Protestant Reformation Dbq Essay

During the 16th century in Europe, the beginning of a reformation occurred that still affects us to this day. This shift in ideas and action caused wars, persecutions, and brought about a counter reformation. This event is known as the Protestant Reformation.

Although many people attribute the reformation beginning with Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door in 1517, there were signs of reform stirring in the church before that. The ending of the protestant reformation is not specifically known as occurring on a certain date but it was suspected to have ended anytime between 1555 and 1648. The reform was not brought about by a singular person, but actually many reformers were involved. The main reformer although was Martin

He was very similar to Martin Luther in terms of their beliefs. Along with Zwingli, was John Calvin who was a French protestant prominent in the reformation. One main event during this time was when King Henry VIII demanded the current pope at the time to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon due to the fact that she hadn’t yet given birth to a son and he believed she was cursed. He thought that all of England’s stability relied on him having an heir to the throne. The pope denied the annulment ultimately causing King Henry to become enraged and he declared himself authority of the church. King Henry’s marriage to Katherine was finally annulled and he remarried to one of the queen’s servants Anne Boleyn but she did not bear a son either. When he died England became mainly Calvinistic with hints of Protestantism. The Catholic Church had a fairly slow response to the accusations of the corruption but they did form the Council of Trent which had the main job of defeating heresy in the Church. This council also introduced the Counter-Reformation which made many changes to the way the Church was being run and added more intellect elements in with the teachings. Most of these changes were religious but there were some political aspects as

The Jesuits sought to stomp out corruption and tried to inforce this international movement. They also focused on the flaw in Protestant theology that was predestination, or the idea of God choosing who will go to heaven and be saved and who he will allow to continue their way on the life of sin that has been chosen for them. Although the Jesuits were one of the most admired teachers of this time, many people believed that they were only doing it for power so this caused them to become a very controversial group. Another important group was known as the Anabaptists and their sects started appearing everywhere just as the Jesuits’ had. Their name comes from their controversial beliefs about infant baptism and how wrong it was. They thought that the child should be old enough to decide for themselves whether they want to participate in the faith or not. Many of the Anabaptist were peaceful people who pushed for religious tolerance and separation of church and state, but some went to extreme measures to try to emphasize their beliefs and scare people out of baptizing their small children. Some of the awful scare-tactics they used were burning down buildings and homes with people still inside and protesting aggressively in the middle of towns and cities. Today’s Baptists, Mennonites, and Amish all can trace their religious heritage back to the