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reformation

  (rĕf'ər-mā'shən) pronunciation
n.
  1. The act of reforming or the state of being reformed.
  2. Reformation A 16th-century movement in Western Europe that aimed at reforming some doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the establishment of the Protestant churches.
reformational ref'or·ma'tion·al adj.
 
 
Business Dictionary: Reformation

Equitable remedy consisting of a revision of a contract by the court, in cases where the written terms of the contract do not express what was actually agreed upon. Thus, reformation is generally only decreed upon a clear and convincing showing of mutual mistake (see Mistake); if only one party was mistaken, reformation is not appropriate unless the mistake of one party resulted from the other party's Fraud.

 

Break with Roman Catholicism and the establishment of Protestant churches in the 16th century. Though reformers such as Jan Hus and John Wycliffe attacked abuses in the Roman Catholic church in the late medieval period, the Reformation is usually dated from 1517, when, according to tradition, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the church door in Wittenberg. Various Protestant denominations were soon founded by more radical reformers, such as Huldrych Zwingli and the Anabaptists. John Calvin established a theocracy in Geneva after his conversion to the Protestant cause. The Reformation spread to other European countries and soon dominated northern Europe. Spain and Italy remained resistant to Protestantism and became centres of the Counter-Reformation. In England, where Henry VIII founded the Church of England in 1534, the Reformation's roots were primarily political rather than religious, motivated by the pope's refusal to grant Henry a divorce. In Scotland the Calvinist John Knox led in the establishment of the Presbyterian church (see Presbyterianism).

For more information on Reformation, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: Reformation

Although ‘reform’ means many things, ‘the Reformation’ always denotes the 16th-cent. division of Latin Christendom into protestant and catholic. Protestantism rejected the catholic belief that salvation comes through grace received in the sacraments; it restricted the church's role to one of proclaiming the unmerited gift of divine forgiveness. The Church of England, established by statute in 1559, was unambiguously protestant. The church in England c. 1500 was devoutly catholic and loyally papalist. Many parish churches were extravagantly rebuilt, and lavished with vessels and ornaments. Kings and popes usually got on well. The fame of the German Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483-1546) caught the imagination of some English followers in the 1520s. Churchmen including Thomas Bilney (c. 1495-1531), Robert Barnes (d. 1540), and the Bible translator and controversialist William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536) reinterpreted the Reformation message. However, their support was confined to young university students and those with foreign connections.

Henry VIII's failure to secure papal annulment of his first marriage led to the break with the papacy during 1532-6. This policy required theoretical justification if the king was to carry such a profoundly catholic nation into schism. Thomas Cromwell recruited a number of young humanist writers, whose propaganda pieces criticized both the papacy and some aspects of the old cults, such as papal indulgences. Nevertheless, these moves were not avowedly ‘protestant’: Henry VIII detested Luther. Though Thomas Cromwell's commissioners who toured the doomed monasteries in 1535-6 mocked spurious relics and hunted dissolute monks, the ensuing abolition of the monastic order had no declared religious rationale.

All ambiguity was swept away in the next reign. Revision of the mass-book began almost at once, leading in 1549 to the publication of Cranmer's first Book of Common Prayer. Meanwhile royal commissioners ruthlessly stripped parish churches of most of the ornaments and furniture associated with the old cult. Distinguished continental reformers such as Martin Bucer and Pier Martire Vermigli settled in the universities and influenced further changes in worship. In 1552 a revision of the Prayer Book simplified the apparatus of worship to the barest protestant essentials.

Mary I inherited religious legislation, in her eyes ultra vires and void, which took some eighteen months to reverse. Nevertheless, priests and laity restored the mass at the mere breath of royal suggestion. Once owners of monastic lands were assured of their titles, papal authority was received back with some enthusiasm. The impact of the campaign which burned c. 280 heretics between 1555 and 1558 was greater in hindsight (helped by Foxe's martyrology) than at the time. Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn and legatee of the schism, found the catholic hierarchy much more stubborn than in 1531-3. Re-establishment of the royal supremacy and abolition of the mass required an almost clean sweep of the episcopate. Even the Thirty-Nine Articles approved by convocation in 1563 were altered by the queen herself, probably to placate conservatives.

The new bishops chosen by Elizabeth from leading reformed clergy in 1559, and most protestant zealots, assumed that the concessions made to tradition were temporary sops. To their increasing horror and bewilderment, they found that the queen obstinately refused to strip away the veneer of ritual. She feared that combative protestant preaching still risked alienating parts of the kingdom and sparking a religious war: the restoration of the mass during the northern earls' revolt of 1569, and her excommunication by the pope in 1570, lent these fears substance. In the ‘puritan’ controversies of the 1570s Elizabeth nurtured a faction of clerics led by John Whitgift (archbishop of Canterbury 1583-1604) which believed with equal zeal in protestant dogma, episcopal church government, and traditionalist ceremonial. So was the peculiar hybrid ‘Anglican’ church, founded both on Foxe's Martyrs and on Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, brought to birth by the end of the 16th cent.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Reformation,
religious revolution that took place in Western Europe in the 16th cent. It arose from objections to doctrines and practices in the medieval church (see Roman Catholic Church) and ultimately led to the freedom of dissent (see Protestantism).

Background

The preparation for the movement was long. Opponents of orthodox views had asserted themselves over centuries, and in the 14th cent. John Wyclif had led a dissident movement. His ideas were amplified later by John Huss in Bohemia, who was burned (1415) at the stake by order of the Council of Constance. After his death his followers in Bohemia upheld his cause in the long and bitterly fought Hussite Wars. These dwindled into compromise, but Huss's challenge to the orthodox view of the Eucharist and the revolutionary effect of the wars did not disappear.

New forces fanned discontent with the church and the medieval order of society. There had long been outcries against abuses in the church, especially the blatant worldliness of some of the clergy, the emphasis on money, and the oppressiveness, not only intellectual but economic, of members of the church hierarchy. In the 15th cent. the conciliar movement (i.e., the attempt to establish the superiority of the ecumenical council over the pope) heralded the growing internal church dissent. Although the movement failed, the number of those wishing reform nevertheless grew steadily.

The desire for change was increased by the appearance of humanism and the spirit of the Renaissance. Study of the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts concentrated attention on the Bible and evoked a new critical spirit, exemplified in such men as Lorenzo Valla and Johann Reuchlin. The Renaissance also tended to develop an emphasis on the individual. The later humanists were outspoken in their attacks on the abuses in the church; Desiderius Erasmus was, perhaps, the most prominent, but there were many others, including the humanists at Oxford. The intimate connection between the new learning and the Reformation itself is shown in the pursuits of men who were to be prominent in the Reformation in central Europe; Ulrich von Hutten and Philip Melanchthon were outstanding figures in humanism, and Huldreich Zwingli arrived at opposition to the church mainly through the study of Greek and Hebrew. The very founding of the Univ. of Wittenberg, which was to be the center of revolt, was part of the urge to humanism.

The introduction of printing in Western Europe allowed more widespread dissemination of criticism. Printing was to hasten the Reformation, and the Reformation in turn was to spread printing further. In secular matters the opposition between church and state was centuries old, but it had begun to take a new turn with the building of strong nations. In Germany this opposition to the power of the church was coupled in the minds of many princes with opposition to that other supranational body, the Holy Roman Empire, and the princes were to play a decisive part in the ecclesiastical rebellion.

The rise of the cities and of the power of merchants and the middle class generally not only upset the old medieval order of things but created much discontent with the scholastic views on finance and economic affairs that fettered the enterprise of the men in search of wealth. The economy of Europe was expanding and forcing cracks in the more or less rigid walls of the system. Scholars of the 20th cent. have put a great deal of emphasis on the connection between the new modes of religious thought and economic change (i.e., the connection between Protestantism and capitalism) as a major force in the Reformation. There were, however, many influences at work, and the field was well prepared by 1517. Nevertheless, it was with suddenness and surprise that the Reformation began.

The Influence of Martin Luther

Martin Luther, a professor of theology at the Univ. of Wittenberg, had been stirred to action by the campaign for dispensing indulgences being launched under Johann Tetzel in Germany. He protested. On Oct. 31, 1517, he posted on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg his 95 theses, inviting debate on matters of practice and doctrine. Luther's action was not as yet a revolt against the church but a movement for reform within. It was, however, much more than an objection to the money-grabbing and secular policies of the clergy. Luther had already become convinced that in certain matters of doctrine the purity of the ancient church had been perverted by self-seeking popes and clergy.

His disagreement with the church on matters of doctrine soon became apparent. In 1519 Luther in a dispute with Johann Eck openly espoused doctrines that were implicit in his theses, and he denied the authority of the church in religious matters. In 1520 the pope issued a bull of excommunication against Luther, and the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, thundered against the rebel. Luther defied them, publicly burned the bull of excommunication, and issued vigorous pamphlets assailing the papacy and the doctrine of the sacraments. The breach was thus made in 1521, and the meeting of the Diet of Worms (see Worms, Diet of) not only failed to produce a compromise but forced many doubters into the camp of the rebels. Luther was declared an outlaw, but the threat was empty; under the protection of the powerful Frederick III, elector of Saxony, he was spirited off to the safety of the Wartburg.

Economic, Spiritual, and Political Motives

The revolt was spreading with incredible speed over central and N Germany and almost immediately extended beyond the German borders. All the elements of discontent and rebellion coalesced. The learned, such as Luther himself, Melanchthon, and Martin Bucer, saw the opportunity to express and expand their own views. The nobles were enabled to cast off allegiance to the Holy Roman emperor and to enrich themselves by seizing the immense landed estates of the church. Too much can be—and has been—made out of this economic motive, however, for many of the princes belonged to the intellectual group that had been stirred to critical rejection of church doctrines, and they were perhaps better aware than the common people of the venality and money-mindedness of many of the clergy. Many of the pious, increased in number by a spontaneous religious revival in the late 15th cent., drank the doctrine of a new spirituality with pleasure, for Luther's doctrine of justification (i.e., salvation) by faith alone and not by sacraments, good works, and the mediation of the church placed humans in open and direct communication with God. The new insistence on reading the word of God in the Bible placed a greater responsibility on the individual.

Those who were feeling the first and welcome experience of nationalism were anxious to shake off the hand of Rome. Absolutist rulers, particularly in Scandinavia, welcomed the opportunity to end the interference of the church in state affairs; by creating national churches they were able to escape outside influence. Merchants and capitalists found the air of individual freedom exhilarating. The peasants, chafing under the old restrictions of feudalism, lifted up their heads in hope that the new dispensation would take away their burdens.

Ferment, Division, and Warfare

In Zürich, Switzerland, Huldreich Zwingli had developed his own brand of dissent. In 1529 in the Colloquy of Marburg, Luther and Melanchthon on the one side and Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius on the other discussed the nature of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper (the Protestant form of the Catholic Eucharist) but failed to come to an agreement. The fundamental principle that every man could arrive at truth by study of the Bible also led many to more radical conclusions than those that Luther adopted. The preacher known as Carlstadt (from the place of his birth) argued for a more thoroughgoing dismissal of old practices and doctrines in Wittenberg itself and caused Luther to emerge from his retirement to halt the progress of radicalism. The Peasants' War (1524–25) showed plainly the rifts within the ranks of the rebels, and Luther, forced to choose between the revolutionary peasants and their opponents, the princes, chose the princes and orderly governance. The lower classes then in large measure followed more revolutionary social leaders, such as the communistic Thomas Münzer and John of Leiden. After their revolution had been brutally put down and the leaders tortured and executed, many of the revolutionary peasants returned to Roman Catholicism, but many continued to foster more radical sects, such as the Anabaptists.

In general the princes were able to dictate what religion should prevail in their territories, and they opposed vigorously the attempt of the Holy Roman emperor to force them back into the old church. The Knights' War (1522–23), led by Franz von Sickingen against the ecclesiastical princes, ended in failure, but the determination of Charles V to extirpate Lutheranism ultimately ended in even more abject failure. The imperial Diet of Speyer in 1526 found no answer to the division of the empire, and when a new Diet of Speyer in 1529 ordered that the emperor's ruling against the heretics should be enforced, the Lutheran princes issued a defiant protest (from which the term Protestant is derived). The Diet of Augsburg in 1530 was equally fruitless in producing a compromise between Catholic and Lutheran princes, but it did produce the Confession of Augsburg (see creed), which was drafted by Melanchthon and became the official statement of Lutheran faith.

The conflict in the empire led the Protestant princes to form a defensive union against the emperor in the Schmalkaldic League, in which the chief figures were Philip of Hesse and John Frederick I of Saxony. The league was put down in the Schmalkaldic War (1546–47), which did not, however, in the least solve the problem. Emperor Charles V, in an effort to prolong the uneasy peace, proposed to the Protestants that there be an interim agreement against change until a general church council could legislate on the dispute. This was the so-called Augsburg Interim (1548), which did not take effect because it was rejected by the Protestant princes. The confusion that political considerations brought to the religious issue is perhaps best seen in the career of Maurice, duke of Saxony, who fought first on one side, then on the other.

A sort of peace of exhaustion and compromise was reached in the Peace of Augsburg (1555; see Augsburg, Peace of). The settlement was at best uneasy and was not to endure except in principle. The conflict was merged with many other issues in the later Thirty Years War (1618–48).

Calvin and the Spread of Protestantism

The message of the Reformation spread quickly throughout Europe (except Russia). The Scandinavian countries became firmly Protestant under Gustavus I of Sweden and Frederick I of Denmark and Norway; later attempts to win them back to Catholicism failed. Geneva had become in 1536 the headquarters of John Calvin, who is considered by many the greatest theologian of Protestantism. His Institutes of the Christian Religion, published at Basel in 1536, marked a new era in thought. He differed from Luther principally in the doctrine of predestination (the foregone choosing by God of the elect to be saved), in the austerity of the life of the godly, and in the emphasis on theocratic government (see Calvinism). His influence was immediate and enormous. France, which had hardly been touched by Lutheranism, was fired by Calvinist doctrine, and the Protestant minority, called the Huguenots, waged fierce battle against the Catholic majority in the Wars of Religion until toleration was won when the Huguenot leader Henry of Navarre turned Catholic, became King Henry IV, and issued (1598) the Edict of Nantes.

Calvinism superseded Lutheranism in the Netherlands, where the religious revolt was coupled with revulsion at the policies of Charles V and his successor, Philip II of Spain. Through bloody wars independence and Calvinism gained the upper hand in the N Low Countries. Calvinism conquered Scotland, too, through the victory of John Knox in his long duel with Mary Queen of Scots. It spread also to Hungary and Poland and took root in parts of Germany.

It proved quite impossible to reconcile the finely wrought theology of Calvinism with Lutheran doctrines, for Lutheranism rejected predestination and clung to part of the sacramental system (see Lord's Supper). Calvinist thought did greatly influence the course of the Reformation in the British Isles and the present United States. There was also a conflict of Lutheranism and Calvinism with the more radical and emotional groups, and the enthusiasm of preachers who interpreted Scripture in their own way met with a cool reception among the Calvinists.

The divisions within Protestantism were from the beginning sharp, and attempts to reconcile Calvinist, Lutheran, and other doctrine had only partial success. Moreover, in England the Reformation went its own course. It was there much more closely connected with the conflict of church and state than was the Reformation on the Continent. The conflict of King Henry VIII with Rome led to the Act of Supremacy (1534), which firmly rejected papal control and created a national church (see England, Church of). Currents of Calvinistic thought were, however, strong in England. The Reformation was begun with the creation of a state church and the dissolution of the monasteries. It was given Calvinist touches under Edward VI, suffered a complete reversal under Mary I, and reached a sort of balance under Elizabeth I with some persecution of both Catholics and Calvinists. The process was to work itself out slowly later in the English civil war, just as the fierce hatreds between Protestant and Protestant as well as between Catholic and Protestant were to be worked out later on the Continent.

The burning of Servetus was a sample of the internal strife within Protestantism itself. The divisions within the churches of the Reformation also served to forward the Counter Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church, which rewon Poland, Hungary, most of Bohemia, and part of Germany. The end of the Thirty Years War in the Peace of Westphalia (see Westphalia, Peace of) in 1648 brought some stabilization, but the force of the Reformation did not end then. It has continued to exert influence to the present day, with its emphasis on personal responsibility and individual freedom, its refusal to take authority for granted, and its ultimate influence in breaking the hold of the church on life and consequent secularization of life and attitudes.

Bibliography

See T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation (2 vol., 1906–7; repr. 1971); E. M. Hulme, The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reformation in Modern Europe (rev. ed. 1917); P. Smith, The Age of the Reformation (1920, repr. 1962); A. Hyma, The Christian Renaissance (1924); R. H. Murray, The Political Consequences of the Reformation (1926, repr. 1960); R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926); M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (tr. 1930); C. Hopf, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation (1946); R. H. Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (1952, repr. 1965) and Studies on the Reformation (1963); G. G. Coulton, Art and the Reformation (rev. ed. 1958); H. S. Lucas, The Renaissance and the Reformation (2d ed. 1960); H. J. Grimm, The Reformation Era, 1500–1650 (rev. ed. 1965); G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe, 1517–1559 (1966); A. G. Dickens, Reformation and Society in 16th-Century Europe (1966), The English Reformation (1967), and The Reformation in Historical Thought (1985); N. Sykes, The Crisis of the Reformation (1967); H. J. Hillerbrand, The World of the Reformation (1973); L. W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation, 1517–1559 (1984); D. MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (2004); P. Collinson, The Reformation (2004).


 
History 1450-1789: Protestant Reformation

The term Reformation refers in general to the major religious changes that swept across Europe during the 1500s, transforming worship, politics, society, and basic cultural patterns. One key dimension was the Protestant Reformation, the movement that began in 1517 with Martin Luther's critique of doctrinal principles and church actions in Germany and that led to the establishment of new official churches—the Lutheran, the Reformed or Calvinist, and the Anglican. These were separate from the Latin Catholic Church in organization and different from it in theology. Many other dissident groups and individuals, collectively known as the Radical Reformation, also emerged during the turmoil of the 1520s and 1530s, building communities despite frequent persecution. Ongoing efforts to reform the old church took on new urgency in response to these challenges, leading to a distinct Catholic Reformation. The Protestant Reformation affected patterns of change in Europe through Protestant theology's shifting theological emphases, through Protestant piety's emphasis on reading and knowledge, and through new alignments between organized churches and politics.

Because of the complex course and multiple outcomes of the Reformation movements, historians today speak of multiple Reformations during the first two-thirds of the 1500s—the Protestant, the Radical, and the Catholic; the urban, the peasants', and the princely; or the German, French, and British. The Protestant Reformation was embedded in larger processes that included the emergence of national states, new encounters with the outside world, and deep socioeconomic shifts. The breakdown of religious unity and the establishment of multiple churches in this era highlights the central role that religion played in early modern European self-understanding. Doctrinal and ceremonial changes had consequences for every aspect of society, from family life and gender roles to art and philosophy. As we learn more about different historical actors and their varying goals, we can no longer view the Reformation as a single conflict between Luther and the popes or as a single movement, positive or negative. Rather, we must approach the Reformation by looking carefully at the spiritual aspirations, the cultural frameworks, and the material circumstances of the people whose lives it transformed.

The idea of reformation had a long history in Western thought before 1500, with two main meanings: to modify in general (to reform) and to improve something by returning it to its original state (to re-form, or restore). St. Augustine's statement that "man is not able to reform himself as he is able to deform himself" durably connected reformation with individual conversion and divine grace, although during the Middle Ages the word could refer to any systematic change. Because the term implied renewal or even rebirth, it could also be associated with the renaissance of classical learning. By the late 1300s, the "reformation" of monasteries became a central goal of the Observant movements that sought to restore the principles of their orders' founders, and by the 1400s, calls for a "reformation in head and members" of the entire church had become loud.

When evangelical thinkers in the early 1500s called for radical changes in the church, they too described their project as a "reformation," as did those who sought to improve the church from within. Most sixteenth-century reformers hoped that a single purified church would be the outcome, while others saw religious division as a sign of the imminent Apocalypse. Only after 1600, when it became clear that the division among western European Christians was permanent, did the term "Reformation" become the name for the movements that created the division as well as for the period during which the division took place.

Antecedents of the Reformation

Scholars have pointed to several developments during the 1400s as possible forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. Developments in formal theology, in broader cultural life, and in different European regions all confirm the continuity between the Reformation and earlier historical processes. For example, disputes among academic theologians raised issues similar to those later addressed by Luther and other Reformation thinkers. Late medieval followers of St. Thomas Aquinas's via antiqua ('old path') argued against adherents of the via moderna ('new path') developed by William of Ockham (1280–1349), while mystical thinkers sought to bypass the confining procedures of Scholastic theology entirely. Particularly in the 1400s, learned churchmen disagreed about such fundamental issues as God's sovereignty, the place of human effort in gaining salvation, and the effects of sin and grace on the human soul. With the growth of universities and the spread of printed books around 1500, many more thinkers became aware of these debates about the fundamentals of Christian faith, setting the stage for Reformation controversies.

Other scholars point to the Renaissance and particularly to humanist philology as preparing the ground for religious turmoil. Although few historians today see the Renaissance as the birth of modern individualism, the recovery of Greek and Latin texts on philosophy and philology during the 1400s did spur intellectuals to look at the writings of the church fathers and the Bible in new ways. Even when motivated by orthodox zeal, careful printed editions and new translations of sacred texts raised new questions about the way the church interpreted its mission. Italian humanists such as Lorenzo Valla led the way in applying the new philology to sacred texts, but the humanist with the greatest impact in northern Europe was Erasmus of Rotterdam. In addition to editing both classical literature and the church fathers, Erasmus in 1516 issued the first printed edition of the New Testament in Greek, together with a new Latin translation that changed the meaning of several key passages. Erasmus was also a best-selling author of Latin textbooks—such as Encomium Moriae (1511; English translation, In Praise of Folly, published 1549)—that savagely mocked popular superstitions and greedy clergymen.

Finally, the Protestant Reformation shared important features with the Hussite movement that swept through Bohemia in the early 1400s. The teachings of Jan Hus contained several ideas that Luther later engaged: an emphasis on God's grace over human works in salvation, a harsh critique of the papacy, and a call for lay Bible reading in local vernaculars. Moreover, Hus's ideas gained support in Bohemia from a coalition of burghers, nobles, and peasants who combined Czech resentment of German dominance with aspirations for a just Christian society. Anger about the special privileges that priests enjoyed and about the fiscal impact of an international church on local societies heightened anticlerical feelings across Europe at this time. Luther's recognition that he shared Hus's ideas accelerated his break with the papacy, and Protestant propaganda later named Hus among its martyrs. Although the Hussite movement was limited to Bohemia after Hus's execution for heresy in 1415, it revealed how potent the combination of anti-clericalism, lay enthusiasm for new ideas, and effective preaching could be.

Early Protestant Movements in Germany

All across Europe after 1500, reformist clerics sought to reform church organization, to purify religious practice, and to intensify individual piety. In Italy educated priests such as Gasparo Contarini combined prayer and study while organizing groups to improve church services for the laity. In France a group around Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples also called for an evangelical renewal of the church. They, like John Colet in England, turned to the Epistles of St. Paul in their efforts to better understand God's will, as would Luther. Among all these groups, humanist ideas and connections played an important role. Evangelical ideas were therefore widespread in Europe, yet the course of reform differed enormously from place to place. To understand this variation, argues historian Euan Cameron, we must analyze the different coalitions that formed and sometimes dissolved around evangelical ideas.

The emergence of separate Protestant churches could not have taken place without the movement's early breakthrough in the Holy Roman Empire, where Martin Luther was the critical figure. Luther's doctrinal views took shape during the 1510s, but the Protestant Reformation as a movement began with the response that he evoked among German clergy, nobles, and common people in the 1520s. This response grew rapidly because of the force of Luther's writing and because evangelical texts were printed not just in Latin but also in pithy German summaries and in illustrated versions. Moreover, criticism of the Roman church was already widespread in Germany, as were lively popular piety and interest in correct religious practice. Many early adherents saw Luther as a German champion against a corrupt Roman hierarchy and its financial abuses, and approved of his attacks on the special status of the clergy; others found spiritual consolation in his understanding of salvation, thought that his calls for "spiritual freedom" would bring about a just world with lighter burdens, or shared his belief in an imminent Apocalypse. Luther's precise theological arguments about justification and grace, meanwhile, mostly influenced engaged clerics and other spiritually focused individuals.

After 1519 another evangelical center emerged in Zurich, where Huldrych Zwingli began preaching sermons that combined humanist critiques of the church and its ceremonies with theological ideas similar to Luther's. Zwingli's ideas quickly became popular in south German cities and in parts of the Swiss Confederation. Although the southern movement remained separate from Luther's, ultimately giving rise to the Reformed and Calvinist churches, both spread evangelical ideas throughout German society. The earliest representatives of the Radical Reformation also emerged during the early 1520s from the circles around Luther and Zwingli; while they joined Luther and Zwingli in attacking the existing church, they often called for radical reform of society and eventually diverged on key doctrinal issues as well.

Political and social tensions converged with new religious ideas to produce a mass movement in the empire, partly because many German and Swiss towns and even villages enjoyed considerable autonomy. During the decisive years between 1518 and 1521, moreover, political circumstances in Germany delayed action against Luther. Luther had powerful supporters among both churchmen and lay leaders, including his lord Frederick the Wise of Saxony, whereas the death of Emperor Maximilian and the struggle to elect his successor Charles V preoccupied the imperial authorities. By the time Luther was excommunicated in 1520 and banned by the empire in 1521, he had already become a national hero. The early Reformation coalitions in Germany thus included clergy, some nobles, and many townspeople and peasants.

After Luther refused to recant at the Diet of Worms in 1521, ordinary people in many German towns called for "preaching the pure Gospel." They enjoyed support from committed members of the local elites—often younger men with humanist educations. Through the 1520s, many German cities edged cautiously toward open rejection of Rome, and by 1530, a substantial majority had joined the Lutheran or Zwinglian "Reformation in the cities." It is striking how radically new converts during these years rejected practices such as the veneration of images, in which they had often participated right up to the introduction of evangelical ideas. Adopting the Reformation brought about sharp changes in daily ritual that everyone could see.

The German peasants also hoped that "Godly law" would help liberate them from their burdens. In 1525 during the German Peasants' War, many of them refused to pay dues, sacked monasteries and castles, and gathered into huge armed bands. Hundreds of peasant communes formulated demands that were ultimately distilled into the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasantry. These demanded the "pure Gospel," local election of priests, an end to serfdom, and free access to commons and forests. Specific Bible verses justified each of the articles, thus linking spiritual renewal to social change. Although poorer townspeople joined the movement in some areas, the German nobility brutally suppressed the uprising. Luther too condemned the peasants, although he had initially recognized the justice of some of their demands. The defeat of the "common man" in 1525 shifted Reformation coalitions in Germany toward urban elites and the territorial nobility, decisively shaping later developments.

For defenders of the old church, the Peasants' War proved that the evangelical movement was subversive. Luther's supporters among Germany's princes and magistrates also sought to control popular turmoil. They faced the challenge of rebuilding territorial church organization in a way that reflected the new teachings while taking account of social and political pressures. This required both gaining legal recognition for their faith and establishing a clearer definition of what they believed. Luther and his key supporter Philipp Melanchthon drew up a comprehensive statement of Lutheran principles, the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and published new catechisms to instruct the laity. The process of consolidation led to heightened repression against dissenters of all kinds. Fearing that Satan sought to destroy the Gospel by encouraging fanaticism, Luther supported the organization of new hierarchical churches under princely control.

After it became clear that neither church would gain a clear majority among the princes, prelates, and towns in the empire, both sides built up alliances, such as the Schmalkaldic League, which linked princely territorial ambitions with the defense of Lutheran doctrine. In 1546 the emperor sought a military solution in the Schmalkaldic War. The effects of his initial victory quickly evaporated amid political maneuvering, however, creating a deadlock that led to the Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The peace decreed that political rulers within Germany could choose between the Catholic and Lutheran faiths for their entire territories: dissidents had to depart or face official persecution. The dynamic evolution of Reformation coalitions thus left the German-speaking world mixed in religious confession, with decisive power over religion in the hands of territorial rulers. Confessional division had a deep and lasting effect on German identity, churches, and politics.

Protestant Movements Outside Germany

The Protestant Reformation followed diverse paths outside the Holy Roman Empire, generally as a minority movement. The first adherents were often intellectuals who read Luther's Latin writings. With few exceptions, those in charge of both churches and governments remained hostile to the Reformation for at least a generation, rigorously persecuting those who sought to introduce it from Germany. Even where Roman authority was rejected early, as in England, Reformation coalitions appeared later, grew more slowly, and attracted fewer influential patrons than in Germany. Partly because of this delay, the form of Protestantism that had the greatest impact outside Germany was based on John Calvin's views rather than on Luther's.

The historian Heiko Oberman suggests that we view the Reformation outside Germany as a "reformation of the refugees," since so many leading figures had to flee from persecution. Calvin himself was a refugee who left France in 1534 during an early crackdown against French evangelicals. During stays first in Strasbourg and then in Geneva, he developed views that differed in important ways from the Lutheran tradition. Calvin shared Luther's belief in justification by faith but adopted a different interpretation of Communion. Calvin and his followers also wanted churches that were more independent from secular control than the Lutheran territorial churches. After Zwingli died in battle against the Catholic Swiss in 1531, his successor Heinrich Bullinger also sought to clarify the doctrine that separated the Zurich church from Catholics and Lutherans. Discussions among Bullinger, Calvin, and other Reformed theologians produced the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 and the Heidelberg Catechism of 1562, important models for later Calvinist confessions of faith. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin produced a systematic Reformed guide to doctrine. Calvinism expanded into France after the 1550s and spread through parts of Germany, the Netherlands, and eastern Europe. It also predominated in the theology (but not the organization) of the Anglican Church in England after 1558.

The emergence of new churches and the consolidation of a reformed Catholic Church confronted Europeans after the 1530s with a complex spiritual landscape. To understand how different Reformation coalitions formed, evolved, and sometimes collapsed, we need to consider the social position of early adherents, the political system, the nature of earlier heretical or anti-Roman ideas, and the international pressures each region faced. The Reformation outside Germany generally lacked peasant participation. It was an urban and professional movement whose most important early activists came from the younger clergy. In France the decision of some nobles to protect Reformation thinkers allowed the movement to grow despite harsh persecution. However, noble support also entangled evangelical religion with factional political disputes that led to vicious religious wars after 1560. In northern Europe the attitudes of monarchs were critical: Henry VIII's decision to break with Rome opened the way for the later spread of Protestantism in England, as did Gustav I Vasa's combination of Swedish independence with Lutheran conversion. Elsewhere, kings suppressed the Reformation using mechanisms such as the Inquisition in Spain or special courts in France. The previous history of religious dissent and the vitality of local humanist movements also affected local Reformation coalitions. In Bohemia, for example, the surviving Hussite church made common cause with the Reformers. The strength of humanism in Italy ensured that serious consideration of evangelical reform within the church continued into the 1550s under the protection of humanist-influenced bishops. Finally, external circumstances shaped the different Reformation coalitions. In the Netherlands, Calvinism became part of a national war against Spanish rule, while the Reformation in Scotland depended on relations between England and France. In eastern Europe political opponents of the Habsburg dynasty often turned to the Lutheran or Calvinist faiths.

Significance of the Reformation

Scholarly views of the Reformation have often reflected religious and ideological perspectives. Protestant historians portrayed it as a moment of heroic recovery from medieval "corruption," while some Catholic historians attacked it as a catastrophic out-break of undisciplined individualism. Nineteenth-century liberal descendants of Protestantism argued that Martin Luther's appeal to conscience represented the "birth of individual liberty," and saw the origins of the modern secular state in conflicts over the free practice of religion. Marxist historians argued that the popular appeal of Luther made him part of an "early bourgeois revolution," while the rebellious peasants were proletarians before their time.

Recent studies of the Reformation more often emphasize its social dimension, going beyond the doctrinal issues that divided Europeans. Because religion helped shape every aspect of European life, the practices of the new churches caused major changes. Sacramental ceremonies from baptism to last rites had long marked key moments in the lives and families and communities. By abolishing or changing the sacraments, Protestantism challenged the social meaning of these rituals. The Protestant attack on clerical celibacy emptied monasteries and nunneries and led to a married clergy. This shattered older understandings about sexuality and personal holiness and led to intensified debate about the role of women in society. New ideas about piety caused the abolition of many public festivals in Protestant regions, often against popular resistance. Poor relief and charity meant something different when they no longer served as rich people's way to perform penance.

In politics the fact that the church had been a political as well as spiritual power led to realignments at every level from villages to international diplomacy. Religious adherence became an important factor in political alliances until the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. The emerging Protestant states of northern Europe were strengthened by the windfalls of property they seized from their churches, and gained new authority over daily life through their tight control over the Protestant clergy. Current research concentrates especially on confessionalization, that is, the organizational consolidation of churches and identities along confessional lines. Of particular interest is the question of whether the Reformations—Catholic and Protestant—opened the way for European states to impose new standards of ethical and sexual behavior on their populations. Among intellectuals, debates among the emerging faiths challenged fundamental understandings about the relation of the individual conscience to God, about how sinful humans should live together in ordered societies, and ultimately about the sources of truth and authority. The confidence of the early reformers gave way later in the 1500s to bitter debates among theologians about ever smaller matters on the one hand, and to calls for the forcible reimposition of unity on the other. In contrast, arguments for greater toleration of dissent and skepticism about whether humans could really know God's will were met with repression throughout the 1500s.

Some thinkers have looked to the Reformation to explain the profound transformation of Europe between 1500 and the present. Notably, the sociologist Max Weber proposed that the religious culture of Protestantism, with its emphasis on Bible reading and ethical self-scrutiny, had produced habits that favored the emergence of modern capitalism, especially among Calvinists. Many other thinkers have probed the contrast between a Protestant "religion of the Word" and a Catholic religion focused on action and emotion, often suggesting that Protestant or radical views "disenchanted" the world to produce a more modern worldview. Today, most historians who study the cultures of Protestant and Catholic Europe are more cautious. Major cultural changes did not correlate in a simple way with religious difference. Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that the larger population only slowly absorbed the formal agendas of Protestantism and renewed Catholicism. It therefore seems unlikely that differences in religious doctrine can entirely explain later developments. Instead, current research seeks to include both the spiritual meaning and the social consequences of Europe's Reformations in efforts to explain Europe's early modern history.

Bibliography

Benedict, Philip. Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism. New Haven, 2002. Definitive study of the Reformed and Calvinist developments from the perspective of social history.

Brady, Thomas A., Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds. Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Leiden and New York, 1994. Scholarly assessments of major issues in European history during this period.

Cameron, Euan. The European Reformation. Oxford and New York, 1991. Comprehensive survey suitable for advanced readers, emphasizing the importance of varying coalitions.

Dickens, A. G., and John Tonkin. The Reformation in Historical Thought. Cambridge, Mass., 1985. Reprint 1999. Explores changing perceptions of the Reformation's course and significance.

Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester, U.K., and New York, 2002. Best survey of the Protestant movements in German-speaking Switzerland.

Karant-Nunn, Susan C. The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany. London and New York, 1997. Explores how changes in ritual transformed religious life in Germany after 1520.

Mc Grath, Alister. Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Oxford, 1999. An accessible introduction to Protestant theology with emphasis on key doctrinal issues.

Oberman, Heiko A. Luther: Man between God and the Devil. Translated by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart. New Haven, 1989. Sets Luther's career in context of late medieval developments and later interpretations.

O'Malley, John W. Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2000. Explores changing understandings of reform and Reformation in a Catholic context.

Scribner, Robert W. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1994. Pathbreaking study of visual propaganda.

Scribner, Robert W., Roy Porter, and Mikulás Teich, eds. The Reformation in National Context. Cambridge, U.K., 1994. Concise introductions to the course of the Reformation in Western and Eastern European contexts.

Tracy, James. Europe's Reformations, 1450–1650. Lanham, Md., 1999. Comprehensive survey, suitable for all readers, reflecting latest research and perspectives.

—RANDOLPH C. HEAD

 
Law Encyclopedia: Reformation
This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A remedy utilized by the courts to correct a written instrument so that it conforms to the original intent of the parties to such an instrument.

Legal documents, such as contracts, deeds, mortgages, and trusts, are all proper subjects for reformation. Since the original intent of the parties must control, however, a totally new agreement cannot be created through reformation.

The court, in the exercise of its equity powers to do justice, will reform a document only in the event that fraud or mutual mistake occurred in its execution.

Reformation is a remedy that is granted at the discretion of the court only where the facts and circumstances of a particular case warrant it. It will not be granted where an entirely new agreement would result between the parties or where unwarranted hardships would be imposed upon them. Only an individual who has acted in good faith can apply to the court to have an instrument reformed.

Reformation is not available as a remedy to correct every minor error, such as typographical errors; rather, it is granted where there has been a mutual mistake that substantially affects the parties' rights and obligations. The mistake must have been in existence at the time the instrument was drawn up. A mistake in the description of land and its boundaries ordinarily justifies reformation of an agreement where the purchaser and seller intended that all the seller's property be sold to the purchaser. In addition, a mistake of law by which both parties to the instrument have incorrectly comprehended the legal effect of the facts and the document might also result in reformation.

 
History Dictionary: Reformation

A religious movement in the sixteenth century that began as an attempted reform of the Roman Catholic Church but resulted in the founding of Protestant churches separate from it. Some of the leaders of the Reformation were Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox. The Reformation was established in England after King Henry VIII declared himself head of the Christian Church in that country.

 
Wikipedia: Protestant Reformation
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Protestant Reformation
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The Reformation
History and origins
History of Protestantism
Movements and denominations
Protestantism


Protestant Reformers
Precursors

See also Template:Protestant

The Protestant Reformation was a movement in Europe that began with Martin Luther's activities in 1517 and ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.[1] The movement began as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church and led to the fracturing of Christendom. Many western Christians were troubled by what they saw as false doctrines and malpractices within the Church, particularly involving the teaching and sale of indulgences. Another major contention was the practice of buying and selling church positions (simony) and the tremendous corruption found at the time within the Church's hierarchy. This corruption was systemic at the time, even reaching the position of the Pope.[2]

On 31 October 1517, in Saxony (in what is now Germany), Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses On the Power of Indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, which served as a pin board for university-related announcements. These were points for debate that criticized the Church and the Pope. The most controversial points centered on the practice of selling indulgences and the Church's policy on purgatory. Luther's spiritual predecessors were men such as John Wycliffe and John Hus. Other reformers, such as Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, soon followed Luther's lead. Church beliefs and practices under attack by Protestant reformers included purgatory, particular judgment, devotion to Mary, the intercession of the saints, most of the sacraments, and the authority of the Pope.

The most important Protestant groups to emerge directly from the reformation were the Lutherans, the Reformed/Calvinists/Presbyterians, the Anabaptists, and the Anglicans. Subsequent Protestant denominations generally trace their roots back to the initial Reformation traditions. It also accelerated the Catholic or Counter Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church.

The Protestant Reformation is also referred to as the "Protestant Revolution", "Protestant Revolt", and, in Germany, the "Lutheran Reformation".

History and origins


See also: History of Protestantism

Mainstream Protestants generally trace their separation from the Roman Catholic Church to the 16th century, which is sometimes called the Magisterial Reformation because the movement received support from the magistrates, the ruling authorities (as opposed to the Radical Reformation, which 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 it was led by a majority of Bohemian nobles and recognized for a time by the Basel Compacts, this was the first Magisterial Reformation in Europe. In Germany a hundred years later, the protests erupted in many places at once, during a time of threatened Islamic Ottoman invasion¹ which distracted German princes in particular. To some degree, the protest can be explained by the events of the previous two centuries in Europe and particularly in Bohemia.

Roots and precursors: 14th century and 15th century

Unrest in the Western Church and Empire, culminating in the Avignon Papacy (1308–1378) and the Great Schism (13781416), excited wars between princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the monastic system. 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. The Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of Constance (14141418). The conclave condemned Jan Hus, who was executed by burning in spite of a promise of safe-conduct. Wycliffe was posthumously burned as a heretic.

The Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of Church and Empire. It did not address the national tensions, or the theological tensions which had been stirred up during the previous century. The council could not prevent schism and the Hussite Wars in Bohemia.

Historical upheaval usually yields much new thinking as to how society should be organized. This was the case leading up to the Protestant Reformation. Following the breakdown of monastic institutions and scholasticism in late medieval Europe, accentuated by the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the failure of the Conciliar m