.
But Servetus continued with his religious concerns and decided to spread his doctrines about Jesus Christ in a book that he had clandestinely printed in a secret printing press.
But, oblivious to the hatred he generated in Calvin, he made the mistake of writing to him in Geneva sending him copies of his work, the Christianismi Restitutio (1553); Calvino denounced him by letter to the French Catholic Inquisition. However, Servetus had friends who protected him and helped hide the authorship of the book from him and the Catholic Inquisition gave up investigating. But Calvino sent the letters that Servetus himself had written to him, and which constituted irrefutable proof that the doctor was the Spanish Miguel Servetus.
The Catholic Inquisition sentenced Servetus to the stake; but the night before the execution his friends helped Servetus to escape. Not knowing the enormous political power that Calvino had acquired in Geneva, he was naive enough to try to take refuge in that city, believing that he would be safe there. In Geneva, Calvin recognized him and got the city authorities to arrest him as a heretic. Calvin wanted him to stand trial and be burned at the stake, but he still did not fully control the city government and Servetus's trial became a showdown between Calvin and the city rulers who opposed him; however, Calvin prevailed and Servetus was sentenced to death at the stake.
The death of Servetus alienated a number of European Protestants who had taken refuge in Geneva from Calvin. These Protestants also had their own religious ideas and felt their lives threatened by Calvin's fanaticism; so they escaped from the city; the most famous of these refugees was Sébastien Châteillon / Sebastián Castellion, who, from abroad, denounced Calvin for the death of Servetus defending religious tolerance and the right of man to have his own opinions when interpreting the Bible in his De haereticis, an sint persequendi (1554), published under a pseudonym; that is why Castellion is considered the father of freedom of thought in Europe. This position was adhered to by the emigrant Spanish Protestants Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera, who had taken refuge in Geneva with the intention of translating the Bible into Spanish, the so-called Bear Bible, printed in Basel in 1569. Casiodoro de Reina, from In fact, he even translated Castellion's work into Spanish.
But the death and trial of Servetus helped Calvino to definitively take over the government of the city and its canton; Calvin's opponents were expelled from the municipal government and some of them were even executed like Servetus. Now all of Geneva obeyed Calvino's orders.
Calvin wanted to make Geneva the religious capital of a new Christianity and force its inhabitants to lead a virtuous and Christian life: all dances were suppressed, all songs that were not church hymns and all shows and theatrical performances. Even the taverns were closed and it was forbidden to make and consume drinks, and the subsequent drunkenness: everyone had to be good Christians, but by force.
All of Geneva became a Calvinist city, dedicated only to work and prayer. But Calvin wanted to extend his Christian community to all of Europe, and Calvinist schools were founded in Geneva for all foreign Protestants visiting the city; these foreigners were to return to their countries of origin and teach Calvinist doctrine there.
The most important of these foreigners was the Scotsman John Knox, who managed to convert all of Scotland to Calvinism; in Scotland Calvinists were called Presbyterians. Scotland was the only country where Calvinism became the official religion, but it also became the majority in Holland and there were important Calvinist minorities in Germany, England and France; in England the Calvinists received the name of Puritans and in France they were given the name of Huguenots.
Apart from Presbyterianism and Puritanism, the Baptist and Congregationalist Churches also come from Calvinism.
The Protestant Reformation in Hungary
The Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary began around 1520 and resulted in the conversion of most Hungarians from Roman Catholicism to a Protestant denomination at the end of the centuryxv. The Kingdom of Hungary, a regional power of Central Europe at the end of the centuryxv, was a multi-ethnic composite monarchy with an important non-Catholic population, predominantly Orthodox Greek.
The reforming Protestant movement initiated by the Augustinian monk Martin Luther soon met in the kingdom of Hungary. After the battle of Mohács in 1526, in which the Ottomans defeated the Hungarians and died King Louis II of Hungary, the Catholic Church suffered a period of weakening in the country, as there were numerous Catholic priests, bishops and archbishops who died in the battle; this left the open field for new religious of lower strata who sympathized with the Protestant Reformation. Many Hungarian nobles, like the Germans and the French, saw in the Reformation the opportunity to get rid of the payment of the tithe and of the supervision of the Catholic Church, in ways that they and their vassals gradually went to Lutheranism.
The Reformation was popular very soon in a part of divided Hungary, in Eastern Hungary (the Principality of Transylvania), where the Hungarian Count Juan Segismundo of Zápolya ruled as an independent though vassal king of the Ottoman Empire, who decided the occupant of the throne and political orientation. It was not in the Royal Hungary—to the west, Catholic, controlled by the Germans, where Fernando I, brother of the Emperor Charles I, had also been crowned as king—or in the Ottoman Hungary (the ejalate of Buddha), the central part in Ottoman power. In Real Hungary Catholicism remained strong and, while Protestant preachers were common, the influence of King Habsburg did not permit its predominance. On the other hand, Catholic priests were rarely seen in Ottoman Hungary; the majority of Christian clerics were Protestants, who then had the protection of the Ottomans. However, the Turks seldom engaged in religious disputes between the two factions, making up for Christians to pay the tribute to the Sultan.
Transylvania and its princes became the representative figures of old Hungary, opposed to the Habsburg dynasty. John Segismundo became Protestantism and began to welcome all the Czech and Germanic philosophers and religious who fled the Empire and the Habsburgs. The strategy of Zápolya and the later princes of Transylvania was to use Protestantism as an instrument against the Catholic Habsburgs, of which they wanted to undo to reunify the divided Hungarian kingdom. Likewise, the new religious movement of John Calvin, known as Calvinism, followed the steps of Lutheranism, and the northeastern region of the Hungarian Kingdom was committed both with this new Christian confession that the city of Debrecen was known at that time as "The Calvinist Rome".
The transilvan princes promoted Protestant schools, becoming more and more popular in cities such as Bratislava, Sopron, Szárlőrinc or Sárvár, as well as in the Saxon settlements in the early transilvano. Later princes such as the Hungarian Baron Esteban Bocskai (1605-1606) and the Hungarian Count Gabriel Bethlen (1613-1629) were strong defenders of Protestantism in Transylvania and Hungary. They catapulted the Hungarians at a cultural, sociopolitical and economic level along with France, the German Empire and England; they led wars against the Habsburgs and even Bethlen participated in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) in favor of the Protestant confederation.
In 1541 the first translation was published to the Hungarian New Testament, the work of the monk John Sylvester. Years later, in 1590, Protestant pastor Gáspár Károli published the first full Bible in Hungarian, known as the Karoli Bible.
One of the most significant Protestant thinkers was Hungarian pastor Ferenc Dávid (1510-1579), who first professed Lutheranism and then Calvinism. Dávid became a great defender of anti-trinitarism, that is, he did not accept the existence of the Holy Trinity; thus introduced unitarism in Transylvania and added a more religious confession to the mosaic of that moment. Religious diversity in the principality reached such levels that the voivoda and antirey Hungarian Juan Segismundo de Zápolya, of Protestant confession, advised by his religious, called the Great Transylvania Assembly and sanctioned the Edict of Turda in 1568. This document argued that all Christian religious denominations were accepted equally. Eastern Hungary would be the first kingdom in the world to recognize the diversity of Christian worship: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unity.
Because of the enmity and constant wars of the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, as the main representatives of Christianity in Central Europe, the Turks often joined the Protestants, instead of the Catholics. Later the Habsburgs introduced in Hungary the Catholic counter-reform, and the hard work of the Jesuits, like Cardinal Pedro Pázmány, achieved the gradual conversion of much of the population to Catholicism (However, Transylvania would remain, in great detail, Protestant to the present time).
- Princes of Transylvania in Reform
John Segismundo Szapolyai as a child, with his mother, the widow queen Isabel Jagellon, giving vassal to Soliman the Magnificent in 1541. Juan Segismundo (r. 1541-1571) was the first prince of Transylvania who turned to Protestantism.
Esteban I Báthory (r. 1571-1586) and future king of Poland and Lithuania (r. 1576-1586), did not disturb religious peace (although it prohibited new reforms) and its aim was to strengthen Catholicism in the Principality of Protestant majority.
Segismundo Báthory (r. 1588-1602), a supporter of Catholics, which made the ambitious young Protestant aristocrats convert to Catholicism during their reign.
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Basic chronology of the Reformation (1454-1648)
 | |||||
| Cat (Catholic) | Lut (Luteranism) | Ang (Anglicanism) | Cal (Calvinism) | Ana (Anabaptism) | |
| - (general matters) | R (Religion-related matters) | ||||
| Date(s) | Development | |
|---|---|---|
| 01454 1454 | - | Johannes Gutenberg publishes the first printed Bible with mobile characters. |
| 01455 1455 | - | Impression of the Bible of Gutenberg |
| 01481-11-10 10 November 1481 | Cat | Spanish inquisition against Jews, Muslims and heretics begins |
| 01483-11-10 10 November 1483 | - | Martin Luther was born in Eisleben (Germany) and was baptized on November 11. |
| 01484-01-01 1 January 1484 | - | Born Ulrico Zuinglio in Wildhaus (Switzerland). |
| 01484 1484 | Cat | A papal bull condemns witchcraft; inquisitors are sent to Germany. |
| 01497-02-16 16 February 1497 | - | Felipe Melanchthon was born. |
| 01497-05-23 23 May 1497 | - | Savonarola is hanged in Florence. |
| 01501 1501 | - | Luther enters the University of Erfurt (receives the Master's degree in Arts in Philosophy, 1505) |
| 01505-07-17 17 July 1505 | - | Luther enters the Augustinian convent of Erfurt (Germany). |
| 01505-04-03 3 April 1505 | - | Luther is ordained a priest in Erfurt Cathedral |
| 01507 1507 | - | Guillaume Briçonnet hosts Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples in Meaux to whom he has frequented since 1505. |
| 01509-07-10 10 July 1509 | - | Born Juan Calvino in Noyon, France. |
| 01512 1512 | - | Luther becomes a Bible teaching professor at Wittenberg University. |
| 01516 1516 | - | Erasmus of Rotterdam publishes Novum Instrumentum, the first Greek New Testament. Ulrich Zwingli meets Erasmus and Froben Printer in Basel. Martin Luther gives a course on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (1515-1516). |
| 01517 1517 | Cat | Pope Leo X proclaims a indulgence to rebuild the Basilica of Saint Peter. |
| 01517-10-31 31 October 1517 | Lut | According to tradition, on October 31, 1517 Luther claps the ninety-five thesis in the portal of the church of the castle of Wittenberg, opposing the sale of indulgences. This date conventionally marks the beginning of the Protestant reform. |
| 01518 1518 | Lut | In Heidelberg Luther exposes the defense of 28 of his 95 thesis in the Heidelberg dispute. |
| 01518 1518 | Lut | Luther is summoned to the Ausgburg Diet, refuses to retract |
| 01519 1519 | Lut | Luther questions papal infallibility. |
| 01519 1519 | Lut | Zuinglio begins to preach in Zurich, the beginning of the Reformation in Switzerland. The city rejects the entrance to the sellers of indulgences. |
| 01520-06-15 15 June 1520 | Cat | Leo X emits the Exsurge Domine bula in which he exhorts Luther to retract 41 of his 95 thesis within sixty days or be excommunicated. |
| 01520 1520 | Lut | Luther publishes his main writings reformers: The Pope of Rome, The call to the Christian nobility of the German nation for the improvement of the Christian order, From the Babylonian captivity of the Church and Christian freedom. |
| 01520-12-10 10 December 1520 | Lut | On the last day for the retraction of his thesis, Luther publicly burns the papal bull and a copy of the canon law. |
| 01520 1520 | Ana | Beginning of the anabaptist movement in Germany. |
| 01521-01-03 3 January 1521 | Lut | Luther is excommunicated by the Bull Decet Romanum Pontificem. |
| 01520 1520 | Lut | The Cenacle of Meaux, an evangelical experience, was founded at the request of the Bishop of Meaux Guillaume Briçonnet for his vicar and friend Jacques Lefèvre d'Etapas; it includes the future reformer Guillaume Farel. Martin Luther's thesis is condemned by the Sorbonne. |
| 01521-04 April 1521 | Lut | Diet of Worms (17-18 April); in the presence of Emperor Charles V, Luther refuses to withdraw from his positions; he pronounces the famous phrase: "Here I am, I cannot otherwise." Carlos V promulgated on 25 May the Edict of Worms to ban Lutheranism, declaring Luther a fugitive and heretic, and it is considered a crime to spread and read his writings (as well as any other written suspect of heresy). On the way back from Worms, the voter Filippo of Saxony mounts a false kidnapping and takes Luther, safe, to the Castle of Wartburg, in the custody of Federico el Sabio. There, Luther translates the New Testament into German (from December 1521 until March 1522). |
| 01521 1521 | Cat | Leo X named Henry VIII of England "Defensor of Faith". |
| 01521 1521 | Lut | Felipe Melanchthon publishes the first Lutheran dogmatic text, the Loci Theologici. |
| 01521 1521 | Ana | Anabaptist Thomas Münzer begins to preach against infant baptism |
| 01521 1521 | Cat | Ignatius of Loyola begins to write his "Spiritual Exercises". |
| 01522 1522 | Lut | Luther returns to Wittenberg, condemns fans and iconoclasts and publishes Luther's Bible, New Testament translation into German (September 21). |
| 01522 1522 | Cat | The University of Alcalá publishes the Complutense Polyglot Bible (Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabic). |
| 01522 1522 | Cat | Carlos V establishes the inquisition in the Netherlands; more than 2000 dead |
| 01522 1522 | Lut | Ulrich Zwingli's publications make him known outside Zurich. |
| 01523 1523 | Lut | Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples publishes the French translation of the New Testament from the Vulgate. He also drafted a Comments sur les Évangiles (Meaux, 1525), which caused him accusations of heresy. Despite harsh criticism of some aspects of Catholicism (such as the celibacy of the priests and the administration of the sacraments) he always remained within the Church, although he had to flee to Strasbourg in the summer of 1525, when the Paris Parliament tried to judge him. |
| 01523 1523 | Lut | Zurich is the first Swiss canton to host the Reformation, thanks to Ulrich Zwingli. |
| 01523-07-01 1 July 1523 | Lut | Enrique Voes and Juan Esch, first Lutheran martyrs, burned at the stake in Antwerp |
| 01523 1523 | Lut | In Zurich, he disputed about preaching according to Scripture, mass and images. |
| 01523 1523 | Lut | The translation of Luther from SalterThat he reboots his classes in Wittenberg. Stop using monk habits in October. Publish, with Juan Walter, Achtliederbuch (book of eight hymns), first Lutheran hymnary. |
| 01524 1524 | Lut | Martin Bucer establishes a reformed cult in Strasbourg (Alsace was not then part of France). |
| 01524 1524 | Lut | The Zurich Council allows the removal of the images of the churches. Zwinglio forbids the Catholic Mass in Zurich. |
| 01524 1524 | Lut | The Protestant German princes meet in Ulm to oppose the Emperor. Tomás Münzer leads the German southern peasants, who rise against the feudal regime. Guillermo Tyndale publishes in Cologne and Worms for not allowing the authorities to do so in England, the first English translation of the New Testament. It is believed that some 6000 copies of the first edition were published (today, there are only two copies of that first edition: one complete (although it lacks a cover) in the British Library; the other, which is missing 71 pages, in the library of St.Paul's Cathedral (no one knows how it got there). More than 18,000 copies were eventually smuggled into England. |
| 01525 1525 | Ana | Jorge Baurock is renamed by Conrad Grebel; it marks the formal beginning of the anabaptist movement. |
| 01525 1525 | Lut | The Twelve Articles of Memmingen express the demands of the German peasants. |
| 01525-05-04 4 May 1525 | Lut | The peasant rebellion in southern Germany is suffocated. Thomas Müntzer and 53 other members of the revolt are executed. |
| 01525-04-12 12 April 1525 | Lut | The Zurich Council abolished the Mass. |
| 01525-05-27 27 May 1525 | Lut | Luther contracts with Catherine de Bora |
| 01526 1526 | Lut | Luther institutes the German Mass on December 25. The anabaptists are established in Moravia. Persecution of the Jews in Hungary |
| 01526 1526 | R | Espira's diet allows German princes to establish religion in their own territories. |
| 01527-05-06 6 May 1527 | - | Sacco de Roma por Carlos V, die four thousand people, the Pope takes refuge in Castel Sant'Angelo. |
| 01527 1527 | Lut | Lutheran Reform in Sweden. The first Protestant university was founded in Marburg |
| 01528 1528 | Ang | Henry VIII explains to the London nobles the reasons for asking for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Melanchton suggests a reform of German education. Reform begins in Scotland, reform is adopted in Bern |
| 01529 1529 | - | After the victory in the battle of Mohacs (29 August), the Ottomans invaded Austria and sitian Vienna, but must lift the site. |
| 01529 1529 | Lut | Basel goes to the Reformation. They follow him Glaris, Berne, Beel, Schaffhouse and St. Gallen. The Republic of Mulhouse adopted the reform inspired by Ulrich Zwingli (later by Jean Calvin) as the only doctrine of the State. |
| 01529-02-21 21 February 1529 | Lut | The Second Diet of Espira puts an end to the tolerance of Lutherans in Catholic territories. A Lutheran minority, six princes and fourteen cities, protest against the decision, giving rise to the term "protestant", that the Romanists apply to all those who agree with Luther |
| 01529-10 October 1529 | Lut | From 1 to 4 October; the colloquiums of Marburg between Luther and Zuinglio mark the division between German and Swiss on the theme of the Last Supper and the Eucharist. The main figures of Protestantism participated. Luther, Brenz, Osiander and Melanchton opposed Zuinglio and Ecolampadio, while Bucero, Hedio and Capito tried to reconcile both parties. |
| 01530 1530 | Cat | Johann Eck writes Four hundred and four articles for the next Diet of Augsburg as aid for Carlos V, compiling what he considered 404 hertic propositions of the writings of the reformers. |
| 01530-06-25 25 June 1530 | Lut | In the Diet of Augsburg, the Confessions of Augsburg, written by the Lutheran theologian Philipp Melanchthon as an attempt to reconciliation, the first exhibition of the Lutheran Christian faith presented to the Emperor Charles V and the founding text of Lutheranism, were signed. |
| 01530 1530 | Lut | Lutheran reform in Denmark. |
| 01530 1530 | Lut | Meaux becomes the first Protestant parish organized in France. |
| 01531-02-27 27 February 1531 | Lut | It forms an alliance of Protestant princes called the Esmalcalda League to confront the Emperor and his allies. |
| 01531 1531 | Ang | Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Anglican Church. |
| 01531 1531 | Lut | The Zurich Bible translated by Zwingli is published by Christian Froschauer. |
| 01531 1531 | - | First complete edition of the works of Aristotle, by Erasmus. The Inquisition is established in Portugal. |
| 01531-10-11 11 October 1531 | Lut | The Swiss Catholic cantons attack the Protestant Canton of Zurich and beat them. Zuinglio dies in the battle of Kappel. |
| 01531-11-24 24 November 1531 | Lut | Die Juan Ecolampadio. |
| 01532 1532 | Lut | In Chanforan Synod (in the Valdense Valleys of Piedmont), the Valdenses adhere to the Reformation. |
| 01532 1532 | Ang | The English clergy accepts the King as its head. |
| 01532 1532 | Cal | John Calvin, converted into 1531, began preaching in Paris. |
| 01532-05 May 1532 | R | Nurenberg's religious peace is signed between the Catholic and Protestant sides confronted in Germany. It was the result of the Imperial Diet held in Regensburg in the same year, in order to “conserve peace and public harmony in the Empire”. Emperor Charles V had to seek understanding with the Lutheran princes of the Enamel league to gain their support against the Turks. The key point of peace or truce was the commitment that no one would be condemned for his religious beliefs until the celebration of a Council. |
| 01533-05 May 1533 | Ang | On May 23, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage of Henry and Catherine without legal force. Five days later, on May 28, Cranmer declared that the marriage of Enrique and Ana Bolena was authentic and valid; the pope excommunicates the king on July 11. |
| 01533 1533 | Cal | Address by Nicolas Cop, Rector of the Sorbonne, written by Calvin. Scan it. Calvin's exil. |
| 01534-11 November 1534 | Ang | The English Parliament promulgates in November 1534 the Act of Supremacy that frees the English Church from any subordination to the papacy. An Anglican Church is born, whose supreme leader is King Henry VIII. |
| 01534 1534 | Lut | The full German translation of Martin Luther's Bible was published by Hans Lufft; about 1547, Lufft had printed more than 100,000 copies of it. |
| 01534 1534 | Ana | The Anabaptists establish an independent theocratic state in Münster, Westphalia, which understand as the New Jerusalem. |
| 01534-08-15 15 August 1534 | Cat | Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus. |
| 01534-10-18 18 October 1534 | R | The pasquin affairs: it was the end of Francisco I's conciliation policies, which had tried to protect the Protestants from the most extreme measures in the Paris Parliament, and also generated the public supplications of Felipe Melanchthon inviting moderation. |
| 01535 1535 | Ang | The English clergy abjure the authority of the pope; Thomas Moro is executed (canonized in 1953). The study of canon law in Cambridge is prohibited. |
| 01535 1535 | Ana | Münster capitulates the troops of Hesse, the anabaptists are eradicated and their warlord Leiden tortured and killed. Ursulins are founded by Angela Merici. |
| 01534 1534 | Guillermo Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned in Vilvoorde Castle, where he remained in prison for 16 months. The commission that judged Tyndale was composed of three theologians from the Catholic University of Lovaina, three lovanian canons and three bishops, in addition to other dignitaries. He was condemned for heresy and was suspended from the Catholic priesthood. He was executed by strangulation and then burned in public on October 6, 1536. | |
| 01536 1536 | Cal | Calvin moves to Geneva where the Reformation has just been approved and publishes there the first edition of Institution of the Christian religionNot to mention predestination. |
| 01536 1536 | Cal | Guillaume Farel, reformer of Neuchâtel, meets with Calvin, returning from Ferrara, where he had remained under the protection of Renata de France, and holds him in Geneva to lead the Reformation. |
| 01536 1536 | Ang | Muere Catalina de Aragón, Ana Bolena is executed, Enrique VIII takes Jane Seymour by wife. The authority of the Pope in England is declared null and void by the English Parliament. In England, 376 religious houses are dissolved by royal decree. Henry VIII allows the use of the English Bible in England. |
| 01536 1536 | Lut | Norway becomes Lutheran territory. |
| 01536 1536 | Ana | Menno Simons assumes the leadership of the Anabaptists |
| 01536 1536 | - | Die Erasmus of Rotterdam. |
| 01537 1537 | Ang | Muere Jane Seymour after giving birth to Eduardo, future Eduardo VII. Pope Paul III states that the American Indians have the right to freedom and property |
| 01538 1538 | Ang | Destruction of relics and sanctuaries in southern England |
| 01538 1538 | Cal | Calvin is banished from Geneva by decision of the City Council and established in Strasbourg, where he collaborates with Martin Bucer and teaches at the newly created Humanist College. |
| 01539 1539 | Cat | The Society of Jesus, constituted in 1534, receives papal approval. The Catholic counter-reform begins with strength. |
| 01539 1539 | Ang | Henry VIII publishes the Great Bible in English (it follows in much the 1525 Tyndale translation). |
| 01539 1539 | Lut | The Electorate of Saxony and the Brandenburg electorate formally become Lutheran territories |
| 01540 1540 | Ang | Henry VIII marries Ana de Cleves, and then marriage is annulled; Henry espouses his fifth wife, Catalina Howard. Martirio de Roberto Barnes, Lutheran confessor, on July 30th. |
| 01541 1541 | Ang | Henry VIII is appointed king of Ireland and head of the Irish church. Solián I conquered Buddha and annexed Hungary. Juan Knox is leading Calvinist reform in Scotland (in 1547 he will be banished and will return in 1560) |
| 01541 1541 | Cal | They call Calvin back to Geneva, where he establishes a Calvinist republic in the city, which he calls the “City of God”. |
| 01541 1541 | Lut | Regensburg colloquiums, whose failure marks the definitive division between the Reformation and the Roman Church. |
| 01542 1542 | Cat | Pope Paul III with the Bull Licet ab initio institutes the Inquisition in Rome. |
| 01542 1542 | Ang | Queen Catherine Howard is executed. |
| 01543 1543 | Ang | Henry VIII married Catherine Parr his sixth and last wife. Pope Paul III publishes Index bookrum prohibitorum |
| 01543 1543 | Cal | The duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg becomes a Calvinist. |
| 01542 1542 | Lut | Bernardino Ochino and Pietro Martire Vermigli, this last prior of the monastery of Saint Frediano in Lucca, escape from Italy. Until 1590, several families of notable local families who had joined the Reformation fled from Lucca to Geneva. Among them, the Diodat, the Zanchi, the Burlamacchi, and the Turretini. |
| 01544 1544 | Cat | Pope Paul III convenes a general council to be held in Trento the following year. |
| 01544-10-05 5 October 1544 | Lut | Luther dedicates the chapel of the castle of Torgau, the first church built to be Lutheran. |
| 01544 1544 | Lut | The Kingdom of Sweden declares Lutheranism as an official religion. (In 1526 the first translation of the New Testament to Swedish had been published. Between 1540 and 1541 the entire Bible was published in Swedish, called the Bible of Gustavo Vasa, based on the German translation that Martin Luther had done in 1534. The final break between Sweden and Rome came with the abolition of canon law in Sweden in 1536, following the Upsala Synod. The entire Swedish Church then declared itself independent of Rome.) |
| 01545 1545 | R | Merindol Massacre, in which 3000 Vaudois du Luberon dies, triggers shock and real research. |
| 01545-12-13 13 December 1545 | Cat | The Council of Trent begins (it is suspended in 1547, restarted in 1551, suspended again in 1552, restarted in 1562 and ended in December 1563) |
| 01546-02-18 18 February 1546 | Lut | Die Luther in Eisleben. His last sermon was February 14. He was buried in the church of Wittenberg Castle on February 22. |
| 01546 1546 | Lut | The Electorate of the Palatinate becomes Lutheran territory. |
| 01546 1546 | - | Turks occupy Moldova. |
| 01546-04-24 24 April 1546 | - | Carlos V defeats the Enamel League at the Battle of Mühlberg. Juan Federico the Magnanimous is taken captive in battle and in the Capitulation of Wittenberg renounced his dignity as an elector prince and the territories of the Electorate of Saxony, including the city of Wittenberg, to save the city and to save his life and that of his wife and children. He was exiled to Weimar |
| 01547 1547 | Cat | Inquisition in France |
| 01548-05-15 15 May 1548 | R | Interim of Augsburg, imperial decree promulgated in the Diet of Augsburg by Emperor Charles V, who had just won in the war of Esmalcalda. Although Protestants were ordained to adopt the traditional beliefs and practices of Catholicism, including the seven sacraments, marriage and laity were allowed to the priests, the so-called chalice of the laity, or communion in the two species (pan and wine). These concessions allow the Interim to be seen as the first significant step in the process that led to the political and religious legitimation of Protestantism as an alternative to Catholicism, and which was definitively made in the Passau Peace of 1552 and the Peace of Augsburg of 1555. |
| 01548-04-24 24 April 1548 | Lut | The dispute by the Adiaphorists, moderate Lutherans who adhered to the opinions of Melanchthon, whose peaceful character did not accommodate the violent character of Luther. |
| 01548 1548 | Cat | The "Spiritual Exercises" of Ignacio de Loyola are published; Francisco Javier founded a mission in Japan |
| 01549 1549 | Ang | First Book of Plegarias ("Prayer Book") Anglican. |
| 01549 1549 | Pier Paolo Vergerio, bishop of Capodistria, retired the Grigiones to escape an inquisitive process with the accusation of Protestant heresy. | |
| 01550 1550 | Cal | Calvin writes Consensus Tugurinus to merge the visions of Zwinglio and Calvinists about the Holy Supper |
| 01550 1550 | R | Charles V orders the death penalty for all heresies in the Holy Roman Empire. |
| 01552 1552 | Ang | Second Book of Plegarias ("Prayer Book") Anglican |
| 01552-04-05 5 April 1552 | - | Mauricio faces Carlos V who is forced to give legal rights to the Lutherans by signing the Passau Peace on August 2. |
| 01552 1552 | Cal | Juan Calvino publishes De la prédestination éternelle de Dieu. |
| 01552-04-05 5 April 1552 | Lut | Joachim Westphal publishes a treaty widely exposing Calvinist mistakes about Holy Communion |
| 01553 1553 | Condemns for heresy and execution of the anti-trinitarian Miguel Servet in Geneva. | |
| 01553 1553 | Cat | Mary Tudor begins her reign; she tries to return to England to Catholicism |
| 01555-09-25 25 September 1555 | - | Peace of Augsburg. The territorial divisions existing in the Holy Roman Empire are recognized with the principle "Cuius regio, eius religio". It grants equal rights to Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire. |
| 01555 1555 | R | It fails Worms Colloquium (11 September-8 October), to unite Lutherans (represented by Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz and Erhard Schnepf) and Catholics (by Michael Helding, John Gropper and Peter Canisius). First they discussed the relationship between the Bible and tradition. When Canisio referred to the differences between the same Protestants in his doctrine of original sin and justification, which they could not overcome, the meeting dissolved. Other participants present at the colloquium were Julius von Pflug, Kaspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig, Johannes Pistorius, François Hotman, Maximilian Mörlin and Theodore Beza. |
| 01561-06-05 5 June 1561 | Cal | Isabel I becomes Queen of England; restores the reforming movement through Calvinism. |
| 01559 1559 | Ang | Theologian John Knox, after spending a few years in exile in Geneva, returns to Scotland to lead the Reformation, and institutes the Presbyterian Church (Calvinist). |
| 01560-04-19 19 April 1560 | - | Die Felipe Melanchton. |
| 01561 1561 | R | At the Naumburg conference, we try to unite the Lutherans; the efforts fail when the second edition of the Confessions of Augsburg and the Apology |
| 01561 1561 | R | Poissy colloquium, an attempt to conciliate between Catholic and Protestant French theologians; the symposium fails in the subject of transubstantiation. |
| 01561-06-05 5 June 1561 | R | With the Cavour Agreements, the Savoys guarantee the Waldenses the opportunity to publicly profess their faith in the territories of their valleys. |
| 01561 1561 | R | Between May and June, the massacre of the Valdenses of Calabria takes place in the current municipality of Guardia Piemontese. |
| 01561 1561 | Cal | Juan Calvino publishes The Congregation for the Eternal Election |
| 01562 1562 | R | [[Masacre de WassyVAMasacre de una reunión de hugonotes en Wassy]]. The wars of religion of France, which will spread to the Edict of Nantes (1598). |
| 01563 1563 | Cat | It ends the Council of Trent, solving the Roman doctrine and establishing the Roman Catholic Church. The Council forces to paint vestments on the naked figures of The final judgment of Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel. |
| 01563 1563 | Lut | The Catechism of Heidelberg, widely approved by the Reformed Churches, is approved |
| 01563 1563 | Ang | Under the reign of Elizabeth I of England, the "39 Articles of Religion" are published, a fundamental confession of faith of the Anglican Church. |
| 01564-05-27 27 May 1564 | Cal | Juan Calvino dies in Geneva. |
| 01564 1564 | Lut | The Second Helvetic Confession of Enrique Bullinger is adopted by several Reformed Churches |
| 01564 1564 | - | The death sentence applied to Andrés Vesalio for dissecting human bodies is commuted to him in exchange for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. |
| 01564-06-30 30 June 1564 | Cat | Pope Pius IV approved the decrees of the Council of Trent concluded the previous year. |
| 01565-05-14 14 May 1565 | - | Nikolaus von Amsdorf dies in Eisenach. |
| 01565 1565 | Lut | Martin Chemnitz and Jacobo Andreae begin to work for the unity of the Lutheran territories and cities |
| 01569 1569 | Lut | The Spanish Protestant Casiodoro de Reina translates the Bible into Spanish, the call Bear Bible (Basilea, 1569). |
| 01570 1570 | Cat | Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England. |
| 01571 1571 | Cal | Them Thirty-nine articles they serve to define the doctrine of the Church of England regarding its relation to Calvinist doctrine and Catholic practice: they establish a more Calvinist form. |
| 01572-08-24 24 August 1572 | R | During the Fourth War of Religion, the massacre of 20 000 hugonotes on the night of San Bartolomé (it extends from 24 August to 17 September). |
| 01571 1571 | R | The Confutation of the Augsburg Confession is finally published |
| 01571 1571 | R | The Concord of Suabia is published |
| 01571 1571 | Lut | Chemnitz publica The two natures in Christ |
| 01592 1592 | Cal | The Articles Saxon of Visitation are published; Calvinism is exterminated in Saxony |
| 01593 1593 | Lut | The Upsala Diet in Sweden confirms the Lutheran doctrine |
| 01598-04-13 13 April 1598 | R | The French monarch Henry IV promulgates the Edict of Nantes, which puts an end to the wars of religion in France, stating that the religion of the State is Catholicism and, at the same time, granting a series of rights to the Hugonotes, including freedom of worship (with the exception of Paris and some other cities). |
| 01598-04-13 13 April 1598 | - | Philip II died, a great champion of Roman Catholicism. |
| 01593-02-17 17 February 1593 | - | Giordano Bruno is burned in the bonfire for holding the astronomical theory of Copernicus. |
| 01648-10-24 24 October 1648 | - | With the peace of Westphalia the wars of religion in Europe are forever concluded; the war of the Thirty Years in Germany and the war of the Eighty Years between Spain and the Netherlands cease. The Pope loses his temporary power over the kings of Europe, who now preside over nation-states. Definitely discredited ceasing and Universitas Christiana of Carlos V. |
Later anti-reform measures
The French monarch Louis XIV tried to persuade the Huguenots (more than less violently) to convert to Catholicism from 1681 with the so-called dragonades, and finally revoked the Edict of Nantes completely in 1685 with another, the Edict of Fontainebleau, which abolished all the rights of Protestants in the kingdom and dissolved all its colleges and universities at Sedan and Saumur. Under this duress, only a few Protestants converted to Catholicism; others practiced their beliefs in secret as crypto-protestants, the contemptuously called Nicodemites; others fled the country to Protestant lands, such as Geneva (thus, for example, the ancestors of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), the Netherlands, Great Britain or the states of Germany. Or they opted for a guerrilla fight, called the camisardos. Louis XV, from 1715 to 1774, carried out a new persecution of the Huguenots.
In Great Britain, the Law of Tolerance or Toleration Act (May 24, 1689) granted religious freedom to Catholics and Protestants, freedom of public worship, the right to open schools and access to all public functions, but it restricted all those liberties, especially to Catholics, called recusants. It is called the "Law of Tolerance" and not of religious freedom, since in the first instance Great Britain had (and has) an official religion, Anglicanism. It tolerates certain Protestant sects that do not absolutely agree with all the precepts of that religion (the so-called dissenters and Anglican non-conformists), but this tolerance was not used to apply to recusant Catholics (for example, the Catholic poet recusant Alexander Pope, who could not have been trained in a Catholic school, but privately) so in fact marginalizes a certain cult and does not establish full religious freedom, but, compared to the French of his time, it seemed true to the deist Voltaire in his English Letters (1733).
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