AP European History

Barron’s

The Reformation

The Spread of Protestantism

1529

The Diet of Speyer refused to recognize the right of the German princes to determine the religion of their subjects.

1531

The League of Schmalkalden was formed by newly Protestant princes to defend themselves against the emperor. Charles V appealed to the Pope to call a church council that could compromise with the Lutherans and regain their allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope, fearing the papacy’s loss of power, refused and lost a potential opportunity to reunite Western Christendom.

1530s

The Reformation spread beyond Germany.

1531

In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), who established Protestantism in Switzerland, was killed in a nationwide religious civil war. Although his followers accepted most of Luther’ s reforms, they argued that God’s presence during communion is only symbolic. The Peace of Cappel allowed each Swiss canton to determine its own religion.

1534

In England, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) and his successors the head of the Anglican Church and its clergy.

• • In 1521, when Luther was outlawed by the Holy Roman Empire, Henry VIII had been awarded the title “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X for Henry’s tract “Defense of the Seven Sacraments.”
• • By 1529, Parliament, partly because of Henry’s influence, declared the English Church independent of Rome.
  1. Cut off revenues to the papacy
  2. Henry, eager to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, had been denied an annulment for political reasons.
• • Catherine was the aunt of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
  1. Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, was granted a divorce by him, and was excommunicated by the Pope.

1534-1539

The English Parliament abolished Roman Catholic monasteries and nunneries, confiscated their lands, and redistributed them to nobles and gentry who supported the newly formed Anglican Church.

1536

In Switzerland, John Calvin (1509-1564) published his Institutes of the Christian Religion in the Swiss city of Basel. Like Zwingli, he accepted most of Luther’s ideas but differed on the role of the state in church affairs.

• Predestination Calvin argued (from an idea of St. Augustine [354-430)) that since God knows even before birth whether a person is saved or damned, there is nothing anyone can do to win salvation. The Elect or Saints are a select few saved only by God’s love from corrupt humanity and given indications of their status by conversion (a mystical encounter with God) or by material prosperity. The latter gave rise to the Puritan or Protestant Ethic, an incentive to avoid poverty as a sign of damnation, and served to justify the rise of capitalism.
• Church government Calvin replaced the Catholic hierarchy with a democratic system whereby each individual congregation elected its minister and governed its policies. He disagreed with Luther’s claim that the church should be subordinate to the state, and argued that it should actually be a moral force in the affairs of secular government. This stand encouraged theocracy, whereby Calvinism became the official religion and intolerant of dissent not only in parts of Switzerland but later in England and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America.

1539

In England, Parliament approved the Statute of the Six Articles.

• • The seven sacraments were upheld.
• • Catholic theology was maintained against the tenets of both Lutheranism and Calvinism.
• • The authority of the monarch replaced the authority of the pope.

Despite attempts by Mary I of England (1516-1558, Henry VIII’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon) to reinstitute Catholicism, and the Puritan Revolution of the following century, the Six Articles helped define the Anglican Church through modern times.

1540s

Calvinism spread: in Scotland the Presbyterian Church and in France the Huguenots were emerging based upon the ideas of Calvin as his religion spread through the wealthy merchant elite throughout northern Europe. The Counter-Reformation began.

1541

1. Calvin set up a model theocracy in the Swiss city of Geneva.
2. The Scottish Calvinists (Presbyterians) established a national church.
3. The French Calvinists (Huguenots) made dramatic gains but were brutally suppressed by the Catholic majority.
4. The English Calvinists (Puritans and Pilgrims – a separatist minority) failed in their revolution in the 1600s but established a colony in New England.

1555

The Peace of Augsburg, after over two decades of religious strife, allowed the German princes to choose the religion of their subjects, although the choice was limited to either Lutheranism or Catholicism. Cuius regio, eius religio: “whose the region, his the religion.”

Results of the Protestant Reformation

1. Northern Europe (Scandinavia, England, much of Germany, parts of France, Switzerland, Scotland) adopted Protestantism.
2. The unity of Western Christianity was shattered.
3. Religious wars broke out in Europe for well over a century.
4. The Protestant spirit of individualism encouraged democracy, science, and capitalism.
5. Protestantism, specifically Lutheranism, justified nationalism by making the church subordinate to the state in all but theological matters.