Summary+-+Chapter+13+(Reformation+and+Religious+Wars)


 * __Reformation and Religious Warfare in the Sixteenth Century__**

//PS: This is taken STRAIGHT from the study guide.//

The great religious earthquake called the Reformation, which split the church into two and then into a dozen parts, was caused by a variety of social and economic developments. Still it depended upon the Renaissance humanism of its day for an intellectual rationale. Christian humanists, particularly in the north of Europe, led the movement to reform and purify the Catholic Church, even though some of them refused to be Protestants; and it was their writings which gave the Reformation its direction. The Reformation began with Martin Luther's criticism of the sale of indulgences and his subsequent excommunication. It spread from Germany to Switzerland through the works of John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli and to Scotland and Holland through the work of Calvin's disciples. Although in England the break with the Catholic Church came because Henry VIII wanted a divorce, the English Reformation grew more radical after Henry's death. Christendom fragmented. While northern Europe, with the notable exceptions of France, Poland, and Ireland, left the Catholic faith, the southern nations of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, as well as France and Austria, remained firmly Catholic. The Council of Trent, called too late to stop the permanent division, confirmed the Catholic teachings of the Middle Ages while implementing many of the reforms of practice advocated by Luther and Calvin. The Age of Reformation left all of the churches stronger in conviction yet at war with each other over authority. In France the Catholic establishment tried to wipe out the Protestant minority, the Huguenots, and came to an uneasy peace only with the Edict of Nantes. Philip II, who earned the title "Most Catholic King", blocked all Protestant activity in his Spanish kingdom but lost his Dutch provinces to the Protestant House of Orange and his naval armada to Protestant England. The English queen Elizabeth presided over the establisment of a national church that included most Englishmen but did not tolerate those who chose a different path. The modern world began with violent disputes about the will of God.