THE SPREAD OF PROTESTANTISM
As the Reformation spread, different forms of Protestantism emerged in Europe.
Calvinism replaced Lutheranism as the most important and dynamic form of
Protestantism. In England, King Henry VIII created a national church, the Church of
England. The Anabaptists believed in a complete separation of church and state. The
Catholic Church underwent a revitalization under the direction of Pope Paul III.
Divisions in Protestantism
The Peace of Augsburg meant that Christian unity was forever lost. Even before
the peace, however, division had appeared in Protestantism. One of these new groups
appeared in Switzerland.
Zwinglian Reformation
Ulrich Zwingli was a priest in Zürich. The city council of Zürich, strongly
influenced by Zwingli, began to introduce religious reforms. Relics and images were
abolished. All paintings and decorations were removed from the churches and
replaced by whitewashed walls. A new church service consisting of Scripture reading,
prayer, and sermons replaced the Catholic mass. As his movement began to spread
to other cities in Switzerland, Zwingli sought an alliance with Martin Luther and the
German reformers. Both the German and Swiss reformers realized the need for unity
to defend themselves against Catholic authorities, but they were unable to agree on
certain Christian rites. In October 1531 war broke out between the Protestant and
Catholic states in Switzerland. Zürich’s army was routed, and Zwingli was found
wounded on the battlefield. His enemies killed him, cut up his body, and burned the
pieces, scattering the ashes. The leadership of Protestantism in Switzerland now
passed to John Calvin.
Calvin and Calvinism
John Calvin was educated in his native France. After his conversion to
Protestantism, however, he was forced to flee Catholic France for the safety of
Switzerland. In 1536 he published the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a summary
of Protestant thought. This work, which eventually became known as his masterpiece,
immediately gave Calvin a reputation as one of the new leaders of Protestantism. On
most important doctrines, Calvin stood very close to Luther. He, too, believed in the
doctrine of justification by faith alone to explain how humans achieved salvation.
However, Calvin also placed much emphasis on the all-powerful nature of God—what
Calvin called the “power, grace, and glory of God.” Calvin’s emphasis on the all-
powerful nature of God led him to other ideas. One of these ideas was predestination.
This “eternal decree,” as Calvin called it, meant that God had determined in advance
who would be saved and who would be damned. The belief in predestination gave
later Calvinists the firm conviction that they were doing God’s work on Earth. This
conviction, in turn, made them determined to spread their faith to other people.
Calvinism became a dynamic and activist faith.
In 1536 Calvin began working to reform the city of Geneva. He created a church
government that used both clergy and laity in the service of the church. The Consistory,
a special court for enforcing moral discipline, oversaw the moral life and doctrinal purity
of Genevans. It could punish those who deviated from the church’s teachings and
moral principles. Citizens in Geneva were punished for such “crimes” as dancing,
singing obscene songs, drunkenness, swearing, and playing cards. Geneva became
a powerful center of Protestantism. Missionaries trained in Geneva were sent to all
parts of Europe. Calvinism became established in France, the Netherlands, Scotland,
and central and eastern Europe. By the mid-sixteenth century, Calvinism had replaced
Lutheranism as the most important and dynamic form of Protestantism. Calvin’s
Geneva stood as the fortress of the Protestant Reformation.
Reformation in England
The English Reformation was rooted in politics, not religion. King Henry VIII
wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had a daughter,
Mary, but no son. Since he needed a male heir, Henry wanted to marry Anne Boleyn.
Impatient with the pope’s unwillingness to annul (declare invalid) his marriage to
Catherine, Henry turned to England’s own church courts.
The Break from Rome
As the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the highest church court in England,
Thomas Cranmer ruled in May 1533 that the king’s marriage to Catherine was “null
and absolutely void.” At the beginning of June, Anne was crowned queen. Three
months later a child was born. Much to the king’s disappointment, the baby was a girl.
She would later become Queen Elizabeth I. In 1534, at Henry’s request, Parliament
moved to finalize the break of the Catholic Church in England with the pope in Rome.
The Act of Supremacy of 1534 declared that the king was “the only supreme head on
earth of the [new] Church of England.” This position gave the king control over religious
doctrine, clerical appointments, and discipline. Thomas More, a Christian humanist
and devout Catholic, opposed the king’s action and was beheaded. Henry used his
new powers to dissolve the monasteries and sell their land and possessions to wealthy
landowners and merchants. The king received a great boost to his treasury and a
group of supporters who now had a stake in the new order. In matters of doctrine,
however, Henry remained close to Catholic teachings.
When Henry died in 1547, he was succeeded by Edward VI, his nine-year-old
son by his third wife. During Edward’s reign, church officials who favored Protestant
doctrines moved the Church of England, or the Anglican Church, in a Protestant
direction. New acts of Parliament gave the clergy the right to marry and created a new
Protestant church service. Before he turned 16, Edward died of tuberculosis.
“Bloody Mary”
The rapid changes during Edward’s reign aroused opposition. When Mary,
Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, came to the throne in 1553, England was
ready for a reaction. Mary was a Catholic who wanted to restore England to Roman
Catholicism. However, her efforts had the opposite effect. Among other actions, she
had more than 300 Protestants burned as heretics, earning her the nickname “Bloody
Mary.” As a result of her policies, England was even more Protestant by the end of
Mary’s reign than it had been at the beginning.
Anabaptists
Reformers such as Luther had allowed the state to play an important, if not
dominant, role in church affairs. However, some people strongly disliked giving such
power to the state. These were radicals known as the Anabaptists. To Anabaptists, the
true Christian church was a voluntary community of adult believers who had
undergone spiritual rebirth and had then been baptized. This belief in adult baptism
separated Anabaptists from Catholics and Protestants, who baptized infants.
Anabaptists also believed in following the practices and the spirit of early Christianity.
They considered all believers to be equal, a belief they based on the accounts of early
Christian communities in the New Testament. Each Anabaptist church chose its own
minister, or spiritual leader. Because all Christians were considered priests, any
member of the community was eligible to be a minister (though women were often
excluded).
Finally, most Anabaptists believed in the complete separation of church and
state. Not only was government to be kept out of the realm of religion, it was not even
supposed to have any political authority over real Christians. Anabaptists refused to
hold political office or bear arms, because many took literally the biblical
commandment “Thou shall not kill.” Their political beliefs, as much as their religious
beliefs, caused the Anabaptists to be regarded as dangerous radicals who threatened
the very fabric of sixteenth-century society. Indeed, the chief thing other Protestants
and Catholics could agree on was the need to persecute Anabaptists.
Reformation and Society
During the political and religious turmoil of the Reformation, the lives of most
women and Jewish people did not improve. Women were still subservient, and
antisemitism continued.
Women and Family
The Protestants developed a new view of the family. Both monasticism and the
requirement of celibacy for the clergy had been abolished. The family could now be
placed at the center of life, and the “mutual love between man and wife” could be
extolled. Were idea and reality the same, however? More often, reality reflected the
traditional roles of husband as the ruler and wife as the obedient servant. Luther stated
it clearly: “The rule remains with the husband, and the wife is compelled to obey him
by God’s command.” Obedience was not a woman’s only role. Her other important
duty was to bear children, which both Calvin and Luther saw as part of the divine plan.
Anti-Semitism
During the Reformation, anti-Semitism remained common in northern Europe.
Martin Luther expected Jews to convert to Lutheranism. When they resisted, Luther
wrote that Jewish synagogues and houses should be destroyed. In the Papal States,
Jews who would not convert to Christianity were segregated into ghettos.
Catholic Reformation
The Catholic Church also had a revitalization in the sixteenth century, giving it
new strength and enabling it to regain much that it had lost to the Protestant
Reformation. Three chief pillars—the Jesuits, reform of the papacy, and the Council of
Trent—supported the Catholic Reformation. A Spanish nobleman, Ignatius of Loyola,
founded the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits. Loyola‘s small group of followers
was recognized as a religious order by Pope Paul III in 1540. All Jesuits took a special
vow of absolute obedience to the pope, making them an important instrument for papal
policy. Jesuits used education to spread their message. Jesuit missionaries were very
successful in restoring Catholicism to parts of Germany and eastern Europe and in
spreading it to other parts of the world. Reform of the papacy was another important
factor in the Catholic Reformation. Participating in dubious financial transactions and
Italian political and military affairs, the Renaissance popes had created many sources
of corruption. It took the jolt of the Protestant Reformation to bring about serious
reform.
Pope Paul III perceived the need for change. He took the bold step of appointing
a Reform Commission in 1537 to determine the Church’s ills. The commission blamed
the Church’s problems on the popes’ corrupt policies. Paul III also began the Council
of Trent, another pillar of the Catholic Reformation. Beginning in March 1545, a group
of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and theologians met off and on for 18 years
in the city of Trent, on the border between Germany and Italy. The final decrees of the
Council of Trent reaffirmed traditional Catholic teachings in opposition to Protestant
beliefs. Both faith and good works were declared necessary for salvation. The seven
sacraments, the Catholic view of the Eucharist, and clerical celibacy were all upheld.
Belief in purgatory and in the use of indulgences was strengthened, although the
selling of indulgences was forbidden. The Roman Catholic Church now possessed a
clear body of doctrine and was unified under the pope’s supreme leadership. Catholics
were as well prepared as Calvinists to do battle for their faith.
