Reformation (other)

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 the authority of the Catholic Church. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe.

The Reformation is usually dated from Martin Luther's publication of the '' Ninety-five Theses'' in 1517, which gave birth to Lutheranism. Prior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars.

In general, the Reformers argued that justification was based on faith in Jesus alone and not both faith and good works, as in the Catholic view. In the Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed view, good works were seen as fruits of living faith and part of the process of sanctification. Protestantism also introduced new ecclesiology. The general points of theological agreement by the different Protestant groups have been more recently summarized as the three ''solae'', though various Protestant denominations disagree on doctrines such as the nature of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with Lutherans accepting a corporeal presence and the Reformed accepting a spiritual presence.

The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The initial movement in Saxony, Germany, diversified, and nearby other reformers such as the Swiss Huldrych Zwingli and the French John Calvin developed the Continental Reformed tradition. Within a Reformed framework, Thomas Cranmer and John Knox led the Reformation in England and the Reformation in Scotland, respectively, giving rise to Anglicanism and Presbyterianism. The period also saw the rise of non-Catholic denominations with quite different theologies and politics to the Magisterial Reformers (Lutherans, Reformed, and Anglicans): so-called Radical Reformers such as the various Anabaptists, who sought to return to the practices of early Christianity. The Counter-Reformation comprised the Catholic response to the Reformation, with the Council of Trent clarifying ambiguous or disputed Catholic positions and abuses that had been subject to critique by reformers.

The consequent European wars of religion saw the deaths of between seven and seventeen million people.

Terminology

In the 16th-century context, the term mainly covers four major movements: Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Radical Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Since the late , historians often use the plural of the term to emphasize that the Reformation was not a uniform and coherent historical phenomenon but the result of parallel movements.

Anglican theologian Alister McGrath explains the term "Reformation" as "an interpretative category—a way of mapping out a slice of history in which certain ideas, attitudes, and values were developed, explored, and applied". Historian John Bossy criticized the term Reformation for "wrongly implying that bad religion was giving way to good," but also because it has "little application to actual social behaviour and little or no sensitivity to thought, feeling or culture." A French scholar has noted "no Reformation term is indisputable" and that "Reformation studies has revealed that “Protestants” and “Catholics” were not as homogenous as once thought."

Specific terminology includes:
* "Protestant Reformation" excludes the Renaissance and early modern Catholic reform movements.
* "Magisterial Reformation" has a narrower sense, as it refers only to mainstream Protestantism, primarily Lutheranism, Anglicanism and Calvinism, contrasting it with more radical ideas such as the Anabaptists'.
* "Catholic Reformation" is distinguished by the historian Massimo Firpo from Counter-Reformation. In his view, Catholic Reformation was "centered on the care of souls ..., episcopal residence, the renewal of the clergy, together with the charitable and educational roles of the new religious orders", whereas Counter-Reformation was "founded upon the defence of orthodoxy, the repression of dissent, the reassertion of ecclesiastical authority".
* Some historians have also suggested a persisting " Erasmian Reformation."

Several aspects of the Reformation, such as changes in the arts, music, rituals, and communities are frequently presented in specialised studies.

The historian Peter Marshall emphasizes that the "call for 'reform' within Christianity is about as old as the religion itself, and in every age there have been urgent attempts to bring it about". Charlemagne employed a "rhetoric of reform". Medieval examples include the Cluniac Reform in the , and the 11th-century Gregorian Reform, both striving against lay influence over church affairs. When demanding a church reform, medieval authors mainly adopted a conservative and utopian approach, expressing their admiration for a previous "golden age" or "apostolic age" when the Church had allegedly been perfect and free of abuses.

When considered as a historical time period, both the starting and ending date of the Reformation have always been debated. The most commonly used starting date is 31 October 1517—the day when the German theologian Martin Luther (d. 1546) allegedly nailed up a copy of his disputation paper on indulgences and papal power known as the '' Ninety-five Theses'' to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony. Calvinist historians often propose that the Reformation started when the Swiss priest Huldrych Zwingli (d. 1531) first preached against abuses in the Church in 1516. The end date of the Reformation is even more disputed: considered as political/martial strife, 25 September 1555 (when the Peace of Augsburg was accepted), 23 May 1618 and 24 October 1648 (when the Thirty Years' War began and ended, respectively) are the most commonly mentioned terminuses. The Reformation has always been presented as one of the most crucial episodes of the early modern period, or even regarded as the event separating the modern era from the Middle Ages.

The term Protestant, though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church that subscribed to the main Reformation (or anti-Catholic) principles. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier.

Background

Calamities

Europe experienced a period of dreadful calamities from the early . These culminated in a devastating pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed about one-third of Europe's population. Around 1500, the population of Europe was about people—no more than of the mid-14th-century demographic maximum. Due to a shortage of workforce, the landlords began to restrict the rights of their tenants which led to rural revolts that often ended with a compromise.

The constant fear of unexpected death was mirrored by popular artistic motifs, such as the allegory of ('dance of death'). The fear also contributed to the growing popularity of Masses for the dead. Already detectable among early Christians, these ceremonies indicated a widespread belief in purgatory—a transitory state for souls that needed purification before entering heaven. Fear of malevolent magical practice was also growing, and witch hunts intensified.

At the end of the , the sexually transmitted infection known as syphilis spread throughout Europe for the first time. Syphilis destroyed its victims' looks with ulcers and scabs before killing them. Along with the French invasion of Italy, syphilis contributed to the success of the charismatic preacher Girolamo Savonarola (d. 1498) who called for a moral renewal in Florence. He was arrested and executed for heresy, but his meditations remained a popular reading.

Late Medieval Christianity

Lay community

Historian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) emphasized that "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. 'Christianity' in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love."

The Catholic Church taught that entry into heaven required dying in a . Based on Christ's parable on the Last Judgement, the Church emphasized the performance of good works by the baptized faithful, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, as an important co-condition of salvation.

Villagers and urban laypeople were frequently members of confraternities (such as the Archconfraternity of the Gonfalone), mutual-support guilds associated with a saint, or religious fraternities (such as the Third Order of Saint Francis). The faithful made pilgrimages to saints' shrines, but the proliferation in the saints' number undermined their reputation. There was a strong non-theological Biblical awareness, especially of the Gospels and Psalms.

New religious movements promoted the deeper involvement of laity in religious practices. The communal fraternities of the Brethren of the Common Life did not encourage lay brothers to become priests and often placed their houses under the protection of urban authorities. They were closely associated with the , a new method of Catholic spirituality with a special emphasis on the education of laypeople. A leader of the movement the Dutch Wessel Gansfort (d. 1489) attacked abuses of indulgences.

Church buildings were richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows. While Romanesque and Gothic art made a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human, Renaissance artists depicted God and the saints in a more human way. Historian Caroline Walker Bynum has written of 'a sort of religious materialism' in the period: 'a frenzied conviction that the divine tended to erupt into matter'.

Sources of authority

The sources of religious authority included the Bible and its authoritative commentaries, apostolic tradition, decisions by ecumenical councils, scholastic theology, and papal authority. Catholics regarded the Vulgate as the Bible's authentic Latin translation. Commentators applied several methods of interpretations to resolve contradictions within the Bible. Apostolic tradition verified religious practices with unclear Biblical foundations or which required deduction, such as infant baptism. The ecumenical councils' decisions were binding to all Catholics. The crucial elements of mainstream Christianity had been first summarised in the Nicene Creed in 325. Its western text contained a unilateral addition which contributed to the schism between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Creed contained the dogma of Trinity about one God uniting three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Church authorities acknowledged that an individual might exceptionally receive direct revelations from God but maintained that a genuine revelation could not challenge traditional religious principles. Preaching was an important part of bishops' and priests' responsibilities.

Clergy

Western Christianity displayed a remarkable unity. This was the outcome of the Gregorian Reform that established papal supremacy over the Catholic Church, and achieved the legal separation of the Catholic clergy from laity. Clerical celibacy was reinforced through the prohibition of clerical marriage; ecclesiastical courts were granted exclusive jurisdiction over clerics, and also over matrimonial causes. Priests were ordained by bishops in accordance with the principle of apostolic succession—a claim to the uninterrupted transmission of their consecrating power from Christ's Apostles through generations of bishops. Bishops, abbots, abbesses, and other prelates might possess remarkable wealth. Some of the ecclesiastic leaders also functioned as local secular princes, such as the prince-bishops in Kingdom of Germany and the English County Palatine of Durham, and the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights in their Baltic . Other prelates might be regents or the power behind the throne. Believers were expected to pay the tithe (one tenth of their income) to the Church. Pluralism—the practice of holding multiple Church offices (or benefices)—was not unusual. This led to non-residence, and the absent priests' deputies were often poorly educated and underpaid.

The clergy consisted of two major groups, the regular clergy and the secular clergy. Regular clerics lived under a monastic rule within the framework of a religious order; secular clerics were responsible for pastoral care. The Church was a hierarchical organisation. The pope was elected by high-ranking clergymen, the cardinals, and assisted by the professional staff of the Roman Curia. Secular clerics were organised into territorial units known as dioceses, each ruled by a bishop or archbishop. Each diocese was divided into parishes headed by parish priests who administered most sacraments to the faithful. These were sacred rites thought to transfer divine grace to humankind. The Council of Florence declared baptism, confirmation, marriage, extreme unction, penance, the Eucharist, and priestly ordination as the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. Women were not ordained priests but could live as nuns in convents after taking the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Papacy

The authority of the papacy was based on a well-organised system of communication and bureaucracy. The popes claimed the power of binding and loosing that Christ had reportedly granted to Peter the Apostle (d. 66), and offered indulgence—the reduction of the penalty in both this world (penance) and in Purgatory to contrite and pardoned sinners who e.g. gave alms or went on pilgrimages. The popes also granted dispensations to institutions or individuals, exempting them from certain provisions of canon law (or ecclesiastic law).

From 1309 to 1417, the papacy was in turmoil: various election controversies resulted in the Western Schism (1378-1417) leading to, at the end, three rival claimant Popes. At the Council of Constance, one of the three popes resigned, his two rivals were deposed, and the newly elected Martin V () was acknowledged as the legitimate pope throughout Catholic Europe. The relative authority of popes and ecumenical councils was in contest.

The Renaissance popes were also secular rulers: as princes of the Papal States in Italy, the popes were deeply involved in the power struggles of the peninsula, and the Italian noble houses vied for election. These popes frequently caused scandal: Pope Alexander VI () appointed his relatives, among them his own illegitimate sons to high offices; Pope Julius II () took up arms to recover papal territories lost during his predecessors' reign, prompting the underground satire ''Julius Excluded from Heaven''.

In the early Age of Exploration, a succession of popes (Nicholas V, Sixtus IV, ) successfully arbitrated territorial disputes between Spain and Portugal outside Europe, notably with the papal bull Inter caetera (1493) drawing a line through South America to separate their trade and colonial regions. The Spanish and Portuguese conquests and developing trade networks contributed to the global expansion of Catholicism.

The popes were generous patrons of art and architecture. ordered the demolition of the ruined 4th-century St. Peter's Basilica in preparation for the building of a new Renaissance basilica, creating a financial problem.

Partial and failed institutional reforms

The necessity of a church reform ('in head and limbs') was frequently discussed at the ecumenical councils from the late . However, many high stakeholders—popes, prelates, abbots and kings—preferred the because they did not want to lose privileges or revenues. The system of papal dispensations proved a continual obstacle to the implementation of each revived reform attempt, as the Holy See had regularly granted privileges or immunities.

Within regular clergy, the so-called " congregations of strict observance" spread. These were monastic communities that returned to the strict interpretation of their order's rule. Reformist bishops tried to discipline their clergy through regular canonical visitations but their attempts mainly failed due to the resistance of autonomous institutions such as cathedral chapters. Neither could they exercise authority over non-resident clerics who had received their benefice from the papacy. On the eve of the Reformation, the Fifth Council of the Lateran was the last occasion when efforts to introduce a far-reaching reform from above could have achieved but it was dissolved in 1517 without making decisions on the issues that would soon come to the fore.

Humanism

A new intellectual movement known as Humanism emerged in the Late Middle Ages. The Humanists' slogan ('back to the sources!') demonstrated their enthusiasm for Classical texts and textual criticism. The rise of the Ottoman Empire led to the mass immigration of Byzantine scholars to Western Europe, and many of them brought manuscripts previously unknown to western scholarship. This led to the rediscovery of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (). Plato's ideas about an ultimate reality lying beyond visible reality posed a serious challenge to scholastic theologians' rigorous definitions. Textual criticism called into question the reliability of some of the fundamental texts of papal privilege: humanist scholars, like Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) proved that one of the basic documents of papal authority, the allegedly 4th-century '' Donation of Constantine'' was a medieval forgery.

As the manufacturing of paper from rags and the printing machine with movable type were spreading in Europe, books could be bought at a reasonable price from the . Demand for religious literature was especially high. The German inventor Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468) first published a two-volume printed version of the Vulgata in the early 1450s. High and Low German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Czech and Catalan translations of the Bible were published between 1466 and 1492; in France, the Bible's abridged French versions gained popularity. Laypeople who read the Bible could challenge their priests' sermons, as it happened already in 1515.

Completed by Jerome (d. 420), the Vulgate contained the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. The systematic study of Biblical manuscripts revealed that Jerome had sometimes misinterpreted his sources of translation. A series of Latin-Greek editions of the New Testament was completed by the Dutch humanist Erasmus (d. 1536). These new Latin translations challenged some scriptural proof texts for some Catholic dogmas.

Dissidents

After Arianism—a Christological doctrine condemned as heresy at ecumenical councils—disappeared in the late , no major disputes menaced the theological unity of the Western Church. Religious enthusiasts could organise their followers into nonconformist groups but they disbanded after their founder died. The Waldensians were a notable exception. Due to their efficient organisation, they survived not only the death of their founder Peter Waldo (d. 1205), but also a series of anti-heretic crusades. They rejected the clerics' monopoly of public ministry, and allowed all trained members of their community, men and women alike, to preach.

The Western Schism reinforced a general desire for church reform. The Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d. 1384) was one of the most radical critics. He attacked pilgrimages, the veneration of saints, and the doctrine of transubstantiation. He regarded the Church as an exclusive community of those chosen by God to salvation, and argued that the state could seize the corrupt clerics' endowments. Known as Lollards, Wycliffe's followers rejected images, clerical celibacy and the purchase of indulgences by crusading lords. The Parliament of England passed a law against heretics, but Lollard communities survived the purges.

Wycliffe's theology had a marked impact on the Prague academic Jan Hus (d. 1415). He delivered popular sermons against the clerics' wealth and temporal powers, for which he was summoned to the Council of Constance. Although the German king Sigismund of Luxemburg () had granted him safe conduct, Hus was sentenced to death for heresy and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. His execution led to a nationwide religious movement in Bohemia, and the papacy called for a series of crusades against Hus's followers. The moderate Hussites, mainly Czech aristocrats and academics, were known as Utraquists for they taught that the Eucharist was to be administered ('in both kinds') to the laity. The most radical Hussites, called Taborites after their new town of Tábor, held their property in common. Their millenarianism shocked the Utraquists who destroyed them in the Battle of Lipany in 1434. By this time, the remaining Catholic communities in Bohemia were almost exclusively German-speaking. The lack of a Hussite church hierarchy enabled the Czech aristocrats and urban magistrates to assume control of the Hussite clergy from the 1470s. The radical Hussites set up their own Church known as the Union of Bohemian Brethren. They rejected the separation of clergy and laity, and condemned all forms of violence and oath taking.

Marshall writes that the Lollards, Hussites and conciliarist theologians "collectively give the lie to any suggestion that torpor and complacency were the hallmarks of religious life in the century before Martin Luther." Historians customarily refer to Wycliffe and Hus as "Forerunners of the Reformation". The two reformers' emphasis on the Bible is often regarded as an early example of one of the basic principles of the Reformation—the idea ('by the Scriptures alone'), although prominent scholastic theologians were also convinced that Scripture, interpreted reasonably and in accord with the Church and the Church Fathers, contained all knowledge necessary for salvation.

Beginnings

The Reformation in Germanic countries was instigated by Martin Luther, however historians note that many of his ideas were pre-dated by Wycliff, Huss, Erasmus, Zwingli and others, both heretic and orthodox. Historian Peter Marshall has noted "In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly acclimatized to the idea that the Reformation was in important respects a continuation and intensification of trends within later medieval Catholicism, rather than simply a wholesale rejection of it."

Luther and the ''Ninety-five Theses''

Pope Leo X () decided to complete the construction of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. As the sale of certificates of indulgences had been a well-established method of papal fund raising, he announced new indulgences in the papal bull in 1515. On the advice of the banker Jakob Fugger (d. 1525), he appointed the pluralist prelate Albert of Brandenburg (d. 1545) to supervise the sale campaign in Germany. The Dominican friar Johann Tetzel (d. 1519), a leading figure in the campaign, applied unusually aggressive marketing methods. A slogan attributed to him famously claimed that "As soon as the coin into the box rings, a soul from purgatory to heaven springs". Frederick the Wise, Prince-elector of Saxony () forbade the campaign because the suspended the sale of previous indulgences, depriving him of revenues that he had spent on his collection of relics.

The campaign's vulgarity shocked many serious-minded believers, among them Martin Luther, a theology professor at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony. Born into a middle-class family, Luther entered an Augustinian monastery after a heavy thunderstorm dreadfully reminded him the risk of sudden death and eternal damnation, but his anxiety about his sinfulness did not abate. His studies on the works of the Late Roman theologian Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) convinced him that those whom God chose as his elect received a gift of faith independently of their acts. He first denounced the idea of justification through human efforts in his ('Disputation against Scholastic Theology') in September 1517.

On 31 October 1517, Luther addressed a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, stating that the clerics preaching the St. Peter's indulgences were deceiving the faithful, and attached his ''Ninety-five Theses'' to it. He questioned the efficacy of indulgences for the dead, although also stated " indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the pope, doubts would be readily resolved". Archbishop Albert ordered the theologians at the University of Mainz to examine the document. Tetzel, and the theologians Konrad Wimpina (d. 1531) and Johann Eck (d. 1543) were the first to associate some of Luther's propositions with Hussitism. The case was soon forwarded to the Roman Curia for judgement. Pope Leo remained uninterested, and mentioned the case as "a quarrel among friars".

New theology

As the historian Lyndal Roper notes, the "Reformation proceeded by a set of debates and arguments". Luther presented his views in public at the observant Augustinians' assembly in Heidelberg on 26 April 1518. Here he explained his "theology of the Cross" about a loving God who had become frail to save fallen humanity, contrasting it with what he saw as the scholastic "theology of glory" that in his view celebrated erudition and human acts. It is uncertain when Luther's concept of justification by faith alone—a central element of his theology—crystallised. He would later attribute it to his "tower experience" (1519), when he comprehended that God could freely declare even sinners righteous while he was thinking about the words of Paul the Apostle (d. 64 or 65)—" the just shall live by faith".

Urged by Luther's opponents, Pope Leo appointed the jurist Girolamo Ghinucci (d. 1541) and the theologian Sylvester Mazzolini (d. 1527) to inspect Luther's teaching. Mazzolini argued that Luther had questioned papal authority by attacking the indulgences, while Luther concluded that only a fundamental reform could put an end to the abuse of indulgences. Pope Leo did not excommunicate Luther because Leo did not want to alienate Luther's patron Frederick the Wise. Instead, he appointed Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (d. 1534) to convince Luther to withdraw some of his theses. Cajetan met with Luther at Augsburg in October 1518. The historian Berndt Hamm says that the meeting was the "historical point at which the opposition between the Reformation and Catholicism first emerged", as Cajetan thought that believers accepting Luther's views of justification would no more obey clerical guidance.

Luther first expressed his sympathy for Jan Hus at a disputation in Leipzig in June 1519. His case was reopened at the Roman Curia. Cajetan, Eck and other papal officials drafted the papal bull ('Arise, O Lord') which was published on 15 June 1520. It condemned Luther's forty-one theses, and offered a sixty-day-long grace period to him to recant. Luther's theology quickly developed. In a Latin treatise '' On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church'', he stated that only baptism and the Eucharist could be regarded as sacraments, and priests were not members of a privileged class but servants of the community (hence they became called ministers from the Latin word for servant). His German manifesto ''To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation'' associated the papacy with the Antichrist, and described the Holy See as "the worst whorehouse of all whorehouses" in reference to the funds flowing to the Roman Curia. It also challenged the Biblical justification of clerical celibacy. Luther's study ''On the Freedom of a Christian'' consolidated his thoughts about the believers' inner freedom with their obligation to care for their neighbours although he rejected the traditional teaching about good works. The study is a characteristic example of Luther's enthusiasm for paradoxes.

The papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro (d. 1542) ordered the burning of Luther's books. In response, Luther and his followers burned the papal bull along with a copy of the —the fundamental document of medieval ecclesiastic law—at Wittenberg. The papal bull excommunicating Luther was published on 3 January 1521. The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V () wanted to outlaw Luther at the Diet of Worms, but could not make the decision alone. The Holy Roman Empire was a confederation of autonomous states, and authority rested with the Imperial Diets where the Imperial Estates assembled. Frederick the Wise vetoed the imperial ban against Luther, and Luther was summoned to Worms to defend his case at the Diet in April 1521. Here he refused to recant stating that only arguments from the Bible could convince him that his works contained errors.

After Luther and his supporters left the Diet, those who remained sanctioned the imperial ban, threatening Luther's supporters with imprisonment and confiscation of their property. To save Luther's life but also to hide his involvement, Frederick arranged Luther's abduction on 4 May. During his ten-month-long staged captivity at Frederick's castle of Wartburg, Luther translated the New Testament to High German. The historian Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the translation as an "extraordinary achievement that has shaped the German language ever since", adding that "Luther's gift was for seizing the emotion with sudden, urgent phrases". The translation would be published at the 1522 Leipzig Book Fair along with Luther's treatise ''On Monastic Vows'' that laid the theological foundations of the dissolution of monasteries. Luther also composed religious hymns in Wartburg. They would be first published in collections in 1524. During Luther's absence, his co-workers, primarily Philip Melanchthon (d. 1560) and Andreas Karlstadt (d. 1541) assumed the leadership of Reformation in Wittenberg. Melanchthon consolidated Luther's thoughts into a coherent theological work titled ('Common Places').

Spread

Roper argues that "the most important reason why Luther did not meet with Hus's fate was technology: the new medium of print". Luther was publishing his views in short but pungent treatises that gained unexpected popularity: he was responsible for about one-fifth of all works printed in Germany in the first third of the . German printing presses were scattered in many urban centers which prevented their control by central authorities. Statistical analysis indicates a significant correlation between the presence of a printing press in a German city and the adoption of Reformation.

Reformation spread through the activities of enthusiastic preachers such as Johannes Oecolampadius (d. 1531) and Konrad Kürsner (d. 1556) in Basel, Sebastian Hofmeister (d. 1533) in Schaffhausen, and Matthäus Zell (d. 1548) and Martin Bucer (d. 1551) in Strasbourg. They were called "Evangelicals" due to their insistence on teaching in accordance with the Gospels (or ). Luther and many of his followers worked with the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) who had a keen sense of visualising their message. He produced Luther's idealised portrait setting a template for further popular images printed on the covers of books. Cranach's woodcuts together with itinerant preachers' explanations helped the mainly illiterate people to understand Luther's teaching. The illustrated pamphlets were carried from place to place typically by peddlers and merchants. Laypeople started to discuss various aspects of religion in both private and public all over Germany.

The self-governing free imperial cities were the first centers of the Reformation. The Evangelical preachers emphasized that many of the well-established church practices had no precedent in the Bible. They offered the Eucharist to the laity in both kinds, and denied the clerics' monopolies, which resonated with popular anti-clericalism. It was not unusual that their supporters attacked clerics and church buildings. Violent iconoclasm was common.In some cities such as Strasbourg and Ulm, the urban magistrates supported the Reformation; in the cities of the Hanseatic League the affluent middle classes enforced changes in church life. Cities located closer to the most important ideological centers of the Reformation—Wittenberg and Basel—adopted its ideas more likely than other towns. This indicates the significance either of student networks, or of neighbours who had rejected Catholicism.

The sociologist Steven Pfaff underlines that "ecclesiastical and liturgical reform was not simply a religious question ... since the sort of reforms demanded by Evangelicals could not be accommodated within existing institutions, prevailing customs, or established law". After their triumph, the reformers expelled their leading opponents, dissolved the monasteries and convents, secured the urban magistrates' control of the appointment of priests, and established new civic institutions. Evangelical town councils usually prohibited begging but established a common chest for poverty relief by expropriating the property of dissolved ecclesiastic institutions. The funds were used for the daily support of orphans, old people and the sick, but also for low-interest loans to the impoverished to start a business. Luther was convinced that only educated people could effectively serve both God and the community. Under his auspices, public schools and libraries were opened in many towns offering education to more children than the traditional monastic and cathedral schools.

Resistance and oppression

Resistance to Evangelical preaching was significant in Flanders, the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria. Here the veneration of local saints was strong, and statistical analysis indicates that cities where indigenous saints' shrines served as centers of vivid communal cults less likely adopted Reformation. Likewise, cities with an episcopal see or monasteries more likely resisted Evangelical proselytism.

Luther's ideas were rejected by most representatives of the previous generation of Humanists. Erasmus stated that Luther's "unrestrained enthusiasm carries him beyond what is right". Jacob van Hoogstraaten (d. 1527) compared Luther's theology of salvation "as if Christ takes to himself the most foul bride and is unconcerned about her cleanliness". Luther's works were burned in most European countries. Emperor Charles initiated the execution of the first Evangelical martyrs, the Augustinian monks Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos. They were burned in Brussels on 1 July 1523. Charles was determined to protect the Catholic Church, but the Ottoman Turks' expansion towards Central Europe often thwarted him. The Spanish Inquisition prevented the spread of Evangelical literature in that country, and suppressed the spiritual movement of the ('Illuminists') who put a special emphasis on personal faith. Some Italian men of letters, such as the Venetian nobleman Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542) and the Augustinian canon Peter Martyr Vermigli (d. 1562) expressed ideas resembling Luther's theology of salvation but did not quickly break with Catholicism. They were part of a group known as .

The English king Henry VIII () commissioned a team of theologians to defend the Catholic dogmas against Luther's attacks. Their treatise titled '' The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments'' was published under Henry's name, and the grateful Pope awarded him with the title Defender of the Faith. In Scotland, the first Evangelical preacher Patrick Hamilton (d. 1528) was burned for heresy. In France, the theologians of the Sorbonne stated that Luther "vomited up a doctrine of pestilence". Guillaume Briçonnet (d. 1534), Bishop of Meaux, also condemned Luther but employed reform-minded clerics like Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (d. 1536) and William Farel (d. 1565) to renew religious life in his diocese. They enjoyed the protection of Marguerite of Angoulême (d. 1549), the well-educated sister of the French king Francis I (). The Parlement of Paris only took actions against them after Francis was captured in the Battle of Pavia in 1525, forcing many of them into exile.

Correspondence between Luke of Prague (d. 1528), leader of the Bohemian Brethren, and Luther made it clear that their theologies were incompatible even if their views about justification were similar. In Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, Luther's theology spread in the local German communities. King Louis of Bohemia and Hungary () ordered the persecution of Evangelical preachers although his wife Mary of Austria (d. 1558) favoured the reformers. Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania () banned the import of Evangelical literature. Christian II, who ruled the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (), was sympathetic towards the Reformation but his despotic methods led to revolts. He was replaced by his uncle Frederick I in Denmark and Norway (), and by a local aristocrat Gustav I Vasa in Sweden ().

Alternatives

Saxon radicals and rebellious knights

Andreas Karlstadt accelerated the implementation of Reformation in Wittenberg. On Christmas Day 1521, he administered the Eucharist in common garment; the next day he announced his engagement to a fifteen-year-old noble girl Anna von Mochau. He proclaimed that images were examples of "devilish deceit" which led to the mass destruction of religious art. Enthusiasts began swarming to Wittenberg. The Zwickau prophets, who had been incited by the radical preacher Thomas Müntzer (d. 1525), claimed that they had received revelations from God. They rejected transubstantiation and attacked infant baptism. Luther defended art as a proof of the beauty of the Creation, maintained that Christ's Body and Blood were physically present in the Eucharist, and regarded infant baptism as a sign of membership in the Christian community. To put an end to the anarchy, Frederick the Wise released Luther in March 1522. Luther achieved the Zwickau prophets' removal from Wittenberg, calling them fanatics. Karlstadt voluntarily left Wittenberg for Orlamünde where the local congregation elected him its minister. Luther visited most parishes in the region to prevent radical reforms, but he was often received by verbal or physical abuses. When he wanted to dismiss Karlstadt, the parishioners referred to his own words about the congregations' right to freely elect their ministers, and Karlstadt called him a "perverter of the Scriptures". Karlstadt was expelled from Electoral Saxony without a trial on Luther's initiative.

Luther condemned violence but some of his followers took up arms. Franz von Sickingen (d. 1523), an imperial knight from the Rhineland, formed an alliance with his peers against Richard von Greiffenklau, Archbishop-elector of Trier

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