Lesson 12 of 12 · about 60 minutes · Updated October 28, 2026

Zwingli, Calvin and the Wider Reformation: The Reformed Churches, the Radicals, the English Church and the Counter-Reformation

You'll be able to

Trace the Zurich Reformation from Zwingli's first sermon on January 1, 1519, through the 67 Articles, the end of the Mass in 1525, Marburg in 1529 and his death at Kappel on October 11, 1531.
Explain what the first Anabaptists taught in their own words (the Schleitheim Confession of 1527), how Catholic and Protestant governments persecuted them, and why Munster (1534 to 1535) was a distinct current.
Describe Calvin's teaching from the Institutes and the church order of Geneva (the Ordinances and the Consistory), and state the documented facts of the Servetus case.
Outline the English Reformation from the Act of Supremacy of 1534 to the Elizabethan Settlement and the Thirty-Nine Articles, with sourced numbers for the Marian burnings.
Summarize the Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation (new orders, the Jesuits, the Inquisition, the Index) and quote the Council of Trent's decree on justification accurately.
Compare six sixteenth-century positions on the Lord's Supper and place the five Western church families of 1600 on a single map of the module.

Start here: the short version

Luther was not the only reformer, and Wittenberg was not the only center. In Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli began preaching straight through the Gospel of Matthew on January 1, 1519, and by 1525 the city council had ended the Mass. His circle split almost at once: a group of his own students baptized one another as adults in January 1525 and became the first Anabaptists, and Zurich answered by drowning Felix Manz in 1527. In Geneva, a French exile named John Calvin wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536, final Latin edition 1559), built a church order with elders and a Consistory, and approved the trial that ended with Michael Servetus burned on October 27, 1553. In England, Henry VIII broke with Rome for reasons of state in 1534, and the English church took its shape under Cranmer's prayer books, Mary I's burnings and the Elizabethan Settlement. The Catholic Church answered with new orders (the Theatines, the Capuchins, the Jesuits), the Roman Inquisition and, above all, the Council of Trent (1545 to 1563), whose decrees still define Catholic teaching on justification, Scripture and the sacraments. By 1600, Western Christianity had divided into Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Anabaptist churches, each with its own confession. This lesson tells each story first in that church's own documents, then from the record.

This is the last lesson of Part A. Lesson 11 followed Luther from the 95 Theses through Worms, the Augsburg Confession and the Peace of Augsburg. This lesson moves south and west to the Swiss cities, then to the radicals who thought the reformers had stopped halfway, then to Geneva, England, and the Catholic reform that met at Trent. The denominations that came out of this century (Lutheran synods, Reformed and Presbyterian churches, Anglicans, Baptists, Mennonites and others) each get a full treatment in module 80, so the later history of each church is left for there.

Zwingli in Zurich

The people's priest of the Great Minster

Huldrych Zwingli was a Swiss priest trained in the humanist schools of Vienna and Basel, a reader of Erasmus and the Greek New Testament, and a former chaplain to Swiss mercenary troops. The chapter of the Great Minster (Grossmunster) in Zurich elected him people's priest, the preaching pastor of the city's main church, by seventeen votes out of twenty-four on December 10, 1518, and he arrived in the city on December 27.¹ Philip Schaff, whose History of the Christian Church (volume 8, 1892) remains the fullest public domain account of the Swiss Reformation, records how he began: "Zwingli began his duties in Zurich on his thirty-sixth birthday (Jan. 1, 1519) by a sermon on the genealogy of Christ, and announced that on the next day (which was a Sunday) he would begin a series of expository discourses on the first Gospel."² (Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484, so by the usual count the day was his thirty-fifth birthday.) Preaching straight through a book was a break with the custom of following the assigned lectionary readings. Schaff adds that within four years Zwingli had preached through the whole New Testament except Revelation.²

Engraved half-length portrait of a man in a flat cap and dark gown, facing left, holding a book — Huldrych Zwingli (1484 to 1531), in a portrait print by Nicolaas Martinus Schild, published by Soetens and Fils, about 1837 to 1840, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The print was made three centuries after his death and follows the traditional likeness. Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Zwingli always insisted he had come to his views from Scripture and Erasmus before he read Luther, and he and Luther never fully trusted each other. The question of who influenced whom is still argued. What the record shows is that the Zurich reform followed its own order of events and was carried out, step by step, by vote of the city's councils.

The sausages of Lent, 1522

The open break came over food. During Lent of 1522, a group of Zwingli's friends, including his printer Christoph Froschauer, ate meat (the story has always been told as sausages) in Froschauer's house. Schaff gives the sequence: "During Lent, 1522, Zwingli preached a sermon in which he showed that the prohibition of meat in Lent had no foundation in Scripture. Several of his friends, including his publisher, Froschauer, made practical use of their liberty. This brought on an open rupture."³ The bishop of Constance sent a deputation to insist on the fasts, and the city council forbade the violation and threatened punishment on April 9, 1522.³ Zwingli defended those who had eaten, in preaching and in print. The principle at stake was larger than meat: whether a church law with no basis in Scripture could bind a Christian's conscience. The same year Zwingli and other priests petitioned the bishop to allow clergy to marry, and Zwingli himself was already secretly married to a widow, Anna Reinhart, a marriage he made public on April 5, 1524, more than a year before Luther married.⁴

The Sixty-Seven Articles and the disputations of 1523

The Zurich council called a public disputation to settle the dispute "on the sole basis of the Scriptures," and Zwingli wrote sixty-seven theses (in German, Schlussreden) for it.⁵ Schaff calls them "the first public statement of the Reformed faith." In his translation, the first articles read:⁵

1. All who say that the gospel is nothing without the approbation of the Church, err and cast reproach upon God.
2. The sum of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of his heavenly Father, and redeemed us by his innocence from eternal death, and reconciled us to God.

Article 18 states Zwingli's view of the Mass in a sentence: "Christ, who offered himself once on the cross, is the sufficient and perpetual sacrifice for the sins of all believers. Therefore the mass is no sacrifice, but a commemoration of the one sacrifice of the cross, and a seal of the redemption through Christ." Article 57 reads: "The Holy Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory after this life." Article 49 attacks clerical celibacy in blunt terms, and articles 37 and 38 say "All Christians owe obedience to the magistracy, provided it does not command what is against God."⁵

The first disputation met in the Zurich city hall on Thursday, January 29, 1523, "in the German language, before about six hundred persons, including all the clergy and members of the small and large Councils of Zurich."⁶ The bishop of Constance sent his vicar general, Johann Faber, "hitherto a friend of Zwingli," with three others.⁶ The Zurich method was that the magistrates, after hearing Scripture argued, decided, and that method itself was one of the things the bishop's side disputed. The council ruled that Zwingli should continue preaching and that the other clergy should preach only what they could prove from Scripture. A second disputation, on images and the Mass, began on October 26, 1523, and Schaff reports "about nine hundred persons, including three hundred and fifty clergymen and ten doctors."⁶

A Romanesque church with two square towers topped by domed caps, seen from below against a blue sky, with houses in front — The Grossmunster (Great Minster), Zurich, where Zwingli preached from 1519 and where the first Reformed communion was held in Holy Week of 1525. Photo taken August 4, 2011. Photo: Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The end of the Mass, 1525

Zurich moved in stages. Images were removed from the churches by order of the council in 1524.⁷ The Mass was ended by council vote in April 1525, and the first Reformed communion followed at once. Schaff describes it: "The first celebration of the communion after the Reformed usage was held in the Holy Week of April, 1525, in the Great Minster. There were three services, first for the youth on Maundy-Thursday, then for the middle-aged on Good Friday, and last for the old people on Easter. The celebration was plain, sober, solemn. The communicants were seated around long tables, which took the place of the altar."⁸ Schaff adds that the people "received in a kneeling posture the sacred emblems in wooden plates and wooden cups."⁸ The same years brought a theological school in Zurich, later called the Carolinum, and a Zurich German Bible from Froschauer's press, issued in a full edition in 1531.⁹

Marburg, 1529, and the Lord's Supper

The issue that divided Zurich from Wittenberg was the Lord's Supper. Zwingli read "This is my body" as "This signifies my body," and pointed to John 6:63, "it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (KJV). Luther held that Christ's body and blood are truly present in, with and under the bread and wine, and received by mouth. Philip of Hesse, who wanted a Protestant military alliance, brought both sides to his castle at Marburg in early October 1529. Luther wrote the words of institution in large letters on the table, "Hoc est corpus meum" ("This is my body"), and refused to move from them.¹⁰

The colloquy produced fifteen articles, drawn up by Luther at the landgrave's request. The two sides agreed on fourteen, covering the Trinity, the person of Christ, original sin, justification by faith, the Holy Spirit and baptism. The fifteenth, on the Supper, reads in Schaff's translation from the Zurich archive copy:¹⁰

We all believe, with regard to the Supper of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, that it ought to be celebrated in both kinds, according to the institution of Christ; that the mass is not a work by which a Christian obtains pardon for another man, whether dead or alive; that the sacrament of the altar is the sacrament of the very body and very blood of Jesus Christ; and that the spiritual manducation of this body and blood is specially necessary to every true Christian. ... And although at present we are not agreed on the question whether the real body and blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine, yet both parties shall cherish Christian charity for one another, so far as the conscience of each will permit; and both parties will earnestly implore Almighty God to strengthen us by his Spirit in the true understanding. Amen.

The articles were signed on the same day by Luther, Melanchthon and others for the Lutherans, and by Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer and Hedio for the Swiss and Strasbourg side.¹⁰ Luther refused Zwingli's offered hand of fellowship. Schaff reports that Luther thought Zwingli a "very good man" yet of a "different spirit."¹¹ The Marburg failure meant that the Lutheran and Reformed churches would grow as two separate families, a division that lasted into the twentieth century.

Kappel, October 11, 1531

Zwingli was a political reformer as well as a preacher. He hoped to see the whole Swiss Confederation reformed, and he backed Zurich's food blockade of the five Catholic forest cantons. Those cantons raised an army of about eight thousand and marched to the Zurich border near Kappel on October 9, 1531, and Zurich could gather only about fifteen hundred men in time.¹² Zwingli rode out with them as chaplain. Schaff, drawing on Bullinger's chronicle, writes that "The battle raged several hours in the afternoon of the eleventh of October," and that the Zurich forces lost "over five hundred men, including seven members of the Small Council, nineteen members of the Great Council of the Two Hundred, and several pastors." Bullinger's list gives 514 Zurich dead against about eighty for the Five Cantons.¹²

Zwingli was among them. Oswald Myconius, his friend and first biographer, recorded an eyewitness report of his last words, which Schaff translates: "What matters this misfortune? They may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul."¹³ The victors had his body quartered as a traitor and burned as a heretic, and the ashes were mixed with the ashes of swine.¹³ The Second Peace of Kappel (November 1531) left each canton to keep its own faith, a Swiss settlement that held the Confederation together, divided by religion, for centuries.

Bullinger and the Zurich church after Zwingli

Heinrich Bullinger, born at Bremgarten on July 18, 1504, was elected preacher of the Great Minster by the council and citizens on December 9, 1531.¹⁴ He led the Zurich church for more than forty years, until 1575, wrote an enormous correspondence that reached England, Hungary and Poland, and drafted the Second Helvetic Confession, which became a common confession for the Swiss Reformed churches. Schaff notes that Bullinger's theory of the sacrament was "higher than that of Zwingli," and in 1549 Bullinger and Calvin agreed on a common statement on the Supper, the Consensus Tigurinus (published at Geneva and Zurich in 1551),¹⁵ which joined the Zurich and Geneva churches into one Reformed family.¹⁴

Six answers to the question that divided the Reformation churches from Rome and from one another. Sources: Council of Trent, Session 13, chapter 4, and Session 22 (Waterworth translation, 1848); the fifteenth Marburg article (Schaff); Zwingli's 67 Articles (Schaff); Calvin, Institutes 4.17.32 (Beveridge translation); the Schleitheim Confession, article 3 (Wenger translation); Articles of Religion, article 28 (Church of England text). Drawn for this lesson from the sources cited.

The Radical Reformation

Historians use "Radical Reformation," a term made standard by George Huntston Williams's book of that name (1962), for the groups that went further than Luther, Zwingli or the city councils would go: Anabaptists, spiritualists who put the inner word above the outward church, and anti-Trinitarians. The largest and longest-lasting of them were the Anabaptists. The name means "rebaptizers" and was given by their opponents. They called themselves brethren, and from their own point of view they were not rebaptizing anyone, since they held that infant baptism was no baptism.

Zurich, January 1525: the first baptisms

Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz had studied Greek and Hebrew with Zwingli and pressed him to move faster: to end the Mass without waiting for the council, and to form a church of committed believers. The break came over baptism. The Zurich council held a disputation on infant baptism on January 17, 1525, ruled for Zwingli, and ordered parents to have their infants baptized and the radicals to stop meeting.¹⁶ A few days later, at a meeting in the house of Manz's mother in Zurich, Georg Blaurock, a former priest, asked Grebel to baptize him on confession of faith. The Hutterite chronicle, the movement's own record, describes the scene (in Schaff's quotation of the German original, here paraphrased in English): the group fell on their knees and prayed; Blaurock rose and asked Conrad to baptize him with the right, true Christian baptism on his faith and knowledge (the chronicle's words, translated here: "mit der rechten wahren christlichen Taufe auf seinen Glauben und seine Erkenntniss"); he knelt and was baptized by Grebel; and then he baptized all the others present, and they broke bread together in remembrance of Christ's death.¹⁷

The date most often given today is January 21, 1525. Schaff, writing in 1892, put the first rebaptism "in February, 1525, soon after the disputation," while quoting the scholar Cornelius that it happened "wenige Tage nach der Disputation des 18. Januar" (a few days after the disputation of January 18).¹⁷ Modern Mennonite and Hutterite histories give January 21 and name the house of Anna Manz as the place.¹⁸ The exact day is a reconstruction from the council records and the chronicle; the week is secure.

The Zurich council answers with drowning

Baptizing adults was an act against the city's law, and the city treated it as sedition as well as heresy, since baptism also enrolled a child in the civic community. Arrests, fines and banishments followed. Then the council threatened death. Schaff writes: "the magistracy proceeded to threaten those who stubbornly persisted in their error, with death by drowning. He who dips, shall be dipped, a cruel irony. It is not known whether Zwingli really consented to the death sentence, but he certainly did not openly oppose it."¹⁶

Felix Manz was the first. "He was bound, carried to a boat, and thrown into the river Limmat near the lake, Jan. 5, 1527. He praised God that he was about to die for the truth, and prayed with a loud voice, 'Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!' Bullinger describes his heroic death."¹⁶ Schaff counts "Six executions in all" in Zurich between 1527 and 1532, the last on March 23, 1532.¹⁶ Grebel had already died, in 1526. Blaurock was expelled and burned at Clausen in the Tyrol in 1529.¹⁶ Schaff, himself a Reformed church historian, judged that "Banishment in this case, as in that of Servetus, would have been severe enough."¹⁶

The Swiss record is small next to the empire's. The Diet of Speyer in April 1529, the same diet at which the Lutheran princes made their "protest," decreed that "every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex be put to death by sword, or fire, or otherwise."¹⁶ Catholic and Lutheran rulers alike enforced it, with the notable exceptions, Schaff notes, of Strasbourg and Philip of Hesse's territories, where they were treated more mildly.¹⁶

Schleitheim, February 24, 1527

On St. Matthias Day, February 24, 1527, a group of Swiss and South German Anabaptist leaders met at Schleitheim, near Schaffhausen, and agreed on seven articles, titled in German Bruderliche Vereinigung etzlicher Kinder Gottes sieben Artikel betreffend ("Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles"). The meeting was led by Michael Sattler, who is generally identified as the main author.¹⁹ The articles were printed within a few years and circulated widely, and Zwingli and Calvin each wrote refutations of them.

The text speaks for itself. These quotations are from the English translation by John C. Wenger, first published in the Mennonite Quarterly Review in 1945 (a modern translation, quoted briefly). The introduction says the brethren were "assembled in the Lord at Schleitheim on the Border" and are "of one mind to abide in the Lord as God's obedient children."²⁰ The seven articles are baptism, the ban (church discipline), the breaking of bread, separation from the abomination, pastors in the church, the sword, and the oath.²⁰

First. Observe concerning baptism: Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ, and to all those who walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and wish to be buried with Him in death, so that they may be resurrected with Him ... This excludes all infant baptism, the highest and chief abomination of the pope.²⁰

On the sword: "The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and puts to death the wicked, and guards and protects the good." Inside "the perfection of Christ, however, only the ban is used." The article concludes "it is not appropriate for a Christian to serve as a magistrate," since "The worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christians are armed with the armor of God."²⁰ On the oath: "Christ, who teaches the perfection of the Law, prohibits all swearing to His [followers], whether true or false."²⁰ The articles therefore did three things that alarmed every government of the time: they refused infant baptism (and with it the parish system), refused the sword and public office, and refused the civic oath, which bound citizens to their city.

Michael Sattler

Sattler had been prior of the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter in the Black Forest, the second office after the abbot. He was arrested with his wife Margaretha and others soon after Schleitheim, tried at Rottenburg am Neckar beginning on May 17, 1527, and sentenced on May 18.²¹ The sentence ordered that his tongue be cut, that his flesh be torn with hot tongs at several points, and that he be burned "to powder" as an arch-heretic. He was burned on May 20, 1527 (some sources give May 21). Margaretha refused offers of mercy in exchange for recanting and was drowned in the Neckar two days later.²¹ Rottenburg was under Habsburg Catholic rule, so Sattler's judges were Catholic, while Manz's were Reformed: the Anabaptists were persecuted by both sides.

Balthasar Hubmaier

Balthasar Hubmaier was a university-trained theologian (a doctor of theology from Ingolstadt) and the most learned early Anabaptist. As pastor at Waldshut and later at Nikolsburg in Moravia, he baptized hundreds, wrote treatises defending believers' baptism and arguing against the burning of heretics, and, unlike Schleitheim, accepted that a Christian might hold the sword as a magistrate. Schaff records his end: he "was burnt at the stake in Vienna, March 10, 1528. Three days afterwards his faithful wife, whom he had married in Waldshut, was drowned in the Danube."¹⁶

The Hutterites

Anabaptist refugees gathered in Moravia, where some noble landowners tolerated them, and one branch began holding all property in common, on the pattern of Acts 2 and 4. They took their name from Jakob Hutter, a hatmaker from the Tyrol who organized the communities. After King Ferdinand ordered the Moravian nobles to expel them in 1535, Hutter returned to the Tyrol, was arrested, tortured, and burned at Innsbruck on February 25, 1536.²² The Hutterite communities survived repeated expulsions and still live in community of goods today, mainly in Canada and the United States.

Munster, 1534 to 1535

The episode that fixed the word "Anabaptist" in European memory happened in the Westphalian city of Munster, and it was the opposite of Schleitheim. Followers of the apocalyptic preacher Melchior Hoffman, led by the Dutch baker Jan Matthys and the tailor Jan Bockelson (Jan van Leiden), took control of the city in February 1534, expelled those who would not be rebaptized, and announced it as the New Jerusalem. The record, here as given in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), includes the election of Bernhard Knipperdolling as burgomaster in February 1534, the siege by the city's bishop and lord, Franz von Waldeck, from 1534, the introduction of community of goods and of polygamy, and the proclamation of Jan van Leiden as king.²³ Matthys died in a sortie at Easter 1534. The city fell to the besiegers on June 24, 1535. After months of imprisonment and torture, the king, Knipperdolling and Bernhard Krechting were executed, and "their bodies were suspended in iron cages from the tower of St. Lambert's church."²³

Most of what is known of Munster comes from hostile witnesses and the trial records, and some numbers that circulate (the king's sixteen wives, for example, in the Catholic Encyclopedia) come from those sources. The basic facts (armed rule, forced rebaptism, polygamy, siege and executions) are not in dispute. What the record also shows is that Munster was a distinct current. The Swiss Brethren had renounced the sword in writing seven years earlier, and the Catholic Encyclopedia itself notes that "there was always in the Anabaptist party a more pacific current represented especially by its Swiss adherents."²³ Treating Munster as typical of Anabaptism is the error the claims section below rates.

Menno Simons

Engraved oval portrait of an elderly bearded man in a skullcap and dark coat, framed by a stone border with an inscription below — Menno Simons, the Frisian priest who became the leading elder of the peaceful Dutch Anabaptists, in a print by Reinier Vinkeles after a drawing by Jacobus Buys, dated 1792, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. No portrait from his lifetime is known, so this is a later engraver's imagining. Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

The Dutch and North German Anabaptists who survived Munster were gathered by a former Catholic priest from Witmarsum in Friesland. Menno Simons was ordained about 1515 or 1516, served as a parish priest at Pingjum and then in his native village, and on January 12, 1536 (the date in the Catholic Encyclopedia), gave up his parish and became an Anabaptist elder.²⁴ He spent the rest of his life as a hunted traveling pastor and writer, rejected the violence of Munster, and taught believers' baptism, a disciplined church and the refusal of the sword. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library gives his dates as January 1, 1496, to January 31, 1561; the older Catholic Encyclopedia gives 1492 and January 13, 1559.²⁵²⁴ His followers were called Mennonites, and the Amish later grew out of the Swiss branch of the same family. Their full history is for module 80.

What the Anabaptists themselves said, in short

From their own surviving confessions and letters: baptism follows repentance and faith; the church is a gathered body of believers kept pure by discipline (the ban); the Supper is for the baptized; Christians do not swear oaths; and, for most Swiss and Dutch Anabaptists, Christians do not take up the sword or hold the office of magistrate. From the record: they were persecuted by Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed governments alike; thousands were executed in the sixteenth century (the Mennonite Martyrs Mirror of 1660 is the classic collection of their stories); and one apocalyptic offshoot seized Munster by force.

John Calvin and Geneva

From Noyon to Basel

John Calvin (Jean Cauvin) "was born July 10, 1509, twenty-five years after Luther and Zwingli, at Noyon, an ancient cathedral city" in Picardy, in northern France.²⁶ His father, a lawyer for the cathedral chapter, first meant him for the church and then sent him to study law at Orleans and Bourges. Calvin trained as a humanist (his first book, in 1532, was a commentary on Seneca's On Clemency), and at some point in the early 1530s he underwent what he later called a "sudden conversion" to the evangelical cause. After the "Affair of the Placards" in October 1534, when posters attacking the Mass appeared in Paris and even on the king's bedroom door, King Francis I began burning evangelicals, and Calvin left France for Basel.

In Basel he finished the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The dedicatory preface to Francis I is dated August 23, 1535, and "at the close of the book the month of March, 1536, is given as the date of publication."²⁷ The first edition was a small book in six chapters, on the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, baptism and the Supper, the other "so-called Sacraments," and Christian liberty and church government.²⁷ Calvin kept enlarging it for twenty-three years. In the final Latin edition of 1559, printed in Geneva by Robert Estienne, Schaff writes, "it grew to four or five times its original size, and was divided into four books," following in the main the order of the Apostles' Creed.²⁷ A French edition followed in 1560.

Painted half-length portrait of a thin bearded man in a black cap and black robe with a fur collar, against a dark background — John Calvin (1509 to 1564), portrait by an anonymous French painter, about 1550, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Calvin in his own words

These passages are from the Institutes in the 1845 translation by Henry Beveridge, which is in the public domain. The book opens with its thesis: "Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves."²⁸

On justification, Calvin stands with Luther. "A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous. Thus we simply interpret justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as if we were righteous; and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ."²⁹

On predestination, the doctrine most tied to his name, he wrote: "By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation."³⁰ Calvin did not invent the doctrine (he cites Augustine constantly, and lesson 06 covers Augustine's view), and in the 1559 edition he placed it late, in Book 3, after the chapters on faith and the Christian life, as a doctrine of comfort for believers. Later Reformed writers gave it more prominence than he did.

On the church, Calvin gave the marks that most Reformed churches adopted: "Wherever we see the word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence."³¹ And on the Supper, where he tried to stand between Luther and Zwingli: "Now, should any one ask me as to the mode, I will not be ashamed to confess that it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend or my words to express; and to speak more plainly, I rather feel than understand it."³² For Calvin, believers really feed on Christ's body and blood, by the power of the Holy Spirit lifting them to Christ, who remains bodily in heaven.

Geneva, Strasbourg and the return

Geneva had expelled its prince-bishop and voted for the Reformation in 1535 and 1536, under the preaching of William Farel. In the summer of 1536 Calvin passed through the city meaning to stay one night. Farel, by Calvin's own later account in the preface to his Psalms commentary, threatened him with God's curse if he refused to stay and help. The two drew up a confession of faith that the citizens were to swear and articles on discipline and excommunication. Resistance grew, and in April 1538 the councils "deposed Farel and Calvin, without a trial, and ordered them to leave the city within three days."³³ Schaff records Calvin's response: "Very well ... it is better to serve God than man."³³

Calvin spent 1538 to 1541 in Strasbourg, as pastor of the French refugee congregation under Martin Bucer, whose church order shaped his own. There he wrote a liturgy, revised the Institutes, wrote his reply to Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto's letter inviting Geneva back to Rome, attended the colloquies of Worms and Regensburg between Catholics and Protestants, and married Idelette de Bure, a widow from an Anabaptist family. Geneva, in political trouble, called him back. He arrived, it seems, on September 13, 1541, avoiding a public welcome.³⁴

The Ecclesiastical Ordinances and the Consistory

On the day of his first meeting with the Syndics and Council after his return, Calvin "insisted on the introduction of an ecclesiastical constitution and discipline in accordance with the Word of God."³⁵ A committee of five pastors and six councillors drafted the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which the councils adopted in November 1541 and a general assembly of citizens ratified on January 2, 1542.³⁵ The preamble, in Schaff's translation, gives the purpose in the city's own voice: "In the name of God Almighty, we, the Syndics, Small and Great Councils with our people assembled at the sound of the trumpet and the great clock, according to our ancient customs, have considered that the matter above all others worthy of recommendation is to preserve the doctrine of the holy gospel of our Lord in its purity, to protect the Christian Church, to instruct faithfully the youth, and to provide a hospital for the proper support of the poor."³⁵

The Ordinances set four church offices, "Pasteurs, Docteurs, Anciens, Diacres" (pastors, teachers, elders and deacons).³⁵ Pastors preached and administered the sacraments, and met weekly as the Venerable Company. Teachers taught doctrine and ran the schools. Elders kept watch over the life of the people. Deacons managed the hospital and care of the poor. The Consistory brought pastors and elders together: at the time of Calvin it "embraced ... five city Pastors and twelve Seniors or Lay-Elders, two of whom were selected from the Council of Sixty and ten from the Council of Two Hundred. The laymen, therefore, had the majority," and a syndic presided.³⁶ It met weekly, on Thursdays. Its stated aim was correction, in the Ordinances' own phrase that discipline should be nothing other than "medicines" to bring sinners back to the Lord.³⁵ The Consistory could admonish and bar from communion, and punishment beyond that belonged to the civil councils.

The registers of the Consistory survive and are being published (Robert M. Kingdon and his colleagues began the edition in 1996), so its work can be read case by case: quarrels between neighbors and spouses, absence from sermons, Catholic practices, dancing, gambling, and blasphemy. Schaff, who admired Calvin, did not hide the severity of the city's courts in the 1540s. Citing the Genevan historian Galiffe, he wrote: "From 1542 to 1546 fifty-eight judgments of death and seventy-six decrees of banishments were passed," and he lists people expelled for heresy (Bolsec, Castellio and others), burned for witchcraft, and the beheading of Jacques Gruet in 1547 for sedition and atheism.³⁷ Those sentences were passed by the civil councils, not the Consistory, and many concerned crimes that every city of the time punished with death. How far Calvin drove them is still debated.

Michael Servetus, 1553

Michael Servetus was a Spanish physician and scholar who had published On the Errors of the Trinity in 1531 and spent years living under a false name in France. In 1553 he secretly printed The Restitution of Christianity at Vienne, attacking the Trinity and infant baptism. The case should be told from the documents, because it is used as a weapon by every side.

First, Calvin's own letter. He had corresponded with Servetus, and on February 13, 1546, he wrote to Farel: "Servetus lately wrote to me, and coupled with his letter a long volume of his delirious fancies, with the Thrasonic boast, that I should see something astonishing and unheard of. He offers to come hither, if it be agreeable to me. But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his safety; for if he does come, and my authority be of any avail, I shall never suffer him to depart alive."³⁸ Schaff notes that the letter, once disputed, "is now generally admitted as genuine."³⁸

Second, the Catholic trial. Information sent from Geneva (by Calvin's friend Guillaume de Trie, with letters supplied by Calvin) led to Servetus's arrest by the Catholic authorities at Vienne in April 1553. He escaped from prison, and the civil court there "sentenced Servetus on the 17th of June, for heretical doctrines ... to be burnt alive by a slow fire," and burned him in effigy with bales of his book.³⁹

Third, the Genevan trial. Servetus was recognized in Geneva in August 1553, at a sermon, and arrested. Calvin drew up the charges. The council consulted the churches of Zurich, Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen, all of which advised that he be punished. The judges found him guilty of calling the Trinity "a monster with three heads," blaspheming the Son of God, and "denying infant-baptism as an invention of the devil," and pronounced sentence: "We condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound, and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to a stake and burnt alive, together with thy book ... even till thy body be reduced to ashes."⁴⁰ "Even the wish of Calvin to substitute the sword for the fire was overruled."⁴⁰

On October 27, 1553, the sentence was read. Schaff, following Farel's account, reports that Servetus fell to his knees and cried, "The sword! in mercy! and not fire!" and in the flames prayed, "Jesus Christ, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me!"⁴¹ Schaff notes that Farel himself does not record that last prayer.⁴¹ The point the prayer carries is theological: Servetus called Christ the Son of the eternal God, and would not call him the eternal Son.

Calvin defended the execution in print in 1554, and most Protestant leaders, including Melanchthon and Bullinger, approved it. Sebastian Castellio answered with Concerning Heretics, Whether They Are to Be Persecuted (1554), one of the first books to argue in general for toleration. In 1903, 350 years later, Reformed Christians in Geneva set up an expiatory monument at Champel. Its inscription reads: "Fils respectueux et reconnaissants de Calvin, notre grand réformateur, mais condamnant une erreur qui fut celle de son siècle et fermement attachés à la liberté de conscience selon les vrais principes de la Réformation et de l'Évangile, nous avons élevé ce monument expiatoire" ("Respectful and grateful sons of Calvin, our great reformer, but condemning an error which was that of his century, and firmly attached to liberty of conscience according to the true principles of the Reformation and the Gospel, we have raised this expiatory monument").⁴²

The Genevan Academy and Calvin's death

Geneva became a refuge for thousands of Protestant exiles from France, Italy, England, Scotland and the Netherlands. The Scottish reformer John Knox, who was pastor of the English refugee congregation there in the 1550s, wrote in 1556 that Geneva was "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles. In other places I confess Christ to be truly preached; but manners and religion to be so seriously reformed, I have not yet seen in any other place besides."⁴³ The Academy of Geneva "was solemnly dedicated on June 5, 1559, in the church of St. Peter, in the presence of the whole Council, the ministers, and six hundred students," with Theodore Beza as rector.⁴⁴ It trained pastors for France, the Netherlands and Scotland.

Calvin labored in Geneva "from September, 1541, till May 27, 1564," when he died at the age of fifty-four, worn out by long illness.⁴⁵ At his own request he was buried in the common cemetery of Plainpalais without a monument, and the exact place of his grave is not known. Beza succeeded him.

A long stone wall with large standing statues of robed men in the center and carved inscriptions, behind a lawn and trees in a park — The International Monument to the Reformation, usually called the Reformation Wall, in Geneva, a twentieth-century memorial to Calvin and the Genevan reformers. Photo: Ofer Davidi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Reformed churches spread

Module 80 covers the Reformed and Presbyterian churches in full. Here is only the outline to 1600, because by Calvin's death the Reformed family was already international.

France and the Huguenots

French Protestants, called Huguenots (the origin of the name is disputed), organized churches on the Genevan model in the 1550s, many led by pastors trained in Geneva. "In 1559 there was held at Paris the first national synod, composed of ministers and elders, assembled from all parts of France; it formulated a confession of faith, drawing inspiration from the writings of Calvin," in the words of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the Huguenots.⁴⁶ That Gallican Confession was revised and confirmed at La Rochelle in 1571. Open war began after the Duke of Guise's men attacked "some six or seven hundred Huguenots holding religious worship" at Vassy in Champagne on March 1, 1562.⁴⁶

The Netherlands

In the Low Countries, ruled by Spain, the Belgic Confession was written in 1561 by Guido de Bres, a pastor later executed (1567), and the Reformed churches became the backbone of the revolt against Philip II that began in the 1560s and produced the Dutch Republic. The Reformed church there adopted the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.

Scotland and John Knox

John Knox was born at Haddington "between 1505 and 1515" (the older biographies said 1505; later scholars argued for the later date) and died at Edinburgh on November 24, 1572.⁴⁷ After the murder of Cardinal Beaton he joined the Protestants holding St. Andrews castle, and when it fell to a French fleet in 1547 "Knox was imprisoned with some others for nineteen months on board the French galleys."⁴⁷ He served in Edward VI's England, fled to the Continent under Mary I, and returned to Scotland in 1559.⁴⁷ In August 1560 the Scottish Parliament adopted the Scots Confession, written by Knox and five colleagues. Its definition of the true church follows Calvin's marks and adds discipline. In the original Scots: "The notes therefore of the trew Kirk of God we beleeve, confesse, and avow to be, first, the trew preaching of the Worde of God," then the right administration of the sacraments, and "Ecclesiastical discipline uprightlie ministred."⁴⁸ The Church of Scotland that grew from this became the mother church of Presbyterianism.

The Heidelberg Catechism, 1563

In the Palatinate, Elector Frederick III moved his territory from Lutheran to Reformed and commissioned a catechism, published at Heidelberg in 1563 and usually credited to Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus. Its first question and answer, in the translation printed in Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, became the best-known lines in Reformed piety: "What is thy only comfort in life and in death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil."⁴⁹ The Reformed churches spread as well to Hungary, Transylvania and Poland in these decades.

The English Reformation

Module 80 covers the Church of England and the Anglican churches. Here are the main documents and events to 1571.

Painted portrait of a broad-shouldered bearded king in a jeweled black cap and a richly embroidered gold and red doublet, against a blue background — Henry VIII, King of England 1509 to 1547, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1540, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Henry VIII and the Act of Supremacy, 1534

The English break with Rome began as a question of marriage and royal power, and doctrine followed later. Henry VIII had written against Luther in 1521 and received from Pope Leo X the title Defender of the Faith. When Pope Clement VII would not annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry had Parliament cut England's ties to Rome step by step. Thomas Cranmer, made archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, pronounced the marriage void, and in November 1534 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. Its operative words: "Be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament that the King our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia," with power "to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses."⁵⁰ Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were beheaded in 1535 for refusing to accept the king's supremacy, and the monasteries were dissolved between 1536 and 1540. In doctrine, Henry stayed largely Catholic to his death in 1547: the Act of Six Articles (1539) upheld transubstantiation and clerical celibacy, and both Catholics and Protestants were executed under him.

Tyndale and the English Bible

William Tyndale, a scholar who could not get permission to translate the Bible in England, translated the New Testament from the Greek on the Continent. Printing began at Cologne in 1525 and was interrupted, and the complete New Testament was printed at Worms. Copies were smuggled into England from 1526, where the bishops bought and burned them.⁵¹ Tyndale was betrayed in Antwerp while at work on the Old Testament and "died October 6, 1536, Vilvoorde, near Brussels," "executed by strangulation and then burned at the stake."⁵¹ Large parts of his wording passed into the King James Version of 1611. The history of the English Bible is the subject of a later Bible and History module.

Cranmer and the prayer books of 1549 and 1552

Printed title page in black letter type, with the title The booke of the common prayer inside a decorative woodcut border — Title page of the first Book of Common Prayer, 1549, prepared chiefly by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Under the boy king Edward VI (1547 to 1553), Cranmer led a fully Protestant reform. "On 21 January, 1549, the first Act of Uniformity was passed imposing upon the whole realm of England 'The Book of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church after the Use of the Church of England.'"⁵² The book put the whole service into English for the first time. After criticism, including Martin Bucer's written review, a more thoroughly Reformed second Book of Common Prayer appeared in 1552.⁵² In 1553 Cranmer issued Forty-Two Articles of religion, the ancestor of the later Thirty-Nine.

Mary I and the burnings

Edward's half-sister Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, came to the throne in July 1553 and restored the Catholic faith and obedience to Rome with Cardinal Reginald Pole as archbishop of Canterbury. Old heresy laws were revived, and burnings began in February 1555 with John Rogers at Smithfield. The numbers differ slightly by source. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) states: "In less than four years 277 persons were burned to death. Some, like Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, were men of influence and high position, but the majority belonged to the lower orders."⁵³ Hilary Mantel, reviewing Eamon Duffy's Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (2009), gives 284 people "martyred for their Protestant convictions between 1555 and 1558."⁵⁴ The same Catholic Encyclopedia article notes that "Both under Henry VIII and Edward VI men had been burned for religion, and Protestant bishops like Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley had had a principal hand in their burning."⁵³

Painted portrait of a clean-shaven older man in a black cap and white clerical robes with black sleeves, holding a book, seated by a window — Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury 1533 to 1556, painted by Gerlach Flicke in 1545, National Portrait Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned together at Oxford in October 1555. Cranmer, after signing a series of recantations, was burned at Oxford on March 21, 1556. At the stake he withdrew his recantations and held his right hand, which had signed them, in the flame until it was consumed.⁵⁵ John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563), the "Book of Martyrs," made these deaths central to English Protestant memory. Mary died on November 17, 1558.⁵⁴

The Elizabethan Settlement and the Thirty-Nine Articles

Elizabeth I's first Parliament passed a new Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity in 1559. The new act changed the monarch's title from "supreme head" to supreme governor, and required clergy and officeholders to swear an oath, which read in part: "I, A. B., do utterly testify and declare in my conscience, that the queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and of all other her highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate, has, or ought to have, any jurisdiction ... within this realm."⁵⁶ The Act of Uniformity restored a revised 1552 prayer book. All but one of the Marian bishops refused the oath and were removed.

The Convocation of Canterbury agreed on Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in January 1563 (dated "1562" in the official heading, because the English year then began on March 25), and a final text was confirmed and subscribed by the clergy in 1571.⁵⁷ On justification, Article 11 reads: "We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort."⁵⁷ Article 28 rejects transubstantiation and states that "The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner," and Article 37 states that "The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England."⁵⁷ Article 38 names the Anabaptists directly, rejecting their view that Christians' goods are held in common.⁵⁷ The result kept bishops, much of the old liturgical year and a set liturgy, with a largely Reformed confession. Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 with the bull Regnans in Excelsis, and English Catholics who kept the old faith became a persecuted minority.

How the single Western church of the Middle Ages became five church families in the sixteenth century, with the dates and documents covered in this lesson and lesson 11. Sources: the council, confession and statute texts cited in this lesson (Trent in Waterworth's translation; Schleitheim; the Acts of Supremacy of 1534 and 1559; the Thirty-Nine Articles; Schaff's History and Creeds of Christendom). Drawn for this lesson from the sources cited.

The Catholic Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

Two names are used for what happened in the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, and both are right about something. "Counter-Reformation" names the Church's response to Protestantism: defining doctrine against it, and checking its spread by preaching, schools, the Inquisition and, in some lands, the power of Catholic rulers. "Catholic Reformation" (or Catholic Reform) names a renewal of devotion, clergy and religious life that had roots before Luther, in Spain under Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros, in Italian confraternities, and in new religious orders. The German Catholic historian Hubert Jedin, author of the standard multivolume history of the Council of Trent, argued in a 1946 essay that both terms are needed, the first for the Church's self-defense and the second for its self-renewal.⁵⁸ The American Jesuit historian John W. O'Malley later proposed "Early Modern Catholicism" as a wider label in Trent and All That (2000).⁵⁹

New orders: the Oratory, the Theatines and the Capuchins

In Rome in the years around 1517, priests and lay people met in a confraternity called the Oratory of Divine Love for prayer, frequent communion and works of charity. The Catholic Encyclopedia credits St. Cajetan (Gaetano da Thiene) with founding the Roman association.⁶⁰ Out of that circle came the Theatines, a new kind of order of "clerics regular," priests living under vows but working in parishes and hospitals. They were founded by Cajetan, Paolo Consiglieri, Bonifacio da Colle and Giovanni Pietro Carafa, "afterwards Pope Paul IV," whose diocese of Chieti (Theate in Latin) gave the order its name. The foundation is dated to May 3, 1524, and Pope Clement VII approved it on June 24, 1524.⁶¹

The Capuchins began as a reform among the Franciscan Observants of the Marches in Italy, led by Matteo da Bascio (Matteo di Bassi), who wanted to return to St. Francis's own poverty. "On 3 July, 1528, ... Clement VII, by the Bull 'Religionis zellus', released them from their obedience to the Observants and constituted them a distinct family of the order."⁶² (The encyclopedia's spelling "zellus" is a misprint for the bull's title, Religionis zelus.) Their preaching to the poor, and their work in the plague years, made them among the most popular orders of the Catholic revival. Other new foundations of these decades included the Barnabites, the Somaschi and the Ursulines (1535), the first teaching order of women.

Ignatius of Loyola and the Society of Jesus

Inigo Lopez de Loyola was born in 1491 at the castle of Loyola in the Basque country and served as a soldier. "The turning-point of his life came in 1521. While the French were besieging the citadel of Pampeluna, a cannon ball, passing between Ignatius' legs, tore open the left calf and broke the right shin (Whit-Tuesday, 20 May, 1521)."⁶³ During his recovery he read lives of Christ and the saints, and at Manresa in 1522 to 1523 he began the notes that became the Spiritual Exercises, a month-long program of guided prayer and meditation. Studying in Paris, he gathered companions, among them Francis Xavier and Peter Faber. "On 15 August, 1534, they took the vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre," and a vow to go to the Holy Land.⁶³ When that proved impossible they offered themselves to the pope. Pope Paul III approved the new Society of Jesus and the first formula of its Institute in the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae, dated September 27, 1540.⁶⁴ The name "Jesuit" was first used of them as a reproach and "was never employed by its founder."⁶⁴

The Spiritual Exercises end with "Rules for thinking with the Church." In the public domain translation by Elder Mullan (1914), the first rule reads: "All judgment laid aside, we ought to have our mind ready and prompt to obey, in all, the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, which is our holy Mother the Church Hierarchical." The thirteenth, often quoted against the Jesuits and often defended by them as a statement of trust in the Spirit who guides the Church: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls."⁶⁵

The Society grew quickly into an order of schools, missions and preachers. When Ignatius died in Rome on July 31, 1556, the Society "already numbered about 1000 religious (of whom, however, only 35 were yet professed) with 100 religious houses, arranged in 10 provinces."⁶³ Francis Xavier had reached India in 1542 and Japan in 1549. Jesuit colleges, free of charge for students, became the main Catholic answer to the Protestant academies, and Jesuit preachers such as Peter Canisius in Germany and Robert Bellarmine in Rome led the Catholic response in print.

Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila was born at Avila in Old Castile on March 28, 1515, and died at Alba de Tormes on October 4, 1582.⁶⁶ She entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation at Avila in 1535, and in midlife, after years of illness and a deepening life of prayer, she began a reform. "After many troubles and much opposition St. Teresa founded the convent of Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Primitive Rule of St. Joseph at Avila (24 Aug., 1562)."⁶⁶ With John of the Cross she extended the reform to friars. Her Life, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle are among the classics of Christian writing on prayer, and in 1970 she became the first woman named a Doctor of the Church.

The Roman Inquisition and the Index

Pope Paul III established the "Sacra Congregatio Romanae et universalis Inquisitionis seu sancti officii" (the Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Holy Office) "by the Constitution 'Licet ab initio' of 21 July, 1542." The tribunal of six cardinals "was to be at once the final court of appeal for trials concerning faith, and the court of first instance for cases reserved to the pope."⁶⁷ It was separate from the Spanish Inquisition, which the Spanish crown had controlled since 1478. The first Roman Index of Prohibited Books, "published in 1559 under Paul IV" (the former Carafa), was, in the Catholic Encyclopedia's own word, "very severe," and it was softened in the same year.⁶⁸ A revised "Tridentine Index" followed in 1564.

The Council of Trent, 1545 to 1563

Painting of a crowded assembly of bishops in white miters seated in tiers in a great hall, with a central figure of the Church and allegorical figures in the foreground — The Council of Trent, painted by Pasquale Cati in 1588, twenty-five years after the council closed. The allegorical figures and the arrangement of the hall are the painter's own composition. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Protestants had called for a free general council since the 1520s, and so had the emperor Charles V. Pope Paul III finally convened one at Trent, a city of the empire in the Italian-speaking Alps. Its first session was "Celebrated under the sovereign Pontiff, Paul III, on the thirteenth day of the month of December, in the year of the Lord, 1545," and its twenty-fifth and last session was "Begun on the third, and terminated on the fourth, day of December, MDLXIII., being the ninth and last under the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IV."⁶⁹⁷⁰ It met in three periods (1545 to 1547, 1551 to 1552, and 1562 to 1563), with long breaks for war and papal politics. Attendance was small at first and mostly Italian and Spanish. Protestant theologians came briefly in 1551 and 1552 under safe conduct but took no part. The Catholic Encyclopedia states its purpose: "Its main object was the definitive determination of the doctrines of the Church in answer to the heresies of the Protestants; a further object" was the reform of discipline.⁷¹ The quotations below are from the translation by J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), which is in the public domain.

Scripture and tradition (Session 4, April 8, 1546). The council received the books of the Old and New Testaments, including the books Protestants call the Apocrypha, and both written Scripture and "unwritten traditions" as handed down in the Church, and it declared that "the said old and vulgate edition" of the Latin Bible, "which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever."⁷² The Latin Vulgate in question was the translation made about 382 to 405 at the request of Pope Damasus.

Justification (Session 6, January 13, 1547). This decree is the council's most important and most carefully worded. It rejects the Pelagian position first: Canon 1 condemns anyone who says "that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ."⁷³ It defines justification itself as "not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just, and of an enemy a friend, that so he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting."⁷³ Chapter 8 explains in what sense Catholics also say justification is by faith and free: "we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification; without which it is impossible to please God ... but we are therefore said to be justified freely, because that none of those things which precede justification-whether faith or works-merit the grace itself of justification."⁷³

The canons then reject the Protestant formulas by name. Canon 9: "If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema." Canon 11: "If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema." Canon 12 condemns the view "that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake."⁷³ Read beside Calvin's definition and Article 11 of the Thirty-Nine Articles, quoted above, the documents show exactly where the churches agreed (grace is necessary and unmerited) and where they divided (whether justification is a declaration based on Christ's imputed righteousness, or also an inner renewal by inherent grace).

The Eucharist (Session 13, October 11, 1551). Chapter 4 reaffirms that "by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called Transubstantiation."⁷⁴ Later sessions treated the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass (1562), and purgatory, saints, images and indulgences (1563).

Seminaries and reform (Session 23, July 15, 1563). Among the reform decrees, chapter 18 of Session 23 ordered that every cathedral and metropolitan church maintain a college to educate boys for the priesthood, so that the college "may be a perpetual seminary of ministers of God." The boys "shall learn grammar, singing, ecclesiastical computation, and the other liberal arts; they shall be instructed in sacred Scripture; ecclesiastical works; the homilies of the saints; the manner of administering the sacraments."⁷⁵ Other decrees required bishops to live in their dioceses and preach, ended the office of the indulgence preacher, and tightened the rules for marriage. The council also called for a catechism for parish priests, published in Latin and Italian at Rome in 1566 under Pius V as the Roman Catechism, or Catechism of the Council of Trent.⁷⁶ A reformed Roman missal followed in 1570.

The wars of religion

Confessions became borders, and in much of Europe borders were fought over. In the empire, the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 (covered in lesson 11) let each ruler choose between Catholic and Lutheran, and left the Reformed and Anabaptists outside the law. In France, eight civil wars of religion were fought between 1562 and 1598. The worst single event began in Paris on the feast of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, days after the wedding of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to the king's sister, when the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny and many of his followers were killed and "The massacre spread to many provincial towns." The Catholic Encyclopedia gives an estimate of "2000 for the capital, and 6000 to 8000 for the rest of France"; other estimates, older and newer, run from lower figures to several times as many.⁴⁶ Henry of Navarre became King Henry IV in 1589, converted to Catholicism in 1593, and in 1598 issued the Edict of Nantes, which re-established Catholic worship everywhere while granting the Huguenots freedom of conscience, public worship in named places, civil rights and fortified towns.⁴⁶ It was revoked in 1685. In the Netherlands the revolt against Spain ran from the 1560s into the next century, and in Germany the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648) lay just ahead.

How historians read the wider Reformation

Each church tradition has its own classic reading of this century, and modern historians have redrawn several of them.

The Reformed reading. Philip Schaff, a German-born Reformed scholar teaching in America, wrote volume 8 of his History of the Christian Church as an admirer of Zwingli and Calvin who refused to excuse them. He called the Zurich drownings "a cruel irony," judged that banishment of Manz and of Servetus "would have been severe enough," and printed Calvin's 1546 letter about Servetus in full.¹⁶³⁸ The 1903 Champel monument expresses the same two-part judgment from inside the Genevan church: gratitude to Calvin, and condemnation of "an error which was that of his century."⁴²

The Anabaptist reading and its revision. In 1944 the Mennonite historian Harold S. Bender, in an address published as "The Anabaptist Vision," described the movement through its Swiss founders as the consistent completion of the Reformation, built on discipleship, the church as a brotherhood and the ethic of love and nonresistance.⁷⁷ Later scholars, notably James M. Stayer in Anabaptists and the Sword (1972) and in a 1975 article with Werner Packull and Klaus Deppermann, "From Monogenesis to Polygenesis," argued that Anabaptism had several separate origins (Swiss, South German and Austrian, and Dutch) and a range of views on the sword, from Schleitheim's refusal through Hubmaier's acceptance of magistracy to the armed kingdom at Munster.⁷⁸ Both readings agree on the record of persecution and on the Schleitheim text.

The Catholic reading. Catholic historians from the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907 to 1912) to Jedin and O'Malley present Trent as a reform council that defined doctrine where Protestants had challenged it and repaired abuses that Catholics themselves had long protested.⁵⁸⁵⁹ The same Catholic Encyclopedia that defends Mary's motives calls the burnings "deplorable severities" and gives the number burned.⁵³

The Anglican reading. Older English histories, shaped by Foxe, told the English Reformation as the triumph of the gospel over a corrupt church. Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars (1992) and Fires of Faith (2009) argued that late medieval English Catholicism was vigorous and popular, and that Mary's restoration was more effective than Protestant memory allowed.⁵⁴

Wider views. Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation: A History (2003) treats the Protestant and Catholic reformations of about 1490 to 1700 as one European story, and Philip Benedict's Christ's Churches Purely Reformed (2002) traces the Reformed churches as an international movement. Francis Schaeffer gave a well-known evangelical reading of the Reformation's place in Western thought, discussed in Liberty 56 at How Should We Then Live?

What the record shows and what it does not

Documented fact: Zwingli began preaching at the Great Minster on January 1, 1519; the 67 Articles and the disputations of January and October 1523; the first Reformed communion in Holy Week 1525; the Marburg articles of 1529 with agreement on fourteen points and part of the fifteenth; Zwingli's death at Kappel on October 11, 1531; the drowning of Felix Manz on January 5, 1527; the Schleitheim articles of February 24, 1527; Sattler's sentence and burning in May 1527; the fall of Munster on June 24, 1535; the Institutes of 1536 and 1559; the Genevan Ordinances of 1541 and 1542; Calvin's 1546 letter and the Genevan sentence on Servetus, executed October 27, 1553; the Act of Supremacy of 1534 and the oath of 1559; the Thirty-Nine Articles; the bull of September 27, 1540; the decrees of Trent, 1545 to 1563; the Edict of Nantes, 1598.
A church's own claim or tradition: that Zwingli reached his views before reading Luther (his own claim); that the Anabaptists restored the church of the apostles (their claim); that Trent taught "the perpetual consent of the Catholic Church" (the council's own words); that the Church of England is both catholic and reformed (the Anglican claim).
Scholarly reading: how far Calvin drove the Genevan courts; whether Anabaptism had one origin or several; whether "Counter-Reformation" or "Catholic Reformation" better names the Catholic response; whether English Catholicism was declining or vigorous before Henry.
Open questions: the exact day of the first Zurich baptisms (January 21, 1525, is a reconstruction); the exact number killed on St. Bartholomew's Day; the exact count of the Marian martyrs (277 to 284 by the sources cited); the details of Munster that come only from hostile witnesses.

The whole module at a glance

The twelve lessons of Part A on one scale, from the first century in Jerusalem to the end of the Council of Trent and the Edict of Nantes. Each bar spans the main dates its lesson treats, and the dates are those verified in the lessons themselves. Sources: the primary texts and records cited in lessons 01 to 12 of this module. Drawn for this lesson from the sources cited.

Read across the whole module, the Reformation century looks less like a sudden break and more like the meeting of old questions with new means. Debates about grace went back to Augustine and Pelagius (lesson 06); disputes over the papacy and councils went back to 1054, Avignon and Constance (lesson 08 and lesson 10); and the call to read Scripture in the common tongue had been heard from Waldo, Wycliffe and Hus. What was new was the printing press, the willingness of princes and city councils to take sides, and the fact that this time no council healed the division.

Claims checked

"Calvin ruled Geneva as a dictator."

Partly supported. Calvin had great moral authority and drafted the church laws, but he held no civil office and did not become a citizen of Geneva until 1559. The Consistory had a lay majority and a syndic as its head, and death sentences were passed by the elected councils.³⁶ The councils expelled him in 1538 and overruled him on the manner of Servetus's death in 1553.³³⁴⁰ The courts of the 1540s were severe by the record Schaff cites.³⁷ "Dictator" overstates his legal power; "the most influential man in the city" fits the documents.

"Calvin burned Servetus."

Partly supported. The Genevan Small Council passed the sentence, unanimously, after consulting four Swiss churches, and it rejected Calvin's wish that Servetus be beheaded instead.⁴⁰ Calvin brought the charges, and his 1546 letter shows he had resolved years earlier that Servetus would not leave Geneva alive if he came.³⁸ The Catholic authorities at Vienne had already sentenced him to be burned alive.³⁹ Responsibility is shared, and Calvin's is large.

"The Anabaptists were violent revolutionaries."

Refuted as a general claim. The founding Swiss confession forbids Christians the sword and public office in writing, in 1527.²⁰ The Hutterites and the Mennonites under Menno Simons were nonresistant. Munster (1534 to 1535) was a real armed theocracy, but even the Catholic Encyclopedia distinguishes the "more pacific current" of the Swiss.²³

"Henry VIII founded the Church of England to get a divorce."

Partly supported. The annulment dispute was the immediate cause of the 1534 Act of Supremacy, which made the king "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England."⁵⁰ The Act claims to confirm a headship the king already "justly and rightfully is and oweth to be," and the Church of England holds that it is the same church that existed in England before 1534, now independent of Rome. Its Protestant doctrine came later, under Edward VI and Elizabeth.⁵²⁵⁷

"Bloody Mary burned thousands."

Refuted on the number. The sources give 277 (Catholic Encyclopedia) or 284 (the figure in Mantel's review of Duffy) burned between 1555 and 1558.⁵³⁵⁴ That is a very high number for England in four years, and many more died in prison, but it is hundreds, not thousands.

"The Council of Trent taught salvation by works."

Refuted as stated. Trent's first canon on justification condemns anyone who says a person "may be justified before God by his own works ... without the grace of God through Jesus Christ," and Chapter 8 says nothing that precedes justification, "whether faith or works," merits it.⁷³ Trent did condemn justification "by faith alone" in the sense of Canon 9 and taught that justification includes inner renewal and that the justified can grow in it and merit eternal life through grace. The disagreement with the Reformers is real and precise; the slogan misstates it.

"Zwingli had the Anabaptists drowned."

Partly supported. The Zurich council passed the sentences. Schaff writes, "It is not known whether Zwingli really consented to the death sentence, but he certainly did not openly oppose it," and he records Zwingli's letter assuring Capito that the magistrates had acted reluctantly.¹⁶

"The Jesuits were founded to fight Protestants."

Partly supported. The first companions vowed in 1534 to go to the Holy Land, and the earliest Jesuit work was missions, preaching and the Spiritual Exercises.⁶³ The Society soon became the leading force in Catholic schools and in controversy with Protestants in Germany, Poland and elsewhere, so the claim describes what the order became more than why it began.

"Luther and Zwingli agreed on nothing at Marburg."

Refuted. Both sides signed fourteen of fifteen articles and the first part of the fifteenth, disagreeing on whether Christ's body and blood are "corporally present in the bread and wine."¹⁰

Hard questions and answers

If the Reformers appealed to conscience, why did they execute dissenters?

Because almost no one in the sixteenth century thought that a Christian state could tolerate public heresy or blasphemy. Catholic Vienne sentenced Servetus to be burned before Protestant Geneva did; Catholic Rottenburg burned Sattler and Catholic Vienna burned Hubmaier, while Reformed Zurich drowned Manz; Mary burned Protestants and Edward's and Elizabeth's governments executed Catholics and radicals.³⁹²¹¹⁶⁵³ The Reformers appealed to conscience bound by Scripture, which they expected the magistrate to protect. Toleration as a principle came from the persecuted (Hubmaier, Castellio, the Anabaptists) and only slowly won over the churches. The record shows the inconsistency, and later Reformed Christians said so themselves at Champel.⁴²

Did Trent close the door on reunion?

On the terms of the time, largely yes. Its anathemas fixed the Catholic position on justification, Scripture and the sacraments against the Protestant confessions, and Protestant leaders did not accept it as a free council. But its own words are precise, and later dialogue has worked from them. In 1999 the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification stating that the teaching of each side, as presented in that declaration, does not fall under the other's sixteenth-century condemnations. That is outside this module, but it shows how much depends on reading the canons exactly.

Was Calvin's Geneva a theocracy?

Not in the sense that clergy ruled. Pastors could not sit on the councils, the councils appointed the elders, and the councils made and enforced the laws.³⁶ It was a city where church and state were joined, where the civil law enforced church discipline and punished heresy, and where the pastors' preaching shaped public life. The same was true, in different forms, of Zurich, Lutheran Saxony, Catholic Spain and Tudor England.

Were the Anabaptists the ancestors of the Baptists?

Not directly. The English Baptists arose in the early 1600s among English Separatists, some of whom had contact with Dutch Mennonites in Amsterdam. Baptists and Anabaptists share believers' baptism and a gathered church, and most Baptists did not share the Anabaptist refusal of oaths, office and the sword. Module 80 covers both families.

Why did the Reformed and Lutheran churches not unite?

Because the Lord's Supper, where Marburg failed, was at the heart of worship for both sides, and each believed the other's view put the gospel at risk. Calvin's middle position and the Zurich agreement of 1549 united the Swiss, but the later Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577) rejected the Reformed view.¹⁵ The chart above sets out the six main positions from their own documents.

What came next

By 1600 the churches of Western Europe had each written down who they were, in the Augsburg Confession, the Reformed confessions and catechisms, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Schleitheim articles and the decrees of Trent. Module 80, coming next in the Bible and History family, takes those Protestant churches one by one: the Lutheran synods, the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Anabaptists and Mennonites and the others. What came after them, Pietism, the Methodists and the American movements, is told in Church History, Part C, which begins with Holiness and Pietism. For the ideas that came out of Europe's long argument over religion, conscience and authority after the Enlightenment, see Liberty 58, Ideas and Values Since the Enlightenment.

Learn more

Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (table of contents): The fullest free account of Zwingli, the Zurich Anabaptists, Calvin, Geneva and the Servetus trial, with the documents in the notes.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Beveridge translation): Read Book 1, chapter 1, and Book 3, chapters 11 and 21, to hear Calvin in his own words.
The Council of Trent, Session 6: Decree on Justification: The sixteen chapters and thirty-three canons that define the Catholic position, in Waterworth's 1848 translation.
The Schleitheim Confession (Wenger translation): Short enough to read in full; the founding statement of the Swiss Brethren.
The Thirty-Nine Articles (Church of England): The Elizabethan confession of the Church of England, still printed with the Book of Common Prayer.
Church History, Part C (module 77): What came after the Reformation: Pietism, the Methodists and the American movements.

Still being checked (18 items)

These points could not be confirmed against a primary source when this lesson was written and fact checked in October 2026. The text above states each one as uncertain.

The exact day of the first Zurich adult baptisms: January 21, 1525, is the modern standard date (Plough, Mennonite histories); Schaff (1892) wrote 'February, 1525' while quoting Cornelius that it was a few days after the January disputation.
The exact date of the Zurich council's vote ending the Mass in April 1525 was not confirmed from a primary record; Schaff confirms the first Reformed communion in Holy Week of April 1525.
The story that the Lenten meal of 1522 was of sausages is the traditional account; Schaff says only that Froschauer and friends ate meat.
Menno Simons's dates differ: CCEL gives Jan. 1, 1496, to Jan. 31, 1561; the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) gives 1492 and Jan. 13, 1559, and Jan. 12, 1536, for leaving his parish. The lesson gives both.
The Hutterite community of goods is dated only to the late 1520s in this lesson; the founding year was not confirmed from an opened source.
Details of the Munster kingdom (the number of wives, the extent of the excesses) come from hostile witnesses and trial records, here via the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907).
The 1903 date of the Servetus expiatory monument rests on the Geneva city page and the 1903 commemorative booklet title; the exact day of its dedication was not confirmed.
Calvin's 'sudden conversion' (Psalms commentary preface), Farel's threat in 1536, the Affair of the Placards (October 1534), Guillaume de Trie's role, the arrest at Vienne (April 1553) and recognition in Geneva (August 1553) are standard accounts not each opened in a primary text during this task.
The publication of the Geneva Consistory registers (begun by Robert M. Kingdon and colleagues in the 1990s) is stated from general knowledge.
Tyndale's New Testament: Britannica's summary says printing began at Cologne in 1525; the complete first edition at Worms in 1526 is the standard account. The printer's name was left out.
The total number of Anabaptists executed in the sixteenth century ('thousands') is not given from a single opened source; estimates vary.
St. Bartholomew's Day deaths: the Catholic Encyclopedia gives about 2,000 in Paris and 6,000 to 8,000 elsewhere; other estimates range widely and none was opened in this task.
The Edict of Nantes's provisions beyond the restoration of Catholic worship (freedom of conscience, places of worship, fortified towns) are standard accounts; the edict's text was not opened.
The founding date of the Oratory of Divine Love in Rome is given only as 'the years around 1517'; sources differ.
Henry VIII's 1521 title Defender of the Faith, the Act of Six Articles (1539), the deaths of More and Fisher (1535), Latimer and Ridley (October 1555), Regnans in Excelsis (1570) and Teresa named Doctor of the Church (1970) are stated from standard reference knowledge, not opened in a primary text during this task.
That Calvin became a citizen of Geneva only in 1559, that pastors could not sit on the Genevan councils, and that Melanchthon and Bullinger approved Servetus's execution are standard accounts (Schaff's section 'Protestant Intolerance. Judgments of the Reformers on Servetus' covers the last) not quoted from an opened page in this task.
Castellio's Concerning Heretics (1554, published under the pen name Martinus Bellius) and Calvin's printed defense of 1554 are stated from standard accounts.
Body length is about 12,300 words, above the 6,000 to 9,000 target; nothing was cut, following the rule never to cut true content for length.

Notes

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8: Modern Christianity, The Swiss Reformation (New York: Scribner, 1892), ch. 3, "Zwingli called to Zurich," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, sec. 11, "Zwingli's Public Labors and Private Studies," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "The Open Breach. Controversy about Fasts. 1522," citing Egli, Actensammlung, no. 237, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "Petition for the Abolition of Clerical Celibacy. Zwingli's Marriage," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, sec. 17, "The Sixty-seven Conclusions," with Schaff's translation of the principal articles, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, sec. 18, "The Public Disputations. 1523," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, sec. 19, "The Abolition of the Roman Worship. 1524," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "The Reformed Celebration of the Lord's Supper," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "The Translation of the Bible. Leo Judae" (the Zurich Bible of 1531), and the preceding section, "Other Changes. A Theological School. The Carolinum," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7: Modern Christianity, The German Reformation (New York: Scribner, 1888), "The Marburg Conference continued. Discussion and Result," with the fifteenth Marburg article translated from the Zurich archive copy, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "The Eucharistic Controversy. Zwingli and Luther," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 5, "The Second War of Cappel. 1531," citing Bullinger's chronicle, vol. 3, p. 130, for the Zurich dead, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 5, "The Death of Zwingli," citing Oswald Myconius, Vita H. Zwinglii, ch. 12, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 6, sec. 54, "Heinrich Bullinger. 1504 to 1575," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 14, "The Lord's Supper. The Consensus of Zuerich," literature list (Consensus Tigurinus, published at Geneva and Zurich, 1551), at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "Persecution of the Anabaptists," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 3, "The Baptismal Controversy," quoting in German the Hutterite (Moravian Baptist) chronicle after C. A. Cornelius; the English rendering in this lesson is a paraphrase, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Plough (Bruderhof), "Felix Manz," online article, plough.com (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
James M. Stayer, "Schleitheim Confession," Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO), drawing on the Mennonite Encyclopedia (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
The Schleitheim Confession of Faith, 1527, trans. John C. Wenger, Mennonite Quarterly Review 19, no. 4 (October 1945): 247 to 253, as reproduced for History 112, University of Washington (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). A modern translation, quoted briefly. Read it online. ↩
Gustav Bossert Jr., Harold S. Bender and C. Arnold Snyder, "Sattler, Michael (d. 1527)," Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO), 1989 (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Hutterian Brethren, "Death of Hutter," hutterites.org history pages (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Anabaptists," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907), section on Munster, at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Mennonites," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 10 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1911), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, author page "Menno Simons" (summary dates and biography; the library also hosts The Complete Works of Menno Simon), ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 9, sec. 69, "Calvin's Youth and Training," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 9, "Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845), Book 1, ch. 1, sec. 1, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, trans. Beveridge (1845), Book 3, ch. 11, sec. 2, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, trans. Beveridge (1845), Book 3, ch. 21, sec. 5, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, trans. Beveridge (1845), Book 4, ch. 1, sec. 9, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Calvin, Institutes, trans. Beveridge (1845), Book 4, ch. 17, sec. 32, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 10, "Expulsion of the Reformers. 1538," citing the Geneva Registers of April 23, 1538, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 12, "Calvin's Return to Geneva. 1541," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 13, sec. 104, "The Ecclesiastical Ordinances," with Schaff's translation of the preamble (French text in Calvini Opera X), at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 13, "The Venerable Company and the Consistory," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 13, "The Exercise of Discipline in Geneva," citing Galiffe as quoted by Kampschulte, vol. 1, p. 425, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 16, "Calvin and Servetus," translating Calvin's letter to Farel of Feb. 13, 1546 (Calvini Opera VIII. 283), at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 16, "The Trial and Condemnation of Servetus at Vienne," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 16, "Condemnation of Servetus," translating the Genevan sentence (Calvini Opera VIII. 827 to 830), at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 16, sec. 155, "Execution of Servetus. Oct. 27, 1553," drawing on Farel's letter to Ambrosius Blaarer, December 1553, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Ville de Genève, "Stèle, statue et plaque Michel Servet," with the text of the expiatory monument at Champel (1903), geneve.ch (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). English translation in this lesson. Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 13, "Geneva Regenerated. Testimonies Old and New," quoting Knox's letter to Anne Locke, 1556, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 17, "The Academy of Geneva," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8 (1892), ch. 18, "Calvin's Last Days and Death," at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Huguenots," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"John Knox," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3 (New York: Harper, 1877), "The Scotch Confession of Faith. A.D. 1560," ch. 18, original Scots text from Dunlop's Collection, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3 (New York: Harper, 1877), "The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563," Question 1, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
The Act of Supremacy, 1534 (26 Henry VIII, c. 1), text at tudorhistory.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Encyclopaedia Britannica, "William Tyndale" (print version), britannica.com (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Book of Common Prayer," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Mary Tudor," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Hilary Mantel, "The Crowe Is White," review of Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), London Review of Books 31, no. 18 (2009) (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Thomas Cranmer: Martyrdom," britannica.com (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Elizabeth's Supremacy Act, Restoring Ancient Jurisdiction (1559), 1 Elizabeth, c. 1, in Henry Gee and William John Hardy, eds., Documents Illustrative of English Church History (New York: Macmillan, 1896), 442 to 458, Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Church of England, Articles of Religion (the Thirty-Nine Articles), text from the Book of Common Prayer, articles 11, 28, 37 and 38 and the heading and ratification, churchofengland.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? (Lucerne: Josef Stocker, 1946); see also his Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, 4 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1949 to 1975). Cited for interpretation. ↩
John W. O'Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). Cited for interpretation. ↩
"St. Cajetan," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Theatines," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Capuchin Friars Minor," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"St. Ignatius Loyola," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Society of Jesus," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, trans. Elder Mullan, S.J. (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1914), rules "To Have the True Sentiment" (Rules for Thinking with the Church), first and thirteenth rules, at ccel.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"St. Teresa of Jesus (Teresa of Avila)," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Inquisition," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Index of Prohibited Books," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, trans. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), Session 1 (Dec. 13, 1545), Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Council of Trent, trans. Waterworth (1848), Session 25 (Dec. 3 to 4, 1563), 232 to 289, Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Council of Trent," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 15 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Council of Trent, trans. Waterworth (1848), Session 4 (April 8, 1546), Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures and Decree concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books, Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Council of Trent, trans. Waterworth (1848), Session 6 (Jan. 13, 1547), Decree on Justification, chapters 7 to 9 and canons 1, 9, 11 and 12, pp. 30 to 53, Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Council of Trent, trans. Waterworth (1848), Session 13 (Oct. 11, 1551), Decree concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, chapter 4, Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Council of Trent, trans. Waterworth (1848), Session 23 (July 15, 1563), Decree on Reformation, chapter 18 (seminaries), pp. 170 to 192, Hanover Historical Texts Project (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
"Roman Catechism," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), at newadvent.org (retrieved Oct. 28, 2026). Read it online. ↩
Harold S. Bender, "The Anabaptist Vision," presidential address to the American Society of Church History (December 1943), published in Church History 13 (1944) and Mennonite Quarterly Review 18 (1944). Cited for interpretation. ↩
James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press, 1972); James M. Stayer, Werner O. Packull and Klaus Deppermann, "From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins," Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975). Cited for interpretation. ↩

Check yourself

1. On what day did Zwingli begin his preaching at the Great Minster in Zurich, and how did he preach?

2. What did the Marburg Colloquy of 1529 produce?

3. Which of these does the Schleitheim Confession (February 24, 1527) teach?

4. Who passed the sentence that Michael Servetus be burned at Champel on October 27, 1553?

5. What title did the Act of Supremacy of 1534 give Henry VIII?

6. How many people were burned for heresy under Mary I, according to the sources cited in this lesson?

7. When did Pope Paul III approve the Society of Jesus?

8. Which statement matches the Council of Trent's decree on justification (Session 6, 1547)?

Terms in this lesson

People's priest (Leutpriester): The preaching pastor of a Swiss city church; Zwingli's office at the Great Minster in Zurich from January 1, 1519.
Disputation: A formal public debate. In Zurich (1523) the city council heard the arguments from Scripture and then decided what would be preached and practiced.
Anabaptists: 'Rebaptizers,' a name given by opponents to those who baptized only believers on confession of faith, beginning in Zurich in January 1525. They called themselves brethren.
Schleitheim Confession: The seven articles agreed by Swiss and South German Anabaptists on February 24, 1527, on baptism, the ban, the breaking of bread, separation, pastors, the sword and the oath.
The ban: Church discipline in Anabaptist teaching: after two private warnings, a sinning member is excluded from the fellowship, without the use of force.
Institutes of the Christian Religion: Calvin's summary of Christian doctrine, first printed at Basel in March 1536 in six chapters and enlarged to four books in the final Latin edition of 1559.
Consistory: The Genevan church court of pastors and lay elders (five city pastors and twelve elders in Calvin's time), which admonished and could bar from communion.
Ecclesiastical Ordinances: Geneva's church law of 1541 (ratified January 2, 1542), setting four offices: pastors, teachers, elders and deacons.
Act of Supremacy: The English statute of 1534 naming the king supreme head of the Church of England, and the 1559 act naming Elizabeth supreme governor and imposing an oath.
Thirty-Nine Articles: The doctrinal articles of the Church of England, agreed by Convocation in January 1563 (dated 1562 in the old reckoning) and confirmed and subscribed in 1571.
Counter-Reformation and Catholic Reformation: Two names for the sixteenth-century Catholic response: the first stresses the defense against Protestantism, the second the renewal of devotion and discipline that began before Luther.
Society of Jesus (Jesuits): The order founded by Ignatius of Loyola and companions, approved by Paul III on September 27, 1540, known for the Spiritual Exercises, schools and missions.
Transubstantiation: The Catholic teaching, restated at Trent in 1551, that the whole substance of bread and wine is changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood.
Edict of Nantes: Henry IV's edict of 1598 granting French Protestants freedom of conscience and worship in named places; revoked in 1685.

Full glossary

Sources

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8: The Swiss Reformation (1892), sections on Zwingli, the Anabaptists, Calvin, Geneva and Servetus (1892) checked 2026-10
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7: The German Reformation (1888), The Marburg Conference (1888) checked 2026-10
Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3: Scots Confession (1560) and Heidelberg Catechism (1563) (1877) checked 2026-10
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (1559; trans. 1845) checked 2026-10
Council of Trent, Canons and Decrees, trans. J. Waterworth, Sessions 1, 4, 6, 13, 23 and 25 (Hanover Historical Texts Project) (1545 to 1563; trans. 1848) checked 2026-10
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, trans. Elder Mullan (1914) (1548; trans. 1914) checked 2026-10
The Schleitheim Confession of Faith, 1527, trans. J. C. Wenger (1945) (Feb. 24, 1527; trans. 1945) checked 2026-10
GAMEO, Schleitheim Confession (James M. Stayer) (online) checked 2026-10
GAMEO, Sattler, Michael (d. 1527) (1989) checked 2026-10
Plough, Felix Manz (online) checked 2026-10
Hutterian Brethren, Death of Hutter (online) checked 2026-10
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Menno Simons author page (online) checked 2026-10
Act of Supremacy, 1534 (26 Henry VIII, c. 1) (Nov. 1534) checked 2026-10
Elizabeth's Supremacy Act (1559), Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History (1559; ed. 1896) checked 2026-10
Church of England, Articles of Religion (Thirty-Nine Articles) (1563 and 1571) checked 2026-10
Ville de Geneve, Stele, statue et plaque Michel Servet (monument 1903) checked 2026-10
Catholic Encyclopedia articles: Anabaptists, Mennonites, Huguenots, John Knox, Book of Common Prayer, Mary Tudor, St. Cajetan, Theatines, Capuchin Friars Minor, St. Ignatius Loyola, Society of Jesus, St. Teresa of Jesus, Inquisition, Index of Prohibited Books, Council of Trent, Roman Catechism (1907 to 1912) checked 2026-10
Encyclopaedia Britannica, William Tyndale (online) checked 2026-10
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Thomas Cranmer: Martyrdom (online) checked 2026-10
Hilary Mantel, The Crowe Is White (review of Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith), London Review of Books (2009) checked 2026-10
Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? (1946) (1946) checked 2026-10
John W. O'Malley, Trent and All That (2000) (2000) checked 2026-10
Harold S. Bender, The Anabaptist Vision (1944) (1944) checked 2026-10
James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword (1972); Stayer, Packull and Deppermann, From Monogenesis to Polygenesis (1975) (1972, 1975) checked 2026-10