AP European History
AP European History
By the mid-1500s, the Scandinavian countries, following the leads of their monarchs, had become strong Lutheran nations.
Switzerland’s 13 cantons were split. Ulrich Zwingli, a humanist and Protestant reformer, preached a more radical Protestantism. Under Zwingli’s leadership, the Zurich city council decreed Protestant reforms and created a state-run church. Artwork and music were banned from churches, and recognition of papal authority and the veneration of saints were rejected. An alliance with the Lutherans floundered on the issue of consubstantiation; Zwingli believed that the bread and wine were only symbols and did not contain the real spirit of Christ. By late 1531, civil war broke out between the Protestant and Catholic Swiss cantons, a war in which Zwingli died.
The even more radical Anabaptists, who often faced persecution by both Protestants and Catholics, usually lived apart, in their own communities. All members of the community were considered equals. Believing that membership in the Christian community should be an adult choice, they baptized only adults, and they read the Bible literally. Anabaptists adhered to a strict separation of church and state, and refused to hold public office, pay taxes that could be used for military purposes, or serve in the army. Most Anabaptist communities were pacifist. A shocking exception was the Anabaptist takeover of Munster in the 1534, followed by its fall in a siege by an army of Catholics and Lutherans.
Menno Simons, an important leader of the Dutch Anabaptists, reinvented and spread the religion. His followers, called Mennonites, carried it throughout Europe and eventually to North America.
While Lutheranism dominated the first half of the sixteenth century, Calvinism dominated the latter half. Born and educated in France, John Calvin, a humanist scholar and lawyer, read smuggled works of Martin Luther and became convinced that the Catholic Church needed reformation. By the 1530s, French Protestants, known as Huguenots, faced persecution by the Crown, and Calvin fled to Geneva, a city that became the center of his brand of Protestantism. It was there that Calvin wrote Institutes of the Christian Religion, a summary of his beliefs, in 1536.
Calvin’s theology resembled Luther’s but differed in several respects. First, Calvin believed in predestination – that God determines before birth who will be saved and who will be damned. According to Calvin, a person could never know whether he or she was among the elect or the damned. Many of his followers in Geneva believed that they were among the chosen and so should legislate morality. They removed artwork from churches, banned dancing and singing, prohibited drinking and gambling, and punished what they considered heretical religious beliefs. Calvin’s followers also promoted hard work and dignified labor – this is the origin of the “Puritan work ethic.” Second, although Luther relied on the German princes to establish state-run churches and promote his beliefs, he believed in a degree of separation between church and state. Calvin, however, believed in theocracy; to that end, the Geneva city council established religious laws to govern the city.
Calvinism became the theological basis of the Puritan movements in Scotland, England, the Netherlands, and France and had an enormous impact worldwide, partially motivating the settlement of some of the North American colonies. Under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland, Calvinism emerged as the theological basis of the Presbyterian Church, which became the national church of Scotland, despite the fact that the monarchy under James V and Mary Queen of Scots was Roman Catholic.
Unlike Martin Luther, who split from the Roman Catholic Church because of theological differences, King Henry VIII initiated the English Reformation because he wanted to divorce his wife. Henry and Catherine of Aragon had one child, Mary. In 1527, wanting a male heir and in the midst of an affair with Catherine’s lady in waiting, Henry sent Cardinal Wolsey to request an annulment from the pope. Denied his request, Henry demanded an annulment from the English ecclesiastical court. Parliament took legal action to cut off papal authority, and in 1533, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, granted the king his annulment. He married a pregnant Anne Boleyn, who then gave birth to Elizabeth. In 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made Henry the head of the English Church. Coupled with the Treason Act, which made it a capital crime to deny that the king was the head of the Church, this act completed the break with the Catholic Church. Henry had a total of six wives and fathered only one more heir, Edward, the son of Jane Seymour.
Under Henry VIII, the theology of the Church of England changed very little, other than rejecting papal authority and closing monasteries. The Book of Common Prayer and the other theological changes that shaped the Church of England were introduced largely during the reign of his son, King Edward VI. This is an important point to remember when comparing and contrasting Reformation beliefs.
After Henry’s death, in 1547, his son, Edward VI, became king. Under the guidance of Archbishop Cranmer and other Protestant leaders, Parliament enacted new laws that established a more Protestant theology and provided for clerical marriage and the elimination of artwork from Anglican churches. Following sickly Edward’s death in 1553, his oldest sister, Mary Tudor, ascended to the throne and tried to re-Catholicize England. Nicknamed “Bloody Mary,” she married Philip II of Spain, convinced Parliament to enact Catholic legislation, and instituted an English Inquisition, burning Protestant heretics at the stake. In 1558, after Mary’s death, Elizabeth became queen, taking over a nation in religious chaos. During her rule, England experienced the Elizabethan Renaissance, became involved in overseas exploration, and grew into a world power. Elizabeth I worked with Parliament to repeal the pro-Catholic legislation and to pass a new Act of Supremacy making her the head of both the government and the Church of England. This act, combined with the Act of Uniformity and the Thirty-nine Articles, comprised the Elizabethan Settlement, which revised the theology of the Church of England so that it was not as radical as the theology under Edward VI. For example, artwork was reinstated in the churches and some prayers that were more acceptable to former Catholics were reintroduced. Elizabeth was a politique, a political ruler who subordinated religious differences in favor of political unity. The settlement worked well except for a minority of radical Catholics and Puritans, who felt that the compromise betrayed true religion. Elizabeth cracked down on the radicals and, for the most part, religion was not a divisive issue during her reign.
Largely based on the power of the English navy, Elizabeth’s foreign policy promoted the wealth and power of England. Elizabeth supported sea-dogs, such as Sir Francis Drake, and provided aid to Protestants who faced persecution in France and the Spanish Netherlands. As tensions between England and Spain mounted and personal animosity between Philip II and Elizabeth intensified, Elizabeth agreed to the execution of Mary Stuart, known as Mary Queen of Scots, in 1587. This action became the final catalyst for the launching of the Spanish Armada; its defeat in 1588 started the decline of Spanish power and secured the power of Protestant England.
Be sure that you do not confuse Mary Tudor with Mary Stuart. Mary Tudor was Queen Mary I of England. Mary Stuart was Mary Queen of Scots, a cousin of Elizabeth and Mary Tudor. Mary I was married to Philip II of Spain and ruled England from 1553 to 1558. Mary Stuart was finally executed after evidence revealed that she was involved in a plot with the Spanish to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and take over the English throne. Both Mary I and Mary Queen of Scots were Catholic.