Lutheran Reformation

The Reformation (from Latin reformatio, literally "restoration, renewal"), also referred to as the Protestant Reformation and the European Reformation, was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther, and continued by John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other early Protestant Reformers in 16th century Europe. Most experts on the subject consider the publication of the Ninety-Five Theses by Luther in 1517 as its starting point, with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (concluding the Thirty Years' War) as its ending.

Necessary groundwork had been laid long before Luther with significant earlier attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church – such as those of Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe and especially Jan Hus, executed in 1415, whose successors became the chief force in the Kingdom of Bohemia for several centuries. Both Wycliffe and Hus preached against indulgences, criticized corruption of the clergy and opened other topics which under the later Luther became the key to Reformation.

Nevertheless, Martin Luther is widely acknowledged to have spread the Reformation with his 1517 work The Ninety-Five Theses. Luther, similar to Wycleff and Hus, criticized the sale 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.

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