Texts in Context:
The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
By Gabriel Blanchard
The wars of religion are nothing to the wars of religious historiography.
The Reformations
It may sound strange to speak of the Reformations, in the plural, rather than of the Protestant Reformation in the singular. However, it is much more accurate and useful, for two reasons.
One is that there was also a Catholic Reformation. This is often described as the Counter-Reformation, and not a few historians imply or say outright that this would never have happened without the impetus of Protestantism. But—without denying that Protestantism was indeed a major driving force in the reform of the Catholic Church, and especially shaped the concerns, conclusions, and anathemas issued at the Council of Trent (1545-1563)1—the fact is that reforming movements were already underway when Luther nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg. Several authors from our Bank, including Erasmus, More, Las Casas, and Teresa, were directly or indirectly involved in reform, independently of the birth of Protestantism.
Protestant Taxonomy
The other reason is that the expression “the Protestant Reformation” really encompasses around half a dozen movements (mostly but not solely in northern Europe), some of which were as hostile to one another as they were to Catholicism. Some were essentially driven by theology, while others were more social and political than anything else, with most (like the Catholic Church itself) partaking in both motives. Furthermore, most movements had at least two “wings,” one more conservative and conciliatory, and the other representing a more dramatic break with the past.
Nonetheless, since we cannot get into full detail about practically any of these movements, we may conveniently classify them in three groups:
- the Magisterial Reformers (Erastian type);
- the Magisterial Reformers (theocratic type); and
- the Radical Reformers.
The magisterial forms of Protestantism were given this name because they did not propose to do away with the Medieval Catholic idea of Christendom—that is, of an earthly, civil society that was itself understood to be Christian and that would encourage, if not enforce, Christianity by civil as well as religious means; theirs was a Christianity that expected not merely personal, but public and official, cooperation from magistrates. The distinction between the Erastian and theocratic types was essentially in whom they believed ought to hold the reins: the Erastians (primarily Anglicans and Lutherans) considered the head of the state to be the appropriate head of the church within the boundaries that state as well, while the theocratic view (associated chiefly with Calvinism2) was that the church ought to rule the state. What set the Radical Reformation apart from the Magisterial was its renunciation of the state’s coercive power; this was the beginning of those churches known as Anabaptist,3 such as the Amish, Mennonites, and most denominations which use the word “Brethren” in their names.
The Advance of the Protestant Reformations
Two major “waves” of Protestantism occurred, theologically speaking—one chiefly followed Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and Thomas Müntzer, taking place mainly in the territory of modern Germany and occurring mostly between 1517 (when it all began) and 1531 (Zwingli’s death—Münzer had been executed years before); this saw the birth and early growth of Lutheranism. The second saw the rise of John Calvin‘s doctrine, the schism of the Church of England from the Catholic Church, and the birth of Socinianism, the ancestor of many forms of Unitarianism.4 This second wave took place mainly between 1534 (the date of the Act of Supremacy in England) and 1545 (the opening of the Council of Trent).
However, the actual progress of Protestantisms did not neatly follow these phases of doctrinal development. Things zigzagged a great deal—a province might be Lutheran yesterday, Catholic today, and Calvinist tomorrow. Catholic reforms, both at Trent and independently of it, limited the spread of Protestant ideas in southern Europe; however, a different tale was to be told everywhere north of the Alps and the Pyrenees.
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room ...
The Kingdom of France
France endured wars that were simultaneously religious and dynastic from 1562 until 1598. When Henri III proved childless, the Calvinist Huguenots did battle with French Catholics for decades in support of Henri of Navarre as the heir to the throne. They won; and, to their exasperation, the newly-crowned Henri IV promptly converted to Catholicism, reportedly remarking, “Paris vaut bien une messe” (“Paris is worth a Mass”). However, His Most Christian Majesty also proclaimed the Edict of Nantes, which secured the right of the Huguenots to practice their religion—until another monarch revoked it: Henri IV’s grandson, Louis XIV, whose reign of over seventy-two years (1643-1715) is the longest of any monarch in recorded history. His 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau effectively forced Catholicism on all Frenchmen, save those who (illegally) emigrated to Protestant lands.
The British Isles
In England, Henry VIII notoriously declared himself head of the Church “as far as the law of God allows”; this provoked less outcry than one might have expected, perhaps partly because while he lived, the ceremonial and doctrine of the Church of England hardly changed at all.5 More changed under his son, Edward VI, but he died young after a short reign, and the country abruptly returned to Catholicism when his half-sister Mary took the throne. Mary had an even briefer reign and likewise died without issue, leaving the throne to the last Tudor, Elizabeth. She restored the Protestant Church, and it was under her that the Thirty-Nine Articles (still the formal doctrinal statement of the Church of England) were codified.
She was succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, King James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England; like Elizabeth, James was stubborn and shrewd, and his religious policy was a deft compromise between traditionalists who wanted to stop or reverse the de-Catholicization of the realm, and Puritans who wanted to carry it further. His son, Charles I, was equally stubborn but not shrewd or deft, and too fond of ritual for his own good: From 1639 to 1653, a series of conflicts raged in England, Ireland, and Scotland known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (the English Civil War is the most famous), which cost the king his head. For a time, England was a kingless Commonwealth. The monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1660, but England and Scotland had become implacably opposed to a Catholic king, and when Charles was succeeded by his Catholic brother James II in 1685, he held onto the throne only three years before it was usurped by his own son-in-law, William of Orange. Thereafter, Britain was a—if not the—pre-eminent Protestant power in Europe.
The Thirty Years’ War
But it was in the Empire that the worst of the wars would be fought. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 had enunciated the principle of cujus regio, ejus religio or “whose realm, his religion” (the who being the secular ruler, turning the Holy Roman Empire into a patchwork quilt of Catholic and Lutheran lordships). But tension continued to simmer, and in 1618 they broke out again, starting in Bohemia. In 1630, Sweden, a major Protestant power, joined the war against the Catholic emperor; in 1635, staunchly Catholic France did the same, prompted by rivalry with equally Catholic Spain—but both Spain and the Empire were ruled by Habsburgs, whom the French were encircled by and whose power they wished to reduce. In 1648, the fighting finally concluded; as many as eight million people, most of them civilians, had been killed, either by direct violence or by the diseases the war had spread; the Peace of Westphalia was signed, reiterating and solidifying the cujus regio rule (though now with a third option for rulers to select from the menu).
Other Trends
However, religious controversy was not the only thing going on in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For one thing, Catholics and Protestants were more or less of one mind when it came to witch hunts, and this—early Modernity, not the Middle Ages—was the witch-finders’ heyday.
It was also in these centuries that the first phase of European exploration and colonization took place, chiefly in the Americas. Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain were the most successful contenders, though the Danish and the Dutch got their fingers in the pie as well. In the following century, this would all blow up in their faces a bit; but that was yet to come.
1The Council of Trent did not meet continuously for this eighteen-year period. Due to difficulties both practical and political, it stopped and started again repeatedly. Its first sessions were held from 1545 to 1547; the council was then put on hold, resuming in 1551. In 1555, the reigning pope died, and his successor was an extreme anti-Protestant (and there had been Protestant representatives at Trent from the beginning), so the council was again frozen. It resumed in 1562, closing in 1563.
2As a rule, the term Calvinist is not well-liked by adherents of Calvin’s theology, who tend to prefer “Reformed” (capitalized when it has this meaning). We have used “Calvinist” here only to avoid confusion, since many partisans of the Protestant Reformation were not and are not, in the capitalized sense, Reformed.
3Anabaptists should not be confused with the similarly-named Baptist churches. Both share the belief that baptism should be administered only to self-professed believers (thus ruling out the baptism of infants). However, the former originated in German-speaking Central Europe, and are a strongly pacifistic tradition with a tendency toward cultural separatism, most observable among the Amish; the latter probably descend from the English Dissenters (a group of movements formed largely during the English Civil War), and are not generally pacifistic or separatist.
4Unitarians reject the doctrine of the Trinity; they acknowledge Jesus as a prophet and the savior of humanity, but do not consider him divine. Unitarian Universalism is perhaps the most widely-known variety of Unitarianism.
5Even the king’s three divorces (from Katharine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Anne of Cleves) were not, legally or canonically, divorces. On paper, they were annulments which the pope had not granted but the English Church—headed by the petitioner—would.
Gabriel Blanchard is a freelance writer contracting with CLT. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
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Published on 28th July, 2025. Page image of The Siege (Defense of a Church Courtyard During the Thirty Years’ War) (1848) by Carl Friedrich Lessing.