Protestantism originated from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The term Protestant comes from the Protestation at Speyer in 1529, where the nobility protested against enforcement of the Edict of Worms which subjected advocates of Lutheranism to forfeit all of their property. However, the theological underpinnings go back much further, as Protestant theologians of the time cited both Church Fathers and the Apostles to justify their choices and formulations. The earliest origin of Protestantism is controversial; with some Protestants today claiming origin back to people in the early church deemed heretical such as Jovinian and Vigilantius.
Since the 16th century, major factors affecting Protestantism have been the Catholic Counter-Reformation which opposed it successfully especially in France, Spain and Italy. Then came an era of confessionalization followed by Rationalism, Pietism, and the Great Awakenings. Major movements today include evangelicalism, mainline denominations, and Pentecostalism.
Overview
One of the early Reformers was John Wycliffe, an English theologian and early proponent of reform in the 14th century. His followers, known as Lollards, spread throughout England but soon were persecuted by both leaders in the Roman Catholic Church and government officials. Wycliffe influenced Jan Hus, a Czech priest from Prague. After Hus was burned at the stake for heresy, his followers dominated the Kingdom of Bohemia, later spreading to Silesia and Moravia. Some of his followers waged the Hussite Wars, with the Utraquist faction eventually defeating the papal backed forces.
Both Wycliffe and Hus preached against indulgences. Hus wrote his Six Errors, fixed to the door of his church, in which he criticized corruption of the clergy and touched on other topics which under the later Luther became the key to the Reformation. After the Battle of White Mountain, persecuted Hussites established minor churches such as the Unity of the Brethren (and its international branch Moravian Church).
Those early reformers influenced German friar Martin Luther, who spread the Protestant Reformation. Originally, Luther intended to reform the Roman Catholic Church rather than break it up. Reformation in Germany diversified quickly as did the earlier Hussites in Bohemian Crown, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in local languages. Similar to his predecessors, Martin Luther wrote the Ninety-five Theses on the sale of indulgences in 1517. Soon, the Reformed tradition began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli in 1519. The Reformation evolved into a large debate involving theologians throughout most of Europe. The political separation of the Church of England from Rome under Henry VIII brought England alongside this movement. The work and writings of John Calvin helped establish a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. Calvinism within the Reformed tradition separated into specific subgroups like the Continental Reformed, Presbyterianism, Congregationalism and a variety of English Dissenters, including the Puritans. Other important movements that emerged during the Reformation include Anabaptism, Arminianism, the Baptist movement and Unitarianism.
After excommunicating Luther in 1521 with the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, Church leaders together with the Holy Roman Empire condemned his followers in the 1521 Edict of Worms. This was the beginning of the Counter-Reformation. When the Lutherans gave the 1530 Augsburg Confession, the Catholics responded with the Confutatio Augustana. The Lutherans gained provisional tolerance for their faith with the Nuremberg Religious Peace, during which the reformer Phillip Melancthon in turn responded with the 1537 Apology of the Augsburg Confession. Although it was rejected by Charles V, there was no document written in response on the Catholic side, and Luther submitted his 1537 Smalcald Articles for consideration to the German nobility, which he wrote also in the hopes that the impending council would not misrepresent his positions, even if it were just going to condemn them. From 1545 to 1563, Roman Catholic officials met at the Council of Trent, as well as some Protestants, although they were not allowed to vote. The Lutheran response"This monumental work is to this day the classic Protestant answer to Trent." from page three of Martin Chemnitz on the Doctrine of Justification by Jacob A. O. Preus to this council in turn came from Martin Chemnitz, who published the Examination of the Council of Trent from 1565 to 1573.Examen, Volumes I–II: Volume I begins on page 46 of the pdf and Volume II begins on page 311. Examen Volumes III-IV: Volume III begins on page 13 of the pdf and Volume IV begins on page 298. All volumes free on Google Books In order to refute him, Diogo de Payva de Andrada wrote the Defensio Tridentinæ fidei which was considerably shorter and published posthumously in 1578. Lutherans never responded to this work. The Jesuit order was founded at the time of the Council of Trent in order to stop the Reformation, and powerful monarchs like the Habsburgs were also committed to the Counter-Reformation. Many Protestants became crypto-Protestants in areas under Habsburg control.Žalta, Anja. 2004. Protestantizem in bukovništvo med koroškimi Slovenci. Anthropos 36(1/4): 1–23, p. 7.
In the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 swept through Bavaria, Thuringia and Swabia. The Nuremberg Religious Peace was breached at the start of the Schmalkaldic War in 1546. Their loss resulted in the imposition of Counter-Reformational measures during the Augsburg Interim, which were intended to bring them closer to Roman Catholicism, but the terms of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg ended this by allowing rulers to choose the religion of their domains (Latin: Cuius regio, eius religio) as either Catholic or Lutheran. The confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648, leaving the agglomeration severely weakened. France suffered its own religious wars. The Dutch people rebelled in the Eighty Years' War. The War of the Three Kingdoms affected the British Isles.
While the Counter-Reformation on the continent continued until the 19th century, the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarized the Elizabethan Age, although it was not until the Civil War of the 1640s that England underwent religious strife comparable to that which its neighbours had suffered some generations before. Nonconforming Protestants along with the Protestant refugees from continental Europe were the primary founders of the United States of America. In the middle 17th century, Pietism became an important influence in Lutheranism.
The Great Awakenings were periods of rapid and dramatic religious revival in American religious history, from the 1730s to the mid-19th century. As a result, a multitude of diverse Protestant denominations emerged. In the First Great Awakening, John Wesley founded Methodism which in turn sparked evangelicalism. The Second Great Awakening brought Adventism, the Holiness movement and Plymouth Brethren alongside other denominations. The Salvation Army was founded during the Third Great Awakening. Some scholars propose the Fourth Great Awakening took place in the late 20th century. Modernist and liberal streams shaped mainline denominations during the Age of Enlightenment.
In the 20th century, Protestantism was becoming increasingly fragmented with Pentecostalism, Charismatic movement, Neo-charismatic movement, Nondenominational churches, house churches, Neo-orthodoxy, Paleo-orthodoxy, numerous Christian fundamentalist, evangelical, independent, and other groups emerging mainly in the United States and the developing world. In particular, American Protestantism was affected by this phenomenon with both mainline and conservative sides being affected. Beginning in the 1980s, the rapid fragmenting became accompanied by a general secularization of Western society. While all these movements spilled over to Europe to a limited degree, the development of Protestantism in Europe was more dominated by secularization, leading to an increasingly post-Christian Europe.
In the 21st century, Protestantism continues to divide, while simultaneously expanding on a worldwide scale largely due to rising Evangelical Protestant and Pentecostal movements.
Historical maps Europe
World
Origins Protestants generally trace to the 16th century their separation from the Catholic Church. Mainstream Protestantism began with the Magisterial Reformation, so called because it received support from the magistrates (that is, the civil authorities). The Radical Reformation, had no state sponsorship. Older Protestant churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren), Moravian Brethren or the Bohemian Brethren trace their origin to the time of Jan Hus in the early 15th century. As the Hussite movement was led by a majority of Bohemian nobles and recognized for a time by the Basel Compacts, this is considered by some to be the first Magisterial Reformation in Europe. In Germany, a hundred years later, protests against Roman Catholic authorities erupted in many places at once during a time of threatened Islamic Ottoman invasion ¹ which distracted the German princes in particular. To some degree, these protests can be explained by the events of the previous two centuries in Europe and particularly in Bohemia. Earlier in the south of France, where the old influence of the Cathars led to the growing protests against the pope and his authorities, Guillaume Farel (b. 1489) preached reformation as early as 1522 in Dauphiné, where the French Wars of Religion later originated in 1562, also known as Huguenot wars. These also spread later to other parts of Europe.
Roots
In the 9th century Claudius of Turin foreshadowed many Protestant views, and had a fanatical zeal for iconoclasm. Claudius of Turin denied the power of the papacy, and the role of good works in salvation, thus believing in faith alone. Gottschalk of Orbais was another 9th-century theologian, who taught double predestination and grace-oriented views of salvation, mirroring the doctrine of faith alone. Gottschalk was defended by Ratramnus, who denied transubstantiation and whose writings influenced some reformers.
Unrest due to the Avignon Papacy and the Papal Schism in the Roman Catholic Church (1378–1416) sparked wars between princes, uprisings among peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the Church. A new nationalism also challenged the relatively internationalist medieval world. The first of a series of disruptive and new perspectives came from John Wycliffe at Oxford University, then from Jan Hus at the University of Prague (Hus had been influenced by Wycliffe). The Catholic Church officially concluded debate over Hus's teachings at the Council of Constance (1414–1417). The conclave condemned Jan Hus, who was executed by burning in spite of a promise of safe-conduct. At the command of Pope Martin V, Wycliffe's body was exhumed and burned as a heretic twelve years after his burial.
The Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of Churches and Empires. It did not address the national or theological tensions which had been stirred up during the previous century. The council could not prevent schism and the Hussite Wars in Bohemia.