Although popular accounts of
the origins of Protestantism often identify Martin Luther’s posting
of the Ninety-five Theses against indulgences on October 31, 1517, as
marking the origins of the Reformation, the truth is much more complex
and interesting.5 Although undoubtedly influenced and catalyzed
by significant individuals—such as Martin Luther and John Calvin—
the origins of Protestantism lie in the greater intellectual and social
upheavals of that era, which both created a crisis for existing forms of
Christianity and offered means by which it might be resolved.
The use of the term “Protestantism” to refer—somewhat vaguely, it
must be said—to this new form of Christianity appears to have been a
happenstance of history. Its origins can be traced back to the Diet of
Worms (1521), which issued an edict declaring Martin Luther to be a
dangerous heretic and a threat to the safety of the Holy Roman Empire.
Any who supported him were threatened with severe punishment. It
was an unpopular move with many German princes, a growing number
of whom were sympathetic to Luther’s demands for reform. One of
them, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, arranged for Luther to be
abducted and given safety in Wartburg Castle, where he began his great
German translation of the Bible. This hostility on the part of many
German rulers toward his policies led Emperor Charles V to dilute the
Edict of Worms. In 1526 the Diet of Speyer decreed that it was up to
individual princes to enforce its draconian anti-Lutheran measures.
The outcome—though clearly not the intention—of this measure was
to allow Luther’s reforming vision and program to gain strength in
many regions of Germany.
Emperor Charles V was seriously preoccupied with other matters at
this time and therefore was distracted from dealing with the rise of this
unpredictable new form of religious faith within Germany. His empire
was under immediate and serious threat. One worrying challenge came
from a perhaps unexpected source: Rome itself had challenged his authority.
Exasperated, in 1527 Charles V sent a task force of twenty thousand
mercenaries to sack Rome and place Pope Clement VII under
house arrest. The episode undoubtedly dampened any slight enthusiasm
Charles might have had for dealing with the pope’s enemies in
Germany.
Yet a far greater danger lay to the east, where decidedly ominous
storm clouds were gathering. Following their capture of the great Byzantine
city of Constantinople in 1453, Islamic armies were pressing
westward, making deep inroads into hitherto Christian areas of eastern
Europe as they pursued their jihad. These armies had occupied much of
the Balkans, where Islamic spheres of influence were well established (a
development that has resounded throughout the subsequent history of
the area, especially in the Bosnian civil war of 1992–95). Following their
defeat of the Hungarians in 1526, Turkish armies headed north. By 1529
they had laid siege to Vienna. The Islamic conquest of western Europe
suddenly became a real possibility. Urgent action was required to deal
with this clear and present danger to western Christendom.
The second Diet of Speyer was hurriedly convened in March 1529.
Its primary objective was to secure, as quickly as possible, a united front
against the new threat from the east. Hard-liners, however, saw this as a
convenient opportunity to deal with another, lesser threat in their own
backyards. It was easy to argue that the reforming movements that were
gaining influence throughout the region threatened to bring about destabilization
and religious anarchy. The presence of a larger number of
Catholic representatives than in 1526 presented conservatives with an
opportunity they simply could not ignore. They forced through a resolution
that demanded the rigorous enforcement of the Edict of Worms
throughout the empire. It was a shrewd tactical move, with immense
strategic ramifications. Both enemies of the Catholic church—Islam
and the Reformation—would be stopped dead in their tracks.
Outraged, yet ultimately powerless to change anything, six German
princes and fourteen representatives of imperial cities entered a formal
protest against this unexpected radical curtailment of religious liberty.
The Latin term protestantes (“protesters”) was immediately applied to
them and the movement they represented. Although its origins lay in
the religious situation in Germany, the movement rapidly came to be
applied to related reforming movements, such as those then associated
with Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland, the more radical reforming
movements often referred to at the time as “Anabaptism” (though now
more generally known as “the Radical Reformation”), and the later
movement linked with John Calvin in the city of Geneva. Older reforming
movements—such as the Waldensians in northern Italy and
the Bohemian reforming movements tracing their origins back to Jan
Hus—gradually became assimilated within this new larger entity.
Although a word had been invented, its connotations remained vague,
subject to the whims and agendas of propagandists on both sides of the
Reformation controversies. Faced with a significant political and theological
threat, the Catholic church used the term to lump together a series
of threats arising from a group of loosely interconnected but ultimately
distinct movements. The tense and dangerous situation demanded unity
within the Catholic church; presenting the various evangelical groupings
as a coordinated anti-Catholic movement proved instrumental in catalyzing
unity within that church and galvanizing its members into action.
Protestants, for their part, saw a revitalized Catholic church as
posing a serious threat to their continuing existence. Anglican and Lutheran,
Reformed and Anabaptist—the four main evangelical strands
present by the 1560s—saw their antagonisms, divisions, and mutual distaste
eclipsed as the need for collaboration against a coordinated and
dangerous opponent became clear. Whatever their differences, they
reasoned, they were all “Protestants”—even though there was a conspicuous
lack of clarity over what that actually meant.
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