THE SPREAD OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

1515 Martin Luther reinterprets Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “justification through faith”

Oct 1517

Luther distributes his 95 Theses in Wittenberg

1520 Luther publishes Three Treatises, is excommunicated

1521 Luther faces Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms

1524/25 German Peasants’ War

1529The “Protestation of Speyer” (6 princes + 14 cities embrace the Evangelical Faith at Diet of Speyer)

1533 King Henry VIII founds the Church of England

1546/47Charles V conquers Hesse & Saxony in the War of the League of Schmalkalden, but the new faith endures

1555 Peace of Augsburg: “He who reigns, his religion” (only applies to Catholics & Lutherans)

“Anabaptists” rejected all existing churches by rejecting infant baptism (an early execution in the Netherlands in

1524):Radical sects included the Hutterites, Mennonites, &

Unitarians

16th-century Hutterite tract, with a happy

family that shares all property like the apostles of old

Satirical pamphlet:“The Hutterite

Anabaptist Dove-Cote”

Thomas Müntzer(1489-1525)

1517: Quarreled with Luther1520/21: Pastor of Zwickau; banished after rejecting infant baptism1524/25: Becomes advisor to peasant rebels, argues for the equal distribution of wealth and the creation of a heavenly kingdom

A Knight, captured by Bundschuh rebels in 1524

The German Peasants’ War of

1525:Luther was

horrified when revolting peasants wrote his slogans on their banners,

and the Evangelical preacher

Thomas Muentzer

joined their army

A peasant army plunders a monastery in southern Germany, 1525: Luther sought to reason with them but soon invited the princes to slay these mad dogs

The mainstream Reformation: “Protestants” read their new “Augsburg Confession” to Charles V at the Diet of 1530

Jan of Leyden,

King of the “New

Jerusalem” in Münster,

1534/35

The siege of the Anabaptist Kingdom, Münster, 1534/35

England’s King Henry VIII

(reigned 1509-47) badly wanted to

divorce Catherine of Aragon and

appropriate the monasteries

Sir Thomas More

(1478-1535)

• Close friend of Erasmus.

• Published Utopia in 1516.

• Rose to become Chancellor of England.

• Executed for refusing to approve Henry’s divorce.

Charles V conquered Saxony & Hessen inThe War

of the League of Schmal-kalden,

1546/47, but they remained Lutheran.

THE HABSBURG LANDS IN 1555

Allegory on the Abdication of Emperor Charles V in 1555—

His brother Ferdinand gets Austria; his son Philip II, Spain

TERMS OF THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG, 1555,between Emperor Ferdinand and the League of

Schmalkalden

“In order to bring peace to the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation, let neither his Imperial Majesty nor the Electors, Princes, etc., do any violence or harm to any estate of the empire on the account of the Augsburg Confession…”“Likewise the Estates espousing the Augsburg Confession shall let all the Estates and Princes who cling to the old religion live in absolute peace…”“However, all such as do not belong to the two above named religions shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it.”[If any ruler of an ecclesiastical territory becomes a Protestant, he must renounce that territory.][Any subject who disagrees with the government’s choice of confession has the right to move elsewhere.]

THE CONFESSIONAL PARTITION OF EUROPE BY 1560