The Other Reformations (Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom)

The Reformation-themed posts on this Blog were until now focused on the person and the ideas of Martin Luther and his supporters, but he was neither the first one nor the last one whose ideas and doings reformed. This post is about the other Reformations.

Jan Hus (1372-1415) is considered to be the first church reformer. His teachings had a strong influence on the states of Western Europe and on Martin Luther. During the Council of Constance he was burned at the stake for heresy. After his death the followers of his religious teachings, the Hussites, rebelled against their Roman Catholic rulers and defeated five consecutive papal crusades during the the Hussite Wars between 1420 and 1431.

Hus Memorial in Prague

Huldrych Zwingli was born in 1484 in the Canton of St Gall in Switzerland. He later studied theology in Vienna and Basel and became pastor. Around 1514 he first encountered the humanist writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam and started to search a deeper approach to the New Testament. In 1522 he wrote a paper against the Lent, which marked the beginning of his conflict with the Church. In 1523 the city council of Zürich organised two disputations and at the end the Reformation according to Zwingli was introduced. The doctrine of Zwingli has many similarities with the one of Luther. The main differences are the missing distinction of secular and religious power and the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. Zwingli's Reformation spread in northern Switzerland and southwest Germany. When Zwingli tried to introduce the Reformation to other parts of Switzerland, a war between Zürich and other Catholic Cantons began. Huldrych Zwingli died during the Battle of Kappel in 1531 and the Reformation in Switzerland came to a standstill for the moment.

This is not a postcard, but a picture from the Internet.

The Church of England was separated from Rome by King Henry VIII in 1534. Although a theological separation had been foreshadowed by various movements within the English Church, the main reason became the monarch himself, although he was actually theologically opposed to Protestantism. Henry's motive was that Pope Clement VII refused the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. So Henry took the position of Supreme Head of the Church of England to ensure the annulment and was later excommunicated by Pope Paul III. Between 1536 and 1540 Henry VIII engaged in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry maintained a strong preference for traditional Catholic practises and just under his son, King Edward VI, more Protestant-influenced forms of worship were adopted. Queen Mary I, who succeeded Edward, returned England again to the authority of the papacy for a short time, thereby ending the first attempt at an independent Church of England. The Elizabethan Settlement from 1558 developed the middle way character of the Church of England, a church moderately Reformed in doctrine and also emphasising continuity with the Catholic and Apostolic traditions of the Church Fathers.

The Canterbury Cathedral is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England. It was built in the 11th century and is considered to be a masterpiece of Gothic architecture. In 1170 Thomas Becket had been murdered in the cathedral, starting a constant flow of pilgrims. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer tell the story of such a pilgrimage in the 14th century. Since 1988 is the Canterbury Cathedral on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Johannes Calvin was born in 1509 in northern France and later studied law and theology. After he acknowledged the Reformation in 1533, he had to leave France. In Basel in 1535 he finished his main work, Institutio Christianae Religionis. Between autumn 1535 and 1538 and again from 1540 onwards he lived in Geneva, where he established a community according to his ideas. In 1541 the city council of Geneva accepted a church order written by Calvin. Together with Luther he is considered to be one of the most important figures of the Reformation. The Calvinism spread to many parts of Europe including France (Huguenots), Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland and Scotland. Johannes Calvin died in 1564.