1. The Renaissance and Reformation (1300–1650)
Lesson 4 Reformation Ideas Spread

2. The Renaissance and Reformation (1300–1650)
Lesson 4 Reformation Ideas Spread
Learning Objectives
Describe the new ideas that Protestant sects embraced.
Understand why England formed a new church.
Analyze how the Catholic Church reformed itself.
Explain why many groups faced persecution during the Reformation.
Explain the impact of the Reformation.

3. The Renaissance and Reformation (1300–1650)
Lesson 4 Reformation Ideas Spread
Key Terms
sects
Henry VIII
Mary Tudor
Thomas Cranmer
Elizabeth
canonized
compromise
Council of Trent
Ignatius of Loyola
Teresa of Avila
ghetto

4. An Explosion of Protestant Sects
Henry III, the Catholic king of France, was deeply disturbed by the Calvinist reformers in Geneva. “It would have been a good thing,” he wrote, “if the city of Geneva were long ago reduced to ashes, because of the evil doctrine which has been sown from that city throughout Christendom.”
Henry was not alone in his anger. Across Europe, Catholic monarchs and the Catholic Church fought back against the Protestant challenge. They also took steps to reform the church and to restore its spiritual leadership in the Christian world.

5. An Explosion of Protestant Sects
As the Reformation continued, hundreds of new Protestant sects, or religious groups, sprang up. Some sects developed their own versions of the teachings of Luther and Calvinism.
Others developed ideas that were increasingly radical.

6. An Explosion of Protestant Sects: Radical Reformers
A number of groups rejected the practice of infant baptism. Infants, they argued, were too young to understand what it means to accept Christ. Only adults should receive the sacrament of baptism. Because of this belief, they became known as Anabaptists.
In the age of religious intolerance, the Anabaptists called for tolerance. They also put forth the idea of separation of church and state. These groups influenced Protestant thinking in many countries.
Today, the Baptists, Mennonites, and Amish all trace their religious ancestry to the Anabaptists.

7. An Explosion of Protestant Sects
Anabaptists practiced adult baptism. Often, the ceremony took place in a river, pond, or similar body of water.

8. The English Reformation
In England, religious leaders like John Wycliffe had called for Church reform as early as the 1300s. By the 1520s, some English clergy were exploring Protestant ideas. The break with the Catholic Church, however, was the work not of religious leaders but of King Henry VIII. For political reasons, Henry wanted to end papal control over the English Church.

9. The English Reformation: Henry VIII Breaks with the Church
Henry was furious, and he decided to take over the English church. Henry had Parliament pass a series of laws that took the English church from the pope’s control and placed it under Henry’s rule. The most notable law was the Act of Supremacy, which made Henry the “only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England.

10. The English Reformation: Henry VIII Breaks with the Church
Thomas Cranmer had been appointed archbishop by Henry, and he annulled the king’s marriage. Henry then married Anne Boleyn. She gave birth to Elizabeth. Henry married four more times, but only produced one son.
Many loyal Catholics refused to accept the Act of Supremacy and were executed. The well-known humanist Sir Thomas More was executed; he later became a saint in the Catholic Church.

11. The English Reformation: Henry VIII Breaks with the Church

12. The English Reformation: The Church of England
Between 1536 and 1540, Henry ordered the closing of all convents and monasteries in England and seized their lands and wealth for the crown. This became known as the dissolution.
Henry shrewdly granted some church lands to nobles, guaranteeing their support for the Anglican Church, as the new Church of England was called.
Henry, aside from breaking from Rome, kept most Catholic forms of worship.

13. The English Reformation
This portrait of King Henry VIII of England was painted by the famous court artist, Hans Holbein. Henry broke with the Catholic Church over differences concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

14. The English Reformation: Religious Turmoil
When Henry died in 1547, his nine year old son, Edward VI, inherited the throne. The young king’s advisers were devout Protestants. Thomas Cranmer drew up the Book of Common Prayer to be used in the Anglican Church. It sparked uprisings that were harshly suppressed.

15. The English Reformation: Religious Turmoil
When Edward died in his teens, his half-sister, Mary Tudor, became queen. A pious Catholic, she was determined to make England Catholic. She failed, but not before hundreds of English Protestants were burned at the stake for heresy, including Archbishop Cranmer. In history, she has become known as Bloody Mary.

16. The English Reformation: The Elizabethan Settlement
On Mary’s death, her Protestant half-sister became queen. As queen, Elizabeth adopted a policy of religious compromise. She moved cautiously at first, but gradually enforced reforms that both moderate Catholics and Protestants could accept. This policy of compromise was later known as the Elizabethan Settlement.
Under Elizabeth, English replaced Latin as the language of the Anglican service. Much of the Catholic ritual was kept. The Church of England also kept the hierarchy of bishops and archbishops, but Elizabeth quickly affirmed that the monarch, not the pope, was the head of the Anglican Church.

17. The Catholic Reformation
As the Protestant Reformation swept across northern Europe, a vigorous reform movement took hold within the Catholic Church. The leader of this movement, known as the Catholic Reformation, was Pope Paul III. (Protestants often called it the Counter-Reformation.)
During the 1530s and 1540s, the pope set out to revive the moral authority of the Church and roll back the Protestant tide. To end corruption within the papacy, he appointed reformers to top posts.

18. The Council of Trent Passes Reforms
To establish the direction that reform should take, the pope called the Council of Trent, which met off and on for over 20 years. The council reaffirmed the traditional Catholic views the Protestants had challenged.
The council believed that salvation came through faith and good works, and that the Christian Bible was not only source of religious truth. It also established religious schools for better-educated clergy who could challenge Protestant teachings.

19. The Catholic Reformation
Pope Paul III meets with Catholic religious leaders at the Council of Trent, where he called for a series of reforms to correct abuses within the Church.

20. The Catholic Reformation: The Inquisition Is Strengthened
To deal with the Protestant threat more directly, Pope Paul strengthened the Inquisition. The Inquisition was a church court set up during the Middle Ages. To battle Protestant ideas, the Inquisition used secret testimony, torture, and execution to root out what the Church considered heresy. It also had a list of forbidden books, including those by Luther and Calvin.

21. The Catholic Reformation: The Jesuits
In 1540, the pope recognized a new religious order, the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. Founded by Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuit order was dedicated to combating heresy and spreading the Catholic faith.
Ignatius drew up a strict program for the Jesuits. It included spiritual and moral discipline, rigorous religious training, and absolute obedience to the Church. The Jesuits embarked on a crusade to defend and spread the Catholic faith. They also set up schools that taught humanist and Catholic beliefs and enforced discipline and obedience.

22. The Catholic Reformation: Teresa of Avila
Teresa of Avila experienced a renewed feeling of intense faith. She entered a convent in her youth. The convent was not strict enough for her strong religious nature. She set up her own order of nuns; they lived in isolation, eating and sleeping very little, and dedicated themselves to prayer and meditation.
The Catholic Church asked Teresa to reorganize and reform Spanish monasteries and convents. After her death, the Church made her a saint.

23. The Catholic Reformation: Results of the Catholic Reformation
By 1600, the majority of Europeans remained Catholic. Across Europe, piety, charity, and religious art flourished, and church abuses were reduced from within.
The Protestant continued, however. Europe remained divided into a Catholic south and a Protestant north. This division would fuel conflicts that lasted for centuries, although later, the goals would be more political than religious.

24. The Catholic Reformation
Analyze Maps By 1600, the spread of Protestantism had transformed Catholic Europe. What was the main religion in France? Why were most people in each region practicing that religion by 1600?

25. Religious Persecution Continues
During this period of heightened religious passion, persecution was widespread. Both Catholics and Protestants fostered intolerance. The Inquisition executed many people accused of heresy. Catholic mobs attacked and killed Protestants. Protestants killed Catholic priests and destroyed Catholic churches. Both Catholics and Protestants persecuted radical sects like the Anabaptists.

26. Religious Persecution Continues: Witch Hunts
The religious fervor of the time contributed to wave of witch hunting. Between 1450 and 1750, ten of thousands of women and men died as victims of witch hunts.
Most scholars agree that the witch hunts had to do with people’s beliefs in magic and spirits. At the time, people saw a close link between magic and heresy. Witches, they believed, were in league with the devil and were thus anti-Christian.
In the charged religious atmosphere of the Reformation, many people were convinced that witchcraft and devil worship were on the rise.

27. Religious Persecution Continues
Women accused of witchcraft are questioned before King James. Many women who were skilled with herbs or seen as being different from the norm were suspected of witchcraft. Men also fell victim to the persecution, fed by religious fervor.

28. Religious Persecution Continues: Persecution of Jews
The Reformation brought hard times for Europe’s Jews. For many Jews in Italy, the early Renaissance had been a time of relative prosperity.
Yet the pressure remained strong on Jews to convert. By 1516, Jews in Venice had to live in a separate quarter of the city called the ghetto. Other Italian cities set up walled ghettos in which Jews were forced to live.

29. Religious Persecution Continues: Persecution of Jews
At first, Luther hoped Jews would be converted to his teachings. When they did not convert, he called for them to be expelled from Christian lands, and for the synagogues to be burned.
During the Reformation, restrictions on Jews increased. Some German princes expelled Jews from their lands. All German states confined Jews to ghettos or required them to wear a yellow badge if they traveled outside the ghetto.

30. Religious Persecution Continues: Persecution of Jews
In the 1550s, Pope Paul IV reversed the lenient policy of Renaissance popes and restricted Jewish activities. After 1550, many Jews migrated to Poland-Lithuania and to parts of the Ottoman Empire. Dutch Calvinists also tolerated Jews, taking in families who were driven out of Portugal and Spain.

33. Quiz: An Explosion of Protestant Sects
What was the one key belief shared by the different Anabaptist sects?
A. Only adults should be baptized.
B. Property should be distributed equally among all people.
C. There should be a state religion.
D. Violent protest was the best way to quickly achieve social change.

34. Quiz: The English Reformation
What was the main catalyst driving Henry VIII to establish the Church of England?
A. He wanted to strengthen the economy by dissolving the monasteries and using their lands and money for the English treasury.
B. The pope had offended Henry by refusing to recognize his efforts in defending the Catholic faith against Martin Luther.
C. He was a staunch Protestant and wanted to break away from the traditions, rituals, and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
D. The pope would not grant him an annulment so he could remarry and produce a male heir to succeed him.

35. Quiz: The Catholic Reformation
What was one of the important results of the Catholic Reformation?
A. The Roman Catholic Church met at the Council of Trent and reaffirmed traditional doctrine, took steps to end abuses, and established new schools.
B. The Roman Catholic Church, through its work at the Council of Trent, completely stopped the spread of Protestantism in Europe.
C. The Roman Catholic Church met at the Council of Trent and incorporated most of Martin Luther’s teachings into its doctrine.
D. The Roman Catholic Church and the main Protestant sects met at the Council of Trent to establish a spirit of cooperation and new schools to educate the clergy.

36. Quiz: Religious Persecution Continues
The ghetto in Venice was an example of how
A. there was greater tolerance for Jewish populations.
B. Christians were willing to have Jews live among them.
C. restrictions on the Jewish community increased.
D. efforts to convert Jews to Christianity increased.