This essay will give an overview of the Protestant Reformation in Germany up to A.D. 1535, and the people who were involved in it. The main topics will be Martin Luther’s excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran ideas that sparked the Reformation, the persecution of Luther, the early stages of the German Reformation, and the spreading of the German Reformation. This essay will hopefully enlighten the reader on what caused the German Reformation, and the worldwide effect that it had.
Martin Luther did not intend on breaking away from the Catholic Church, but intense conflict soon became inevitable. Martin Luther recognised the necessity of a reformation of the existing Church. He had seen the corruption of the Catholic Church in Germany, and it angered him. An example of the corruption being the selling of indulgences.
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In my opinion, the greatest pioneer of the Reformation was Jan Hus, a Czech priest who was a vital predecessor of the German Reformation. Although his many years of ministry did not start in Germany, they ended there. Jan Hus refused to recant the content of his writings, because of this he was executed. As Hus was tied up and ready to be executed, he was given one last opportunity to recant, he replied, “God is my witness that the things charged against me (heresy) I never preached. In the same truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught, and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die today.” His neck was then chained to a post; straw and wood was stacked the whole way up his body. As the fire was lit on the 6th of July, 1415, he cried out, “Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on us.” Over the next hundred years, the doctrine of the reformers started to resonate with the people of Germany, so when Martin Luther came along, this time Germany was ready for a