"How great a fire, a little matter kindleth"

The Fourfold Religious Reformation of Europe

It can undeniably be said, that Emperor Constantine transformed the Christian Church and had a tremendous lasting influence on its character throughout the centuries of its history.  By declaring religious tolerance through edicts, gifting public buildings for places of worship; by establishing councils of bishops to debate and determine universal church teaching and practice; placing church leaders under obligation to his leadership; granting them freedom from manual labor or public office and tax free status, the Roman Emperor effectively changed the entire culture and presentation of the church.  Constantine changed the humble Jewish religious sect of local congregants meeting together to worship and study the teachings of Christ and his Apostles, into a universal, Roman government-sanctioned religious bureaucracy of councils and courts, generously endowed by the State and housed in lavish edifices.

 Christian dissent of this transformation was existent down through the centuries, often marginalized as ‘heretical’ by the established and sanctioned Universal or Catholic Church.  Donatists, Monatists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathari, Albigenses, Arnoldists, Lollards, Hussites, Waldensians and others were all demonized and persecuted by this catholic Church down through the centuries for their resistance and solidarity against the established teachings, forms and rituals of the universal Church.  Due to the wealthy Lords and Bishops having domination over the poorer classes of inhabitants, no real protest or resistance to the powerful universal Church could ever effect lasting change.

 Following the Black Death plague and subsequent power struggles in leadership that occurred amongst the various principalities of Europe, more of the learned elite began to doubt the supremacy of Rome.  The Emperor’s foundations of state supremacy in matters of religion and church dogma were challenged by monks, priests, lawyers and princes.  The monk Martin Luther, the priest Zwingli, lawyer Calvin, and the princely King Henry VIII, arose to the forefront of religious dissension with Rome.

 When Luther dared nail his ninety-nine theses of disagreement with the Roman Catholic Church’s tenets and practices to the Wittenberg church door in 1517, he was summarily tried by a religious and political assemblage at the Diet of Worms. Those who agreed in spirit with Luther’s actions voiced protest against the assembly’s finding Luther guilty of the charge of heresy.  They would from thenceforth be known as ‘Protestants’. Though Luther spoke out against the Church’s corruption in the use of Indulgences as financial ‘payments’ for sins committed, and the licentiousness of priests supposedly celibate, his most effective proposal was that individuals could gain salvation from their sins by faith alone, without the aid or ministrations of the established Church. A byproduct of this concept  purported that  anyone who was able to read, could learn and understand God’s essential truth for themselves, building their own faith and teaching themselves the precepts of God’s true religion.  Luther dedicated himself to translate and print the entire Bible into the German tongue of his native land.

 These thought provoking seeds of individualism spread amongst the populations of European citizens already distrustful of the universal authority and legitimacy of the Roman Church.  Nationalism and support from local princes fueled the flames of Luther’s ‘purification’ of the Catholic Church and forever realigned many countries into independent secular and religious states outside of the direct control of the Pope in Rome. 

As Lutheranism spread across Europe, chiefly amongst German principalities discontent with the Italian Roman rule of the Pope, other influential personalities arose to speak out against the Catholic Church.  Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin took matters mentioned by Luther in his Theses a few steps further.  They essentially built upon Luther’s concepts and molded and shaped those sparks of light into a broader and fuller flame.

 John Calvin, a French expatriate lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland, who had humanist leanings and was encouraged by the independence of spirituality championed by Luther, proposed a statement of theology different from the established dogma of the universal Church.  His published writings, collectively called “The Institutes of Christian Religion”, detailed a plan for ‘Reformed’ churches, which eventually became nationalistic movements in several European countries.  Scotland developed Presbyterianism, based on John Calvin’s challenge to Papal and priestly intermediacy balanced with his belief that church congregants needed oversight from congregational consistories to keep them on the ‘straight and narrow’. In the Netherlands, Calvinist teachings were the foundational principles in the formation of the Dutch Reformed Church.  France experienced the development of the Huguenots, particularly among aristocratic and noble families discontent with the rule of the Papacy.  England was heavily influenced by John Calvin and his teachings, particularly amongst Puritan and Separatist sects desirous to see King Henry’s Anglican Church reform further from Popish practices.

Ulrich Zwingli, another Swiss protestant, encouraged by Luther’s efforts, spoke out in the Gross Munster church in Zurich, denouncing catholic religious images and practices as contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, proposing, unlike Luther, that the Eucharist was only symbolic of Christ’s presence. In step with the political thought of his Swiss peers and neighbors, Zwingli promoted a more egalitarian concept of church government without a hierarchy.  Some of the students under his tutelage, encouraged by these protestations against the traditional understandings of the Roman Catholic Church, went on to embrace even more radical practices, including Anabaptism.  Thus many of the principles of dissension originally and sporadically held by many of those classified as ‘Heretics’ since the days of Constantine, came to be more widely appreciated and acknowledged, being eventually promoted by priests and monks turned Anabaptist, namely Menno Simons and Michael Sattler.  Opposition to celibacy requirements for clergy, rejection of the saving merit of the Mass, adoption of adult baptism upon confession of faith, rejection of swearing of oaths, non-participation in civil warfare or government, and ascetically plain simplicity of deportment and lifestyle came to be hallmarks of Anabaptism as it was nourished in the nursery of Zwinglian reform.

England seems to have been affected by and benefitted from all of these varying Continental movements of reform. As King, Henry the VIII was an ardent supporter of the established Church and the Papacy.  So much so, that in the 1520’s, he actually published a paper condemning Luther as heretical, for which the Pope gratefully honored him with the title, ‘Defender of the Faith’, an appellation English monarchs still bear to this day.  Power disputes and political intrigues also influenced people’s opinions on this island state.  Frustrations came to a boiling point when the Pope refused to grant Henry a divorce from his wife, with whom he was displeased for not having produced him a male heir.  National independence and Royal sovereignty was seen locally in England as more important than the superfluous intimidations of the Roman Pope.  Henry’s parliamentary Act of Supremacy in 1534 severed the control of Rome over English affairs and cemented his power as head of the state and church in England.

In its Fourfold form, the religious reformation of the Christian Church in Europe has had lasting effect on the societies and cultures influenced by Christianity throughout the subsequent centuries and even today.  The religious minded inhabitants of the German principalities from the former Holy Roman Empire, which eventually formed the modern state of Germany, still have a predominantly moderate practice of religion, similar in spirit to the ‘not too drastic’ reforms that Luther initiated.  Switzerland, the Netherlands and England, which all embraced more decidedly specific reforms, have religiously developed more complex and detailed religious practices which in turn gave birth to many, many differing denominations in the New World.  Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Methodists being some of the largest and most influential variations of English Protestantism, have encircled the globe with their missionaries and evangelical gospels, converting thousands and transforming the dynamic of Christianity around the world.  In retrospect of Luther’s actions, it worthily bears repeating, ‘how great a fire, a little matter kindleth!’