History of Protestantism

Protestantism originated from the ideas of several theologians starting in the 12th century, although there could have been earlier cases of which there is no surviving evidence. However, these ideas were a subject to persecution by the Roman Catholic Church, and thus were kept isolated or effectively eradicated up to the 16th century. One of the early Protestant reformers was John Wycliffe, a theologian and an early proponent of reform in the 14th century. He influenced Jan Hus, a Czech priest from Prague, who in turn influenced German Martin Luther, who sparked the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church.

Martin Luther wrote Ninety-Five Theses on the sale of indulgences in 1517. At the same time, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli. The political separation of the Church of England from Rome under Henry VIII brought England alongside the broad Reformation movement. The Scottish Reformation of 1560 decisively shaped the Church of Scotland.

Following the excommunication of Luther, the Pope condemned the Reformation and its followers. The work and writings of John Calvin helped establish a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. In the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 swept through Bavaria, Thuringia and Swabia. The confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648, leaving the agglomeration severely weakened.

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