The Reformation: History in an Hour
Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.The Reformation was a long struggle of ideas between the established Catholic Church and the questioning of faith brought about by the Renaissance in Western Europe. Started by Martin Luther in 1517, religious dissidence spread across Europe throughout the sixteenth century, causing wars, migration and disunity. By 1648 Henry VIII’s desire for divorce led him to break with the Catholic Church in Rome and form the Church of England.The Reformation: History in an Hour is a clear and comprehensive look at this long and complex period of religious change. It explains the major causes of the Reformation and the differences between Protestants and Catholics. It will help you understand the significance of the Reformation in European history in just one hour.Know your stuff: Read a concise history of the Protestant Reformation in just one hour.
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THE REFORMATION
History in an Hour
Edward A. Gosselin
History in an Hour is a series of ebooks to help the reader learn the basic facts of a given subject area. Everything you need to know is presented in a straightforward narrative and in chronological order. No embedded links to divert your attention, nor a daunting book of 600 pages with a 35-page introduction. Just straight in, to the point, sixty minutes, done. Then, having absorbed the basics, you may feel inspired to explore further.
Give yourself sixty minutes and see what you can learn …
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Contents
About History in an Hour
Introduction
Origins of the Protestant Reformation
131 Years of the Reformation
The Sacraments, Heaven and Hell
‘The Third Place’: Purgatory
‘Shortening a Stay in Purgatory’
Early Sixteenth-Century Efforts at Reform
Martin Luther
Luther’s Interpretation of St Paul
Renaissance Popes
The Birth of Classical Protestantism
The Diet of Worms
One Man Alone
‘Infallible Donkey’ and ‘Upstart Heretics’
‘Preaching the Gospel Purely’
Zwingli v. Luther on the Eucharist
Zwingli’s Death
The Creation of Sects
John Calvin and his ‘Reformed Church’
Anti-Tolerance of Anti-Trinitarianism
Hunted Heretic
The Spread of Protestantism
The End of Choices: The Territorial Churches
Protestantism on a European Political Basis
The Reformation after 1550
France
The Low Countries
The Protestant Diaspora
How the Protestant Reformation Ended
Appendix 1: Key Players
Appendix 2: Timeline of the Reformation
Copyright
Got Another Hour?
About the Publisher
From the time of St Peter to AD 1521, the Roman Catholic Church was the only ‘official’ Christian church in western Europe. It provided the only means through which a person could expect to have access to God and gain entry into Heaven. The Church, however, was not immune to corruption, and there had been several attempts to rein in Church leaders who were often distracted from their pastoral duties with more earth-bound interests such as the gathering of power and wealth. Yet the one Church remained intact and unchanged in its teachings and doctrines throughout the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and up to the Reformation.
In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther began his feverish quest for salvation and Church reform, and started an evangelical movement which spread beyond the borders of sixteenth-century Germany. This movement is the first of three distinct developments of the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s (and others’) evangelical revolution evolved into personal causes for rulers and monarchs, who sought to impose their religious will upon their subjects, and signified a second phase, the Reformation ‘from above’. During the Reformation’s third, confessional (religious wars) period, in which princes, territories and national churches conducted wars of belief, Protestants migrated to and colonized new settlements, and created their own methods of preserving the faith.
The era of the Protestant Reformation begins in 1517 and, by 1648, becomes fully shaped in Europe as a movement embodying several new independent churches, revolutionized systems of belief and geopolitical changes that affected monarchs and their subjects throughout the region. By the mid-seventeenth century, the original one Church had become several different churches without any hope of reuniting.
Origins of the Protestant Reformation
On 31 October 1517, the 34-year-old German monk, Martin Luther (pictured above c. 1520), posted his condemnation against Roman Catholic theological declarations on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. Luther therein attacked, among other things, a system of Church-sponsored intercession in exchange for money as a means of getting into Heaven. Described by a contemporary as ‘a man of middle stature, with a voice which combined sharpness and softness’, Luther believed in a God who condemns sinful men, without exception, and was consumed by years of self-doubt as to whether he himself would ever get into Heaven.
Martin Luther c.1520, by Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Protestant Reformation, in simple terms, caused a breaking off of many Christians from the original Roman Catholic Church. New churches were formed throughout Europe under the leadership of Luther, Huldreich Zwingli, John Calvin and others. Wars would be fought within and between states over matters of religion, and tens of thousands of Europeans would die in the ensuing conflicts.
Today’s relatively harmonious coexistence among the many Protestant churches and sects as well as between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism belies the hatred that existed between and among them all throughout the sixteenth century.
