Schism: The Protestant Reformation

The image on the left is where Protestant was the offical religion by 1600, on the right is the modern map of the Germanic language subfamily of the Indo-European family. In every country where Protestantism was adopted, the leaders spoke a Germanic language. In no country where they did not speak a Germanic language was Protestantism made the official religion. In the upper right of the left-hand map (labelled 1561) is Livonia , which was then ruled by the Livonian Order of Teutonic Knights, German-speakers.

The Romance languages stayed truest to Roman Catholicism, specifically the people who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Catalan.

The Germanic languages become most thoroughly Protestant: German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish/Norwegeian and Frisian. Iceland converted when Denmark, which controlled it, did. Estonia, (Estonian is a language in the group with Finnish and Hungarian) was then ruled by Sweden.

Ireland, which speaks a language in the Celtic family of Indo-European, remained Roman Catholic. Poland and Transylvnania, Slavic speaking Roman Catholic countries, were the most multi-confessional of all nations. Transylvanians, on the border of the Ottoman Empire, even accepted Unitarians and other anti-Trinitarians for a while1 .

By 1600, Germany was 90% Protestant, while in France never more than 20% (more likely 10%) converted2 3 .

The results of the efforts of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli brought to the Catholic area of Western and Central Europe a warring era which lasted almost two centuries (1517-1720), leaving 10s of millions dead.

Some other notes on Christianity and Language between the Great Schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation.

The Glagolitic script was invented by monks to write the Slavic languages, Pope Innocent IV granted the Croats the right to use a Glagolitic text and to perform their liturgy in Slavic in 1248, the only official non-Latin language allowed by the Papacy from that year until the Second Vatican Council in 1962.
John Wycliff in England translated the Bible into English in the late 1300s. Wycliff and his followers lost their jobs at Oxford, all existing English Bibles were banned, and all further efforts at translation were banned in England4 . Wycliff's followers were called "Lollards ," or "mumblers who talked nonsense."5
See entry on the Utraquists

Protestantism in Germany

Germany ruled by "cuius regio, eius religio" "who rules, his religion" by the Augsburg Confession of 1555, covering only Lutheranism and Catholicism, not Calvinism.

Ferdinand of Styria, later Emperor during the Thirty Years War, purged his land of Protestantism during his reign as Archduke there, 1595-1617. My theory does not address why the counter-reformation was strongest in Germany itself. The most obvious reason is that the Habsburgs, leaders of the counter-reformation, were the only leaders of Protestant peoples with strong ties to Spain and other Roman Catholic lands.

The War of Ideas

I need to point out the effort of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, who built Catholic madrassas throughout Europe, to train young princes to hate heresy, and the effort of Calvin of Geneva, both in starting his university , and his massive book publishing effort. About the latter the Bishop of Winchester, in the funeral oration of Mary (aka Bloody Mary) "The wolves be coming out of Geneva, and other places of Germany, and have sent their books before, full of pestilential doctrines, blasphemy and heresy to infect the people."6 If Kings and Princes fought most of the battles, Ignatius and Calvin were fighting the war of words. Calvin published, the Jesuits banned.

Protestantism in England

In the first year of the reign of Edward VI, 1548, every single work of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Ossiander, Bullinger and Melanchthon were translated into English.7 English is the least Germanic of the all the Germanic languages, because of its mixed Latin, French and Greek roots on top of its base of Dutch and German. The Anglican Church by 1600 was supporting the tradition of Bishops, and many grand cathedrals which had survived were in use.8 By the 19th century, "very many Anglicans would have been embarassed to be called Protestants, and would insist on being thought of as Catholics, even inventing the label 'Anglo-Catholic' to distinguish themselves[.]"9

Protestantism in Scandinavia

In Sweden and Denmark, conversion to Lutheranism was basically a result of a decision of the Monarch, which might be seen as a larger power struggle with Rome.

Calvinism in Europe

Calvinism, it was clear, was making its impact on the educated and literate classes of Europe. For the illiterate peasantry, on the other hand, the appeal of a religion so dependent on the written word was relatively slight. It was possible, but difficult, for Calvinism to cross the barrier of literacy -- a barrier which tended to separate the countryside from the town. 10

Protestantism in the East

MacCullough argues11 , plausibly from my perspective, that the combined country of Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania, both on the border between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic lands, had far more experience with toleration. Not to mention their proximity to lands under Ottoman Suzerainity. Poland-Lithuania was, in fact, Roman Catholic in Poland and Eastern Orthodox in Lithuania. MacCullough also notes12 that there was a great spirit of equality among all of Poland's 10% aristocracy, preventing many from wanting a definitive decision made on how they should all worship.13 Hungary was mostly under the control of the Ottomans at this time. The leader of Transylvania ended up controlling a large part of what was left , and the rest fell to the Hapsburgs . Hungary was firmly Catholic by 1711.

Institutional Interests

There are, of course, institutional interests at stake. It would be unlikely for a person working for the Curiae in Rome to side with Luther, since their boss would have been against it, and although Luther didn't have his own institutional framework when he started, one might expect his own fellow Augustinian Monks in Saxony to be more sympathetic than average, if only to defend one of their own. Institutional concerns were not enough of a force to keeping people from deciding for themselves the merit of Lutheranism and the subsequent Protestant offerings in comparison to the earlier Catholic faith.

Other Theories on the Geography of the Split

Diarmaid MacCullough in her 700 page book called "The Reformation" can only guess at the reasons Protestantism spread where it did. Her only posited theory is that the differences between the North and the South in their views on purgatory, combhined with the fact that different books of sermons sold well in the North and the South, especially as they relate to the Church's views of penitents, led to Luther's different appeal in different regions14 . I am skeptical of this view on two main grounds.

Luther was pointedly interested in the ability for people to pay to get to Heaven through Papally approved sales, and Luther was particularly upset at a particularly energetic "indulgence" salesman named Tetzel, mentioning it in two of his 95 treatises. However much Luther's attack on the Papacy may have been catapulted by the fee-based remittance of sin, the religion that was born in that particular fire, the ideas spread in such a way to create a very different Church. Salvation through faith in Jesus, the rejection of Latin and (generally) the Mass, rejecting all but two of seven sacraments (baptism and Eucharist, keeping penance, but at a lower level of importance).

Secondly, MacCullough points to Tetzel as being a particularly egregious indulgence salesman, as if only Germans could be quite offended at the idea. The history of indulgence sales is not short, and was hardly constrained to the Empire (Germany). Pope Clement VI granted at least two hundred indulgences costing elevent shillings each in England in 1344. Since indulgences cost the Papacy nothing physical to grant, and resulted in cash income, Pope after Pope increasingly relied on them. There was no limit whatsoever on the number of indulgences a Pope could make possible. First it was to be visiting Rome in 1300 and every hundred years thereafter. Successive Popes decreased the time frame from 50, to 33, to 25 years. The first one, in 1300, was quite an event. In 1350, local chroniclers barely mention it. Not long after, towns all over Europe were granting the same privileges, and sometimes the events again passed without mention.15 I can hardly wonder at the morals of a continent where for the cost of a dozen shillings, or to travel to a neighboring county, all sin was absolved. During this period the Church was still the greatest taxing authority in Europe, and the Medici, as Italy's great bankers, was constantly having problems getting all the gold back to Italy.16

Toleration in Catholic Countries

Apart from Italy and Spain, almost all Catholic States tolerated some sort of a Protestant community in their midst." 17 Italy's deciding factor was likely the presence of Rome, while Spain was the richest country in Europe and shared no borders with any Protestant countries.

Non-religious Sources for Reformation Enthusiasm

The Renaissance Popes were bloody and extravagant. This quote concerns the era of Pope Eugenius IV: "[He] left the Rome to be pacified by a ferocious Biship, Vitelleschi, who razed cities, hanged and decapitated Barons, slaughtered left, right and center ... By such murderous methods were the Popes re-established. The calculated savageries of Cesare Borgia, which were to astound a later generation, were unusual only in the beauty and dexterity of their timing."18 Luther's critique of the Popes of Rome was a critique of the same Popes who were building the Basilica of St. Peters, the Sistine Chapel, and who patronized Botticelli, Raphael and Michaelangelo.

Footnotes13. Confederation of Warsaw of 1573, "This remarkable compact, which the new king was to promise to preserve, had no exact parallel in the Europe of its day. The Augsburg Peace of 1555 had been confined to Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and had rested on the principle of territorial division [...] Perhaps the act most comparable in its scope was the recognition by the Translyvanian Diet of 1571 of equal religious rights for Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Unitarians. But the Confederation of Warsaw extended the principle of religious liberty to nobles of any faith." 19 back