The Protestant Reformation

Often referred to simply as the Reformation, was the schism within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and other early Protestant Reformers.

Time frames of the Reformation are debatable. Period between the publishing of Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 and thePeace of Westphalia of 1648 is the most common timing used by a majority of authors and scholars on the subject.

The core motivation behind these changes was theological, though many other factors played a part, including the rise of nationalism, the Western Schism which eroded people's faith in the Papacy, the perceived corruption of the Roman Curia, the impact of humanism and the new learning of the Renaissance which questioned much of the traditional thought.

Although there had been significant earlier attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church before Luther — such as those of Jan Hus,Peter Waldo, and John Wycliffe — it is Martin Luther who is widely acknowledged to have started the Reformation with his 1517 work The Ninety-Five Theses. 

Luther began by criticising the selling of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The attacks widened to cover many of the doctrines and devotional Catholic practices. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The new movement within Germany diversified almost immediately, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. 

The largest groupings were the Lutherans and Calvinists. Lutheran churches were founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced the Church of England decisively after 1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, although the national church had been made independent under Henry VIII in the early 1530s for political rather than religious reasons. There were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as the Radical Reformation, which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian, and otherPietistic movements.

The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent. Much work in battling Protestantismwas done by the well-organized new order of the Jesuits. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, came under the influence of Protestantism. Southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central Europe was a site of a fierce conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years' War, which left it massively devastated.