Unlike the Renaissance, the Reformation appealed to the deepest devotional traditions of the Middle Ages, and it rode on a wave of a religious revival which affected not just the scholars but the masses. What started as a broad religious revival divided into two separate and hostile movements, later known as the Catholic Reformation and the Protestant Reformation.
The revival, clearly visible at the end of the 15th century, was largely driven by popular disgust at the decadence of the clergy. Europe was full of tales about simoniac monks, nepotistic popes, promiscuous priests, idle monks and above all the sheer worldly wealth of the Church.
Once again the harbinger of things to come appeared in Florence. The ferocious hellfire sermons of a fanatical friar, Fra Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98), raised a revolt in the 1490's which ended only with the friar's own burning, but not without first temporarily driving out the Medici.
In Italy under the future Pope Paul IV, an influential circle of Roman churchmen bound themselves to a regime of intense devotional exercises and practical charity. From them there arose a series of new Catholic congregations of clerks regular, neither monks nor friars — among them the Jesuits.
The stirrings of revival coincided with the nadir of the Church's reputation. Alexander VI's passions were for gold, women and the careers of his illegimate children. Julis II gratified an innate love of war and conquest. In 1509, when he was planning to pay for his wars and for the rebuilding of St. Peter's through the sale in Germany of indulgences — Rome was visited by a young Augustinian monk from Wittenberg. Martin Luther was shocked by what he saw.

Martin Luther
Within ten years Luther (1483-1546) found himself at the head of the first Protestant revolt. His lectures at Wittenberg show that his doctrine of 'Justification by Faith Alone' had been brewing for some years. Rome had become, to him, the seat of sodomy and the Beast of Revelation.
Luther's fury was rought to the boil by the appearance in Germany of a friar, Johann Tetzel, who was selling indulgences. Tetzel had been banned from the territory of the Elector of Saxony, who had no deesire to see his subjects pouring large sums into papal coffers. So by challenging Tetzel's theological credentials, Luther was not only enforcing the policy of his Prince but also ingratiating himself towards him.
On the 31st October 1515, All Saint's Eve, he took the fateful step of naling a sheet og 95 Theses, or arguments against indulgences, to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. From that one famous act of defiance several consequences flowed.
First Luther became emroiled in a series of several public disputations, most notably the one staged at Leipzig with Dr. von Eck which preceded his formal excommunication (June 1520). In the course of his preparations he penned the primary treatises of Lutheranism — Resolutions, Liberty of a Christian Man, Address to the Christian Nobility of German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God.
Secondly, in 1521, the Emperor Charles V summoned Luther to appear under safe conduct before the Imperial Diet at Worms. Luther, like Hus before him at Constance, defended himself with fortitude: I am overcome by the Scriptures I have quoted; my conscience is captive to God's Word. I cannot and will not revoke anything, for to act against conscience is neither safe nor honest... Hier stehe ich. Ich kan nicht anders.
After that he was spirited away by the Saxon Elector's men and hidden in Wartburg Castle. The ban pronounced by the Diet against Luther could not be enforced. Religious protest thereby turned into political revolt.
Germany in 1522-25 was convulsed by two major outbursts of unrest. Luther's defiance of the Church may have been a factor in the defiance of political authority, but he had no sympathy for the peasants. When fresh rebel bands appeared in Thuringia, Luther published his appeal Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants, trenchantly defending the social order and the princes' rights. The peasants were crushed in a sea of blood.
The Lutheran revolt took definite shape during a session of the Imperial Diet at Augsburg in 1530. There, a measured summary of beliefs was presented. This Confession of Augsburg, composed by Melanchthon, was the Protestant manifesto. Meanwhile, a series of parallel events which swelled the Protestant movement, also widened nature of Protestantantism.

Huldrych Zwingli
In 1522 in Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), hellenist, correspondent of Erasmus, and a 'people's priest' at Zurich, challenged the Roman church both on ecclesiastical organisation and on doctrine. Like Luther, he started by denouncing indulgences; and he shared Luther's concept of justification by faith. But he also rejected the authority of bishops; and he taught that the Eucharist was no more than a simple, symbolic ceremony.
The Anabaptists, or Rebaptisers, emerged among some disgruntled Swiss Zwinglians. Rejecting all established authority, they declared all previous baptisms invalid. They also sought to found an ideal Christian republic on evangelical principles, renouncing oaths, property and, in theory, all violence. The Anabaptists were persecuted by Protestants and Catholics alike. They recovered and survived as Mennonites, under the Frieslander Menno Simons (1496-1561), sowing a spritual legacy for later Baptists, Unitarians and Quakers.

King Henry VIII
In 1529 King Henry VIII of England initiated the policy which was to separate the English Church from Rome. The initial cause lay in Henry's obsessive desire for a male heir and the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce. Contrary to popular belief Henry was not promiscuous but was motivated by a desire to do what was right — produce an heir. He had an enormous musical talent the most memorable of his compositions being Greensleeves.
Henry had earlier earned the title Fidei Defensor for his denunciation of Luther, politically rather than religiously motivated, and gained great support in Parliament, and immense material advantage by attacking the Church's priveleges and property. It was this rather than his spiritual protest that set Rome against him. His Acts of Annates (1532) cut financial payments to Rome. The Act of Appeals (1533) curtailed Rome's ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The Act of Supremacy (1534) abolished papal authority completely, raising the King to be Supreme Head of the Church of England. Subjects such as Thomas More or Cardinal John Fisher who declined to accede were executed for treason.

Jean Calvin
In 1541 a second attempt was made to persuade Jean Calvin (1509-64) to take control of the church in Geneva. A fugitive Frenchman, more radical than Luther, Calvin founded the most widely influential brach of Protestantism. He expressed original ideas on theology, on the relations of Church and State, and especially on private morality. He was close to Luther on matters of the Eucharist but his one big black mark was to revive the doctrine of predestination. He saw humanity divided into the Damned and the Elect.
On church organisation, too, Calvin's innovations far exceeded those of Zwingli. He insisted not only on the separation of Church and State but also on the competence of local congregations.
In ethical matters, Calvin established a new and inimitable code which made his followers instantly recognisable. The good Calvinist family was to abhor all forms of pleasure and frivolity — dancing, songs, drinking, gaming, flirtation, bright clothes, entertaining books, loud language and even vivacious gestures. Their life as to be marked by sobriety, self-restraint, hard work, thrift and above all godliness. Their membership of the Elect was to be reflected in their appearance, in their conduct, their church-going and in their worldly success.
They were to find the sole source of joy and guidance in the daily reading of the Bible. Here was what the English-speaking world would come to know as Puritan.
The spread of Protestantism has to be described both in socio-political terms as well as in geographical terms. Lutheranism appealed dirctly to independant-minded princes. In Denmark and Norway, for instance, through the preaching of the Danish 'Luther', Hans Tausen, it became the state religion in 1537. Calvinism, by contrast, often appealed to the rising urban bourgeoisie, and in France to an impressive cross-section of the nobility. In eastern Europe, also, it appealed both to the landed gentry and to the magnates.

Anglicanism
In the kingdom of England, Calvinism began to make an impact after the death of Henry VIII in 1547. The reign of the pious boy-king Edward VI produced much confusion and that of the ultra-Catholic Bloody Queen Mary a crop of martyrs, especially at Oxford. Thereafter, a string of legislation, enacted under Elizabeth I, reached a judicious synthesis of Erastian, Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist and traditional Catholic influences.
From then on, Anglicanism has always provided an umbrella for two main political and theological tendencies — the 'High Church' of Anglo-Catholicism and the 'Low Church' of Calvinist evangelicals. Despite persecution, non-conformist puritans survived underground to re-emerge in force in the 17th century and under Oliver Cromwell briefly (1649-1658) to control the state.

Other European Countries
Thanks to the efforts of John Knox (1513-72), Calvinism became the sole established religion in Scotland in 1560, in a form known as Presbyterianism. Thus the Scottish Kirk remained apart from Anglicanism.
In France the Calvinists were dubbed Huguenots. They formed the backbone of the Bourbon Party during the Wars of Religion, and were an essential feature of the French religious scene until their ultimate expulsion in 1685.
In the Netherlands the rise of Calvinism created the division of Catholic provinces to the west and the United provinces to the east. The Dutch Reformed Church established in 1622 has since played a central role in the country.
In Germany, Calvinism received its major support from the adherence in 1563 of the Elector-Palatine, Frederik III, who imposed the Heidelberg Catechism on all his subjects, from Christian I of Saxony and from the conversion of the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg in 1613.
In Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary Calvinism appealed to a wide section of landed gentry. The hungarian city of Debrecen has bee 'the Calvinist Rome' ever since. In Lithuania it claimed the allegiance of many powerful magnates, including Europe's largest landowners — the Radziwills.

The efforts of Protestantism can be observed in every sphere of European life. By emphasizing the necessity of Bible-reading, it made a major impact on education and hence on popular literacy. In the economic sphere it made a major contribution to enterprise culture, and hence to the rise of capitalism. In politics, it dealt a severe blow to the ideal of a united Christendom. Until the 1530's, Christendom had been split into two — Orthodox and Catholic. From the 1530's onward it wassplit into three Othodox, Catholic and Protestant. And the protestants themselves were split into irreconcilable factions. The fragmentation grew so pronounced that one no longer talked about Christendom but about Europe.