The Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther, heretic and firebrand

At the turn of the 16th century, the Holy Roman Empire was a convoluted mess, a mismatch of hundreds of princes struggling to keep control of their subjects and to make good on their claims to independence. This hodgepodge of little kingdoms and territories were nominally ruled over by the emperor, but the emperor had become more of a figurehead and lacked any real power over the Empire’s princes. Religious devotion ran strong, as the Empire was the ‘crown jewel’ of the Church in the west: religious leaders and the nobility mixed, bishops could control large swathes of territory, and opposition to the Church could be quelled due to the Empire’s lack of central government and the princes themselves wanting independence from the Church. The Empire was thus the Church’s surefire revenue, but the Protestant Reformation changed that—and it all began with a renegade monk named Martin Luther. While reading the Book of Romans, Luther’s eyes were opened to the reality that people didn’t need the Church to be saved. All they needed was to believe in Jesus, trusting him for their salvation and following him rather than the dictates of the Church. These teachings were liberating, and they set off a religious insurrection that lasts up until the present day.

Luther’s revolutionary ideas spread, disseminated by word-of-mouth, broadsides, and pamphlets. Thousands of people were eager to renew their faith in lieu of Luther’s soul-freeing teachings, and in their zeal, many turned to outright destruction of Church property. It wasn’t long before priests were marrying and spearheading efforts to reform the sacraments, and Lutheran congregations sprouted across the Empire. Princes over territories given over to Luther’s teachings used this newfound faith as a weapon: as early as 1522 imperial knights launched a politically-motivated attack on the archbishop of Trier, a Church high-roller, and justified the attack by claiming it to be an attack against the papacy. Though the knights were crushed within a year, they had set a dangerous precedent, and the Church could now claim that Luther’s teachings undermined God-ordained law and order.

The Peasant's Revolt of 1524

It wasn’t long before Lutheranism became a banner over homegrown revolts, and the largest of these became known as The Peasant’s Revolt of 1524. An uprising in Swabia spread like wildfire through the southern and central territories of the Empire, and in 1525 they published twelve demands (only two—the right to pick their pastors and freedom from the yoke of the papacy—were religious in nature; the other ten covered the social injustices that had fueled the fire of the ‘religious’ revolt). All eyes were on Luther—what did he think of the revolt? Though sympathizing with their religious plight, he stood against the violent uprising against the local authorities. His Against the Rapacious and Murdering Peasants exhorted the beleaguered nobility to mercilessly snuff out the revolt and reclaim peace. When the revolutionaries were crushed in battle just a few months later, Luther threw his weight behind the Empire’s political and social order while remaining staunch against the papacy and virulent against Jews. Had Luther not sided with the secular leaders against the peasant’s revolt, his cause may have been extinguished along with him. His siding with the princes wasn’t a move of self-preservation; if anything, it was a boom to his cause and enabled it to survive the revolt and the stain on Lutheranism’s name. Besides, having princes on his side helped: the Church was coming against him with everything they had, treating him as a low-born heretic worthy of trial and death, and only the princes could offer protection.

Many princes who sided with Luther did so from a heart of religious courage and a belief in his teachings, but more often than not their loyalties were political in nature. If a kingdom became predominantly Lutheran (or at least open to new ideas), princes ran the risk of losing control of their kingdoms if they remained true to the papacy. That this risk wasn’t minor is seen in The Peasant’s Revolt; though the revolution failed, no one failed to notice what could have been. Thus some princes aligned with Lutheranism to court peace and curry favor from their subjects. Other princes threw in with Lutheranism for the initial payout: princes could make little fortunes off confiscated ecclesiastical holdings in their domains (though, on the converse, princes loyal to the Church could extort the papacy into paying for their allegiance). Though the Holy Roman emperor Charles V was loyal to the papacy and could strip heretical princes of their titles, the princes aligning with Lutheranism grew. Soon they became a political bloc dangerous to the unity of the Empire, and the Empire ruled that no more religious innovations were to be introduced into her territories. This attempt to stem the spread of Lutheranism irked the Lutherans, and in 1529 they signed a declaration ‘protesting’ the law. It was then that all who embraced religious reforms—whether it be reforms of Luther, or Calvin, or Zwingli, or the butcher next door—became known as “Protestants”; those loyal to the Church, which was led from Rome, became known as “Roman Catholics” (despite the widening fissure’s in western Europe’s spiritual landscape, the Church stuck vehemently to its claim that it was the one true, universal church—i.e. catholic). A year later the Lutheran princes put their weight behind the Augsburg Confession, the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church.  

The Augsburg Confession was just a step too far for Charles V, and he threatened the use of imperial armies to crush the Protestant heresies. The Lutherans responded to this threat by forming a defense league, and throughout the 1530s this alliance whittled away at Charles V’s Empire. Protestant beliefs spread, and more sects popped up. In Switzerland a drama played out between two reformers: John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. Condemned as a heretic by the Church in 1533, Calvin sought exile in Switzerland, and three years later he published a small treatise entitled Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he put forth his teachings (the Institutes as we have them today is a much-expanded version of this original treatise). The treatise helped Calvin’s teachings spread, and Calvinism became the most hotheaded branch of Protestantism in the 16th century. Calvin’s contemporary, Ulrich Zwingli, caught Calvin’s ire when he insisted that the sacraments—such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper—were, at heart, merely symbolic practices. They lacked any real power. He declared that baptism was an outward sign of an inward grace, and thus he ran against all of church history, straight back to the early church fathers, who saw tangible effects in baptism. Though Calvinism to this day has its fierce and vocal supporters, Zwingli’s view on baptism has become standard stock in western evangelical churches (and a lot of Calvinists even lean Zwingli’s way on a number of issues). Another group of reformers also talked a lot about baptism, teaching that baptism should only be administered to adults (up to this time, infant baptism was an everyday occurrence). Adults, they said, could understand baptism whereas infants could not. Their detractors called them ‘Anabaptists,’ or ‘re-baptizers,’ because adult converts would be ‘re-baptized’ in the light of their childhood baptisms being meaningless. Their beliefs have become commonplace in western Protestantism. In England, King Henry VIII broke from the Roman Church and started the Church of England (or ‘Anglican Church’), which looked like a quasi-compromise between Protestant and Catholic teachings.

a religious map of Europe in the late 16th and 17th centuries

Though the varying Protestant sects had their points of disagreement (disagreements which could lead to fistfights in glowering taverns), almost all Protestants found common cause against the Roman Catholics. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the tug-of-war between Protestants and Catholics colors European events. Both camps viewed the other as an enemy to God’s truth and believed they were fighting to promote God’s will. One’s religious slant—Catholic or Protestant—became the ‘identity marker’ of the period, in that people were more devoted to their religious inclinations than to the secular state in which they lived. We mustn’t assume, however, that this ‘devotion’ meant that people were generally more pious than before. Many used religion to justify political feuds, and secular princes continued to live according to ‘the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life.’ Nevertheless many people, especially those lower on the totem pole, rediscovered themselves in Protestant faith and turned their lives in a better direction. It is sad, then, that western Europe became a battleground infused with religious ideology. Before the end of the 17th century, when religious fervors died down and were supplanted by loyalty to one’s state, two major wars became so intertwined with religion that they became known as the ‘Religious Wars’ (though neither, to be honest, was caused by religion). The French Wars of Religion were in reality a civil war between two rival French houses, the Guises and Bourbons; and the Thirty Years War was mostly about determining how far Habsburg dominance would spread.