Crypto-Protestantism is a historical phenomenon that first arose on the territory of the
Habsburg Empire
The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities (composite monarchy) that were ruled by the House of Habsburg. From the 18th century it is ...
but also elsewhere in Europe and Latin America, at a time when Catholic rulers tried, after the
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...
, to reestablish
Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
in parts of the Empire that had become
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
after the Reformation. The Protestants in these areas strove to retain their own confession inwardly while they outwardly pretended to accept Catholicism.
[Žalta, Anja. 2004. Protestantizem in bukovništvo med koroškimi Slovenci. ''Anthropos'' 36(1/4): 1–23, p. 7.] With the
Patent of Toleration
The Patent of Toleration (, ) was an edict of toleration issued on 13 October 1781 by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II. Part of the Josephinist reforms, the Patent extended religious freedom to non-Catholic Christians living in the crown lands ...
in the Habsburg Empire in 1781, Protestantism was again permitted, and from that time on most Protestants could live their faith openly once more.
See also
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Nicodemite
A Nicodemite () is a person suspected of publicly misrepresenting their religious faith to conceal their true beliefs. The term is sometimes defined as referring to a Protestantism, Protestant Christian who lived in a Roman Catholic country and es ...
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Crypto-Papism
The words Popery (adjective Popish) and Papism (adjective Papist, also used to refer to an individual) are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox ...
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Crypto-Christianity
Crypto-Christianity is the secret adherence to Christianity, while publicly professing to be another faith; people who practice crypto-Christianity are referred to as "crypto-Christians". In places and time periods where Christians were persecuted ...
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Crypto-Calvinism
Crypto-Calvinism is a pejorative term describing a segment of those members of the Lutheran Church in Germany who were accused of secretly subscribing to Calvinist doctrine of the Eucharist in the decades immediately after the death of Martin Luth ...
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Hundskirke stone
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Cafeteria Catholicism
Cafeteria Catholic, also called à la carte, is an informal term used to describe a follower of Catholicism who dissents from certain official doctrinal or moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Polling indicates that many Catholics dissent from ...
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Cum ex apostolatus officio
''Cum ex apostolatus officio'' is the name of a papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV in 1559; it states that only Catholics can be elected popes
The pope is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is ...
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Molinism
Molinism, named after 16th-century Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, is the thesis that God has middle knowledge (or ''scientia media''): the knowledge of counterfactuals, particularly counterfactuals regarding human action. It seeks to ...
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Jansenism
Jansenism was a 17th- and 18th-century Christian theology, theological movement within Roman Catholicism, primarily active in Kingdom of France, France, which arose as an attempt to reconcile the theological concepts of Free will in theology, f ...
(sometimes labeled as Crypto-Calvinism)
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Salzburg Protestants
The Salzburg Protestants () were Protestantism, Protestant refugees who had lived in the Catholic Archbishopric of Salzburg until the 18th century. In a series of persecutions ending in 1731, over 20,000 Protestants were expelled from their homel ...
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Transylvanian Landler
The Landlers or Transylvanian Landlers () are an ethnic German sub-group which has been living on the territory of today's Romania, more specifically in southern Transylvania (mostly corresponding to present-day Sibiu County) since the 18th cen ...
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Zillertal Valley expulsion
References
{{Intermediates between Catholicism and Protestantism
Protestant Reformation
Counter-Reformation
Crypto-Christianity