The Reformation

from 1517

The splintering of Western Christendom

What began as an academic protest by a German friar against the sale of indulgences became, with the help of the printing press and of princes who saw their advantage, a permanent division of western Christianity. Within forty years much of northern Europe had left Rome, and the Catholic Church had reinvented itself in answer.

How to spot them

▸1517 onwards: a protest against indulgences that ends by dividing western Christianity
▸Quiz clue: 'Wittenberg', 'ninety-five theses', 'Diet of Worms', 'sola fide', 'cuius regio'
▸Made possible by movable type: pamphlets and vernacular Bibles in tens of thousands of copies
▸Answered by the Council of Trent and the Jesuits

What happened

Ninety-five theses said to have been nailed to a castle church door in Wittenberg (31 October 1517)

Written in Latin and aimed at scholars; the nailing itself may be a later embellishment

Johann Tetzel's jingle about a coin in the coffer and a soul springing from purgatory

The indulgence campaign, partly funding the rebuilding of St Peter's in Rome

'Here I stand, I can do no other' — an answer before Charles V at an imperial diet (1521)

The famous words are probably a later addition to the record

A New Testament translated into German in eleven weeks at the Wartburg (1522)

Done in hiding after excommunication and outlawry; it shaped the modern German language

The Institutes of the Christian Religion, and a disciplined city-state at Geneva

John Calvin, whose doctrine of predestination spread to France, Scotland and the Netherlands

Zurich, and a bitter split with Luther over the words 'This is my body'

Huldrych Zwingli; the Marburg Colloquy of 1529 failed to reconcile them

'Whose realm, his religion' — the formula agreed at Augsburg in 1555

Cuius regio, eius religio: each prince chose between Lutheranism and Catholicism for his lands

Quick-fire facts

•Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar and professor at the new University of Wittenberg
•His core doctrines are summed up as sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura — faith, grace and scripture alone
•He was excommunicated by the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem in 1521 and outlawed by the Edict of Worms
•Other principal reformers: Zwingli in Zurich, Calvin in Geneva, Knox in Scotland, Cranmer in England
•The German Peasants' War of 1524–25 invoked reform; Luther denounced the rebels ferociously
•'Protestant' comes from the protestatio of reforming princes at the Diet of Speyer in 1529
•England's break was dynastic as much as doctrinal, driven by Henry VIII's annulment and the Act of Supremacy 1534
•The Catholic answer — the Counter-Reformation — ran through the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Jesuits founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, and the Roman Inquisition
•The Peace of Augsburg (1555) made no provision for Calvinists, a gap that helped cause the Thirty Years' War; the Peace of Westphalia (1648) closed it

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Reformation
Diarmaid MacCulloch — Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700