Everything about Protestant Reformation totally explained
The
Protestant Reformation was a reform movement in
The Holy Roman Empire that began in 1517, though its roots lie further back in time. The Reformation involved cultural, economic, political and religious aspects. It began with
Martin Luther and ended with the
Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The movement began as an attempt to reform the
Catholic Church. Many western
Catholics 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 what was seen at the time as considerable corruption within the Church's hierarchy. This corruption was seen by many at the time as systemic, even reaching the position of the
Pope.
On
31 October 1517, in
Saxony (in what is now Germany), Martin Luther nailed his
Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the
Wittenberg Castle Church, which served as a notice board for university-related announcements.
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 movement, the sixteenth century saw the fomenting of a great cultural debate about religious reforms and later fundamental religious values (See
German mysticism). Historians would generally assume that the failure to reform (too many vested interests, lack of coordination in the reforming coalition) would eventually lead to a greater upheaval or even revolution, since the system must eventually be adjusted or disintegrate, and the failure of the Conciliar movement helped lead to the Protestant Reformation in Europe. These frustrated reformist movements ranged from
nominalism,
devotio moderna (modern devotion), to
humanism occurring in conjunction with economic, political and demographic forces that contributed to a growing disaffection with the wealth and power of the
elite clergy, sensitizing the population to the financial and moral corruption of the secular
Renaissance church.
The outcome of the
Black Death encouraged a radical reorganization of the economy, and eventually of European society. In the emerging urban centers, however, the calamities of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century, and the resultant labor shortages, provided a strong impetus for economic diversification and technological innovations. Following the Black Death, the initial loss of life due to famine, plague, and pestilence contributed to an intensification of capital accumulation in the urban areas, and thus a stimulus to trade, industry, and burgeoning urban growth in fields as diverse as banking (the
Fugger banking family in
Augsburg and the
Medici family of
Florence being the most prominent); textiles,
armaments, especially stimulated by the
Hundred Years' War, and mining of iron ore due, in large part, to the booming armaments industry. Accumulation of surplus, competitive
overproduction, and heightened competition to maximize economic advantage, contributed to civil war, aggressive
militarism, and thus to centralization. As a direct result of the move toward centralization, leaders like
Louis XI of France (1461–1483), the "spider king", sought to remove all constitutional restrictions on the exercise of their authority. In
England,
France, and
Spain the move toward centralization begun in the thirteenth century was carried to a successful conclusion.
But as recovery and prosperity progressed, enabling the population to reach its former levels in the late 15th and 16th centuries, the combination of both a newly-abundant labor supply as well as improved productivity, were 'mixed blessings' for many segments of Western European society. Despite tradition, landlords started the move to exclude
peasants from "
common lands". With trade stimulated, landowners increasingly moved away from the
manorial economy. Woolen manufacturing greatly expanded in
France,
Germany, and the
Netherlands and new textile industries began to develop.
The invention of
movable type would lead to the Protestant zeal for translating the Bible and getting it into the hands of the laity. This would advance the culture of Biblical literacy.
The "humanism" of the
Renaissance period stimulated unprecedented academic ferment, and a concern for
academic freedom. Ongoing, earnest theoretical debates occurred in the universities about the nature of the church, and the source and extent of the authority of the papacy, of councils, and of princes.
16th century
The protests against Rome began in earnest when
Martin Luther, an
Augustinian monk and professor at the university of
Wittenberg, called in 1517 for a reopening of the debate on the sale of
indulgences. Luther's dissent marked a sudden outbreak of a new and irresistible force of discontent which had been pushed underground but not resolved. The quick spread of discontent occurred to a large degree because of the
printing press and the resulting swift movement of both ideas and documents, including the
95 Theses. Information was also widely disseminated in manuscript form, as well as by cheap prints and woodcuts amongst the poorer sections of society.
Parallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of
Ulrich Zwingli. These two movements quickly agreed on most issues, as the recently introduced
printing press spread ideas rapidly from place to place, but some unresolved differences kept them separate. Some followers of Zwingli believed that the Reformation was too conservative, and moved independently toward more radical positions, some of which survive among modern day
Anabaptists. Other Protestant movements grew up along lines of mysticism or humanism (
cf. Erasmus), sometimes breaking from Rome or from the Protestants, or forming outside of the churches.
After this first stage of the Reformation, following the
excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of
John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland,
Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere.
The Reformation foundations engaged with
Augustinianism. Both Luther and Calvin thought along lines linked with the theological teachings of
Augustine of Hippo. The Augustinianism of the Reformers struggled against
Pelagianism, a heresy that they perceived in the Catholic church of their day. In the course of this religious upheaval, the
Peasants' War of 1524–1525 swept through the
Bavarian,
Thuringian and
Swabian principalities, leaving scores of Catholics slaughtered at the hands of Protestant bands, including the
Black Company of
Florian Geier,a knight from
Giebelstadt who joined the peasants in the general outrage against the Catholic hierarchy.
Even though Luther and Calvin had very similar theological teachings, the relationship between their followers turned quickly to conflict. Frenchman
Michel de Montaigne told a story of a Lutheran pastor who once claimed that he'd rather celebrate the mass of Rome than participate in a Calvinist service.
The political separation of the
Church of England from Rome under
Henry VIII, beginning in 1529 and completed in 1536, brought England alongside this broad Reformed movement. However, religious changes in the English national church proceeded more conservatively than elsewhere in Europe. Reformers in the Church of England alternated, for centuries, between sympathies for Catholic traditions and Protestantism, progressively forging a stable compromise between adherence to ancient tradition and Protestantism, which is now sometimes called the
via media.
Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli are considered Magisterial Reformers because their reform movements were supported by ruling authorities or "magistrates". Frederick the Wise not only supported Luther, who was a professor at the university he founded, but also protected him by hiding Luther in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach. Zwingli and Calvin were supported by the city councils in
Zurich and
Geneva. Since the term "magister" also means "teacher", the Magisterial Reformation is also characterized by an emphasis on the authority of a teacher. This is made evident in the prominence of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as leaders of the reform movements in their respective areas of ministry. Because of their authority, they were often criticized by
Radical Reformers as being too much like the Roman Popes. For example, Radical Reformer Andreas von Bodenstein Karlstadt referred to the Wittenberg theologians as the "new papists".
Humanism to Protestantism
The frustrated reformism of the humanists, ushered in by the
Renaissance, contributed to a growing impatience among reformers.
Erasmus and later figures like Martin Luther and Zwingli would emerge from this debate and eventually contribute to another major schism of Christendom. The crisis of theology beginning with
William of Ockham in the fourteenth century was occurring in conjunction with the new
burgher discontent. Since the breakdown of the
philosophical foundations of
scholasticism, the new
nominalism didn't bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God. New thinking favored the notion that no religious
doctrine can be supported by philosophical arguments, eroding the old alliance between
reason and
faith of the medieval period laid out by
Thomas Aquinas.
The major individualistic reform movements that revolted against medieval scholasticism and the institutions that underpinned it were:
humanism,
devotionalism, (see for example, the
Brothers of the Common Life and
Jan Standonck) and the observatine tradition. In
Germany, "the modern way" or devotionalism caught on in the universities, requiring a redefinition of God, who was no longer a rational governing principle but an arbitrary, unknowable will that can't be limited. God was now an unknowable absolute ruler, and religion would be more fervent and emotional. Thus, the ensuing revival of Augustinian theology, stating that man can't be saved by his own efforts but only by the grace of God, would erode the legitimacy of the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works and get into
heaven. Humanism, however, was more of an educational reform movement with origins in the
Renaissance's revival of
classical learning and thought. A revolt against
Aristotelian logic, it placed great emphasis on reforming individuals through eloquence as opposed to reason. The European Renaissance laid the foundation for the Northern humanists in its reinforcement of the traditional use of
Latin as the great unifying
cultural language.
The polarization of the scholarly community in Germany over the
Reuchlin (1455–1522) affair, attacked by the elite clergy for his study of
Hebrew and Jewish texts, brought Luther fully in line with the humanist educational reforms who favored
academic freedom. At the same time, the impact of the Renaissance would soon backfire against traditional Catholicism, ushering in an age of reform and a repudiation of much of medieval Latin tradition. Led by Erasmus, the humanists condemned various forms of corruption within the Church, forms of corruption that might not have been any more prevalent than during the medieval zenith of the church.
Erasmus held that true religion was a matter of inward devotion rather than outward symbols of ceremony and ritual. Going back to ancient texts, scriptures, from this viewpoint the greatest culmination of the ancient tradition, are the guides to life. Favoring
moral reforms and de-emphasizing
didactic ritual, Erasmus laid the groundwork for Luther.
Humanism's intellectual
anti-clericalism would profoundly influence Luther. The increasingly well-educated
middle sectors of Northern Germany, namely the educated community and city dwellers would turn to Luther's rethinking of religion to conceptualize their discontent according to the cultural medium of the era. The great rise of the burghers, the desire to run their new businesses free of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices, contributed to the appeal of humanist
individualism. To many,
papal institutions were rigid, especially regarding their views on just price and
usury. In the North, burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration for not paying any
taxes to the nation, but collecting taxes from
subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to the Pope in
Italy.
These trends heightened demands for significant reform and revitalization along with anticlericalism. New thinkers began noticing the divide between the priests and the flock. The clergy, for instance, were not always well-educated. Parish priests often didn't know
Latin and rural parishes often didn't have great opportunities for theological education for many at the time. Due to its large landholdings and institutional rigidity, a rigidity to which the excessively large ranks of the clergy contributed, many
bishops studied
law, not theology, being relegated to the role of property managers trained in administration. While priests emphasized works of religiosity, the respectability of the church began diminishing, especially among well educated
urbanites, and especially considering the recent strings of political humiliation, such as the apprehension of
Pope Boniface VIII by
Philip IV of France, the "Babylonian Captivity", the Great Schism, and the failure of Conciliar reformism. In a sense, the campaign by
Pope Leo X to raise funds to rebuild
St. Peter's Basilica was too much of an excess by the secular
Renaissance church, prompting high-pressure indulgences that rendered the clergy establishments even more disliked in the cities.
Luther borrowed from the humanists the sense of individualism, that each man can be his own priest (an attitude likely to find popular support considering the rapid rise of an educated urban middle class in the North), and that the only true authority is the
Bible, echoing the reformist zeal of the
Conciliar movement and opening up the debate once again on limiting the authority of the Pope. While his ideas called for the sharp redefinition of the dividing lines between the
laity and the clergy, his ideas were still, by this point, reformist in nature. Luther's contention that the human will was incapable of following good, however, resulted in his rift with Erasmus finally distinguishing Lutheran reformism from
humanism.
Religious influences for the Reformation
While there were some parallels between certain movements within humanism and teachings later common among the Reformers, the Reformation's principal arguments were based on "direct" Biblical interpretation. The Catholic Church had for several centuries been the main purveyor in
Europe of non-secular humanism: the
Neoplatonism of the
scholastics and the neo-Aristotelianism of
Thomas Aquinas and his followers had made humanism a part of Church
dogma. This was of course due to the Catholic Church's use of historic, religious tradition (including the
Canonization of
Saints) in the forming of its
liturgy. Thus, when Luther and the other reformers adopted the standard of
sola scriptura, making the Bible the sole measure of theology, they made the Reformation a reaction against the humanism of that time. Previously, the Scriptures had been seen by some as the pinnacle of a hierarchy of sacred texts, and on par with the
oral traditions of the Church.
The Protestants emphasized such concepts as justification by "faith alone" (not faith and good works or infused righteousness), "Scripture alone" (the Bible as the sole
inspired rule of faith, rather than the Bible plus tradition), "the priesthood of all believers" (eschewing the special authority and power of the Catholic sacramental priesthood), that all people are individually responsible for their status before God such that talk of mediation through any but Christ alone is unbiblical. Because they saw these teachings as stemming from the Bible, they encouraged publication of the Bible in the common language and universal
education.
Part of the revolt was an
iconoclasm, seen in Huldrych Zwingli, but particularly amongst the radical reformers. Iconoclastic riots took place in Zürich (in 1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Geneva (1535), Augsburg (1537) and Scotland (1559). John Calvin took a more moderate stance to Zwingli and the Anabaptists, but preferred a more simple aesthetic, to the excesses of the Middle Ages.
The Reformation didn't happen in a vacuum, as there were movements for centuries calling for a return to Biblical teachings, the most famous being from Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and the
Waldensians. It is no surprise that their teachings were later found in the Reformation, as they imbibed from the same source.
While it's true that there were calls for religious, doctrinal, and moral reformation within and without the institutional church for centuries, apparently it was the invention of the
printing press which allowed quick broadcasting of ideas, the rise in nationalistic fervor, the increasing availability of the Bible to the public, and popular discontent at the moral corruption in the church to coalesce in support for a reformation as never before.
Many unskilled laborers had been squeezed from the countryside into the cities and suffered from the over-crowding and high prices that can follow such a quick and voluminous influx of new citizens. Discontented and morally righteous, the lower classes embraced the most radical theological options opened up by the religious revolution and were ready to follow leaders rising within their ranks, who urged them to band together against immorality and decadence. The
Drummer of Niklashausen and later the
Anabaptist preachers railed against landowners who took control of increasing areas, kings centralizing control, and princes looking for increased tax revenues to fund their growing states.
The Anabaptists and other radical leaders were condemned by the Lutherans and nationalistic Germans. Nearly every country in Europe saw a flare-up of failed peasant revolts motivated by religious concerns and executed according to religious doctrine. The Hungarian Peasants' War (1514), the revolt against
Charles V in
Spain (1520), the discontent of the lower classes in
France with the excessive taxes levied by
Louis XI, and the secret associations which prepared the way for the great
Peasants' War of the lower classes in Germany (1524), show that discontent wasn't confined to any one country in Europe.
Lutheranism adopted by the German princes
Luther, like Erasmus, in the beginning favoured maintaining the bishops as an elite class for administrative purposes, though he denied that their succession from the Apostles gave their consecration any special sacramental value. And while Luther rejected many of the Catholic
sacraments, as well as salvation by grace alone through both faith and good works (as opposed to the Protestant "faith alone") and indulgences, he firmly upheld the sacraments of
Baptism and the
Eucharist. Transubstantiation was most fully spelled out by the medieval scholastics, who agreed that the elements, once consecrated, remained the body and blood of Christ and could be adored as such. Traditionally, the consecrated bread and wine were held to become, substantially, the body and blood of Christ (
transubstantiation).
Luther affirmed a theology of the
Eucharist called
Real Presence, a doctrine of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist which affirms the real presence yet upholding that the bread and wine are not "changed" into the body and blood; rather the divine elements adhere "in, with, and under" the earthly elements. He took this understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist to be more harmonious with the Church's teaching on the Incarnation. Just as Christ is the union of the fully human and the fully divine (cf. Council of Chalcedon) so to the Eucharist is a union of Bread and Body, Wine and Blood. According to the doctrine of real presence, the substances of the body and the blood of Christ and of the bread and the wine were held to coexist together in the consecrated Host during the communion service. While Luther seemed to maintain the perpetual consecration of the elements, other Lutherans argued that any consecrated bread or wine left over would revert to its former state the moment the service ended. Most Lutherans accept the latter.
A Lutheran understanding of the Eucharist is distinct from the Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist in that Lutherans affirm a real, physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist (as opposed to either a "spiritual presence" or a "memorial") and Lutherans affirm that the presence of Christ doesn't depend on the faith of the recipient; the repentant receive Christ in the Eucharist worthily, the unrepentant who receive the Eucharist risk the wrath of Christ.
Luther, along with his colleague
Philipp Melanchthon, emphasized this point in his plea for the Reformation at the
Reichstag in 1529 amid charges of
heresy. But the changes he proposed were of such a fundamental nature that by their own logic they'd automatically overthrow the old order; neither the Emperor nor the Church could possibly accept them, as Luther well knew. As was only to be expected, the edict by the
Diet of Worms (1521) prohibited all innovations. Meanwhile, in these efforts to retain the guise of a Catholic reformer as opposed to a heretical revolutionary, and to appeal to German princes with his religious condemnation of the peasant revolts backed up by the
Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, Luther's growing conservatism would provoke more radical reformers.
At a religious conference with the Zwinglians in 1529, Melanchthon joined with Luther in opposing a union with
Zwingli. There would finally be a schism in the reform movement due to Luther's belief in
real presence—the real (as opposed to symbolic) presence of Christ at the Eucharist. His original intention wasn't schism, but with the
Reichstag of Augsburg (1530) and its rejection of the Lutheran "Augsburg Confession", a separate Lutheran church finally emerged. In a sense, Luther would take theology further in its deviation from established Catholic dogma, forcing a rift between the humanist Erasmus and Luther. Similarly, Zwingli would further repudiate ritualism, and break with the increasingly conservative Luther.
Aside from the enclosing of the lower classes, the middle sectors of Northern Germany, namely the educated community and city dwellers, would turn to religion to conceptualize their discontent according to the cultural medium of the era. The great rise of the burghers, the desire to run their new businesses free of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices contributed to the appeal of individualism. To many, papal institutions were rigid, especially regarding their views on just price and
usury. In the North, burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration for not paying any taxes to the nation, but collecting taxes from subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to Italy. In Northern Europe Luther appealed to the growing national consciousness of the German states because he denounced the Pope for involvement in politics as well as religion. Moreover, he backed the nobility, which was now justified to crush the Great Peasant Revolt of 1525 and to confiscate church property by Luther's
Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. This explains the attraction of some territorial princes to Lutheranism, especially its Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. However, the Elector of Brandenburg, Joachim I, blamed Lutheranism for the revolt and so did others. In Brandenburg, it was only under his successor Joachim II that Lutheranism was established, and the old religion wasn't formally extinct in Brandenburg until the death of the last Catholic bishop there,
Georg von Blumenthal, who was
Bishop of Lebus and sovereign
Prince-Bishop of Ratzeburg.
With the church subordinate to and the agent of civil authority and peasant rebellions condemned on strict religious terms, Lutheranism and German nationalist sentiment were ideally suited to coincide.
Though
Charles V fought the Reformation, it's no coincidence either that the reign of his nationalistic predecessor
Maximilian I saw the beginning of the Reformation. While the centralized states of western Europe had reached accords with the Vatican permitting them to draw on the rich property of the church for government expenditures, enabling them to form state churches that were greatly autonomous of Rome, similar moves on behalf of the Reich were unsuccessful so long as princes and prince bishops fought reforms to drop the pretension of the secular universal empire.
The Reformation outside Germany
Switzerland
Scandinavia
All of
Scandinavia ultimately adopted Lutheranism over the course of the sixteenth century, as the monarchs of
Denmark (who also ruled
Norway and
Iceland) and
Sweden (who also ruled
Finland) converted to that faith.
In Sweden the Reformation was spearheaded by
Gustav Vasa, elected king in 1523. Friction with the pope over the latter's interference in Swedish ecclesiastical affairs led to the discontinuance of any official connection between Sweden and the papacy from 1523. Four years later, at the Diet of Västerås, the king succeeded in forcing the diet to accept his dominion over the national church. The king was given possession of all church property, church appointments required royal approval, the clergy were subject to the civil law, and the "pure Word of God" was to be preached in the churches and taught in the schools—effectively granting official sanction to Lutheran ideas. and, through it, all other
Presbyterian churches worldwide.
Netherlands
The Reformation in the Netherlands, unlike in many other countries, wasn't initiated by the rulers of the
Seventeen Provinces, but instead by multiple popular movements, which in turn were bolstered by the arrival of Protestant refugees from other parts of the continent. While the
Anabaptist movement enjoyed popularity in the region in the early decades of the Reformation, Calvinism, in the form of the
Dutch Reformed Church, became the dominant Protestant faith in the country from the 1560s onward.
Harsh persecution of Protestants by the Spanish government of
Phillip II contributed to a desire for independence in the provinces, which led to the
Eighty Years' War and eventually, the separation of the largely Protestant
Dutch Republic from the Catholic-dominated
Southern Netherlands, the present-day
Belgium.
Hungary
Much of the population of
Hungary adopted Protestantism during the sixteenth century. After the
1526 Battle of Mohács the Hungarian people were disillusioned by the ability of the government to protect them and turned to the faith which would infuse them with the strength necessary to resist the invader. They found this in the teaching of the Protestant Reformers such as Luther. The spread of Protestantism in the country was aided by its large ethnic German minority, which could understand and translate the writings of
Martin Luther. While Lutheranism gained a foothold among the German-speaking population,
Calvinism became widely embraced among ethnic Hungarians.
In the more independent northwest the rulers and priests, protected now by the
Habsburg Monarchy which had taken the field to fight the Turks, defended the old Catholic faith. They dragged the Protestants to prison and the stake wherever they could. Such strong measures only fanned the flames of protest, however. Leaders of the Protestants included Matthias Biro Devai, Michael Sztarai, and Stephen Kis Szegedi.
Protestants likely formed a majority of Hungary's population at the close of the sixteenth century, but
Counter-Reformation efforts in the
seventeenth century reconverted a majority of the kingdom to Catholicism. A significant Protestant minority remained, most of it adhering to the Calvinist faith.
France
Though he wasn't personally interested in religious reform,
Francis I (1515–47) initially maintained an attitude of tolerance, arising from his interest in the
humanist movement. This changed in 1534 with the
Affair of the Placards. In this act, Protestants denounced the mass in placards that appeared across France, even reaching the royal apartments. The issue of religious faith having been thrown into the arena of politics, Francis was prompted to view the movement as a threat to the kingdom's stability. This led to the first major phase of anti-Protestant persecution in France, in which the
Chambre Ardente ("Burning Chamber") was established within the
Parlement of Paris to handle with the rise in prosecutions for heresy. Several thousand French Protestants fled the country during this time, most notably
John Calvin, who settled in
Geneva.
Calvin continued to take an interest in the religious affairs of his native land and, from his base in Geneva, beyond the reach of the French king, regularly trained pastors to lead congregations in France. Despite heavy persecution by
Henry II, the
Reformed Church of France, largely
Calvinist in direction, made steady progress across large sections of the nation, in the urban
bourgeoisie and parts of the
aristocracy, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment.
French Protestantism, though its appeal increased under persecution, came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the noble conversions of the 1550s. This had the effect of creating the preconditions for a series of destructive and intermittent conflicts, known as the
Wars of Religion. The civil wars were helped along by the sudden death of
Henry II in 1559, which saw the beginning of a prolonged period of weakness for the French crown. and outrage became the defining characteristic of the time, illustrated at its most intense in the
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots were killed across France. The wars only concluded when
Henry IV, himself a former Huguenot, issued the
Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's
Edict of Fontainebleau—which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion of France. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau,
Frederick William of
Brandenburg declared the
Edict of Potsdam, giving free passage to French Huguenot refugees, and tax-free status to them for 10 years.
Conclusion and legacy
The Reformation led to a series of religious wars that culminated in the
Thirty Years War. From 1618 to 1648 the Catholic
Habsburgs and their allies fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, supported by
Denmark and
Sweden. The Habsburgs, who ruled
Spain,
Austria,
the Spanish Netherlands and most of
Germany and
Italy, were the staunchest defenders of the Catholic Church.
The Reformation Era came to a close when Catholic
France allied herself, first in secret and later on the battlefields, with the Protestants against the Habsburgs.
Christians living in principalities where their denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to practice their faith in public during allotted hours and in private at their will.
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