Wikipedia
The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation (from Latin reformatio, "restoration, renewal"), was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther and continued by other early Protestant Reformers in Europe in the 16th century.
Although there had been significant earlier attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church before Luther – such as those of Jan Hus, Geert Groote, Thomas A Kempis, Peter Waldo, and John Wycliffe – Martin Luther is widely acknowledged to have started the Reformation with his 1517 work The Ninety-Five Theses. Luther began by criticizing the selling of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura and sola fide. The core motivation behind these changes was theological, though many other factors played a part, including the rise of nationalism, the Western Schism that eroded faith in the Papacy, the perceived corruption of the Roman Curia, the impact of humanism, and the new learning of the Renaissance that questioned much traditional thought.
The initial movement within Germany diversified, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The largest groups were the Lutherans and Calvinists. Lutheran churches were founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced the Church of England decisively after 1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, although the Church of England had been made independent under Henry VIII in the early 1530s for political rather than religious reasons.
There were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as the Radical Reformation, which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian and other Pietistic movements. Radical Reformers, besides forming communities outside state sanction, often employed more extreme doctrinal change, such as the rejection of the tenets of the late antique councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon.
The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent. Much work in battling Protestantism was done by the well-organised new order of the Jesuits. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, came under the influence of Protestantism. Southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central Europe was a site of a fierce conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years' War, which left it devastated.
Usage examples of "protestant reformation".
Jumping on her Lutheran bandwagon as well as on the rest of her, Henry imported the Protestant Reformation into England.
Cardinal de Guise in France will be very interested in the lengths the Jesuits are prepared to go to impose their fanaticism over the entire church, and not just to reclaim those lost to the Protestant Reformation.
This was the very land that had been seized from the Abbey of Fulda during the early days of the Protestant Reformation.
Considering itself an army against the newly established Protestant Reformation in Europe, its political and religious activism led to its rapid growth and great influence.
But beginning in the fifteenth century, around the time of the Protestant Reformation, the attitude of the Church changed.
With the Protestant Reformation and the Dutch rebellion, Marannos from Portugal found refuge in Amsterdam starting in 1593.
The Protestant Reformation, which began to affect England in the reign of Henry VIII (see page II-783), settled down at last into a typical English compromise under Elizabeth I.
She went on a tirade about the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, the burning of witches that had gone on for a century or more right to the very end of the history of Donnelaith, cruel cruel burnings.
And in Germany, adventurous scholars found themselves at oddswith the zealous spirit of the Protestant Reformation.
Painters after the Renaissance, and certainly after the Protestant Reformation, have not painted such pictures with the frankness that was natural to pre-Renaissance artists.
Presbyterianism is one of several Protestant denominations whose teachings derive from the theology of John Calvin, one of the original giants of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation.