The Reformation: History in an Hour. Edward Gosselin A

      THE REFORMATION

      History in an Hour

      Edward A. Gosselin

       About History in an Hour

      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

       Cover

       Title Page

      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

       Introduction

      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

       131 Years of the Reformation

      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.

      Luther’s simple act of nailing his writings to a cathedral door began a change in western Europe of such magnitude that it can only be compared to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. The invention of Gutenberg’s new printing press with movable type (c. 1450) made these two revolutions possible by allowing information and new ideas to spread quickly and far.

       The Sacraments, Heaven and Hell

      Ensuring your