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
1529
The “Protestation of Speyer” (6 princes + 14 cities
embrace the Evangelical Faith at Diet of Speyer)
1533
King Henry VIII founds the Church of England
1546/47
Charles 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 Luther
1520/21: Pastor of Zwickau;
banished after rejecting
infant baptism
1524/25: 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 in
The War of
the League
of Schmalkalden,
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