History of Protestantism | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-10

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
History of Protestantism

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SUMMARY
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Protestantism originated from work of several theologians starting in the 12th century, although there could have been earlier cases of which there is no surviving evidence.
Any prominent dissent was subject to persecution by the Roman Catholic Church, and thus attempts to change anything in the Catholic Church were kept isolated or effectively eradicated up to the 16th century. One of the early Protestant Reformers was John Wycliffe, an English theologian and early proponent of reform in the 14th century. His followers, known as Lollards, spread throughout England but soon were persecuted by both the Catholic Church and the crown. Wycliffe influenced Jan Hus, a Czech priest from Prague, whose followers waged the Hussite Wars after he was burned on the stake following a decision made by the Council of Constance. Five crusades were proclaimed against Bohemia by the Pope (in 1420, 1421, 1422, 1427, and 1431), though all of them were defeated by Hussite Czechs. Hussites divided early on into Radical Hussites and Moderate Hussites who opposed each other in the Hussite Wars. Utraquism eventually prevailed. Utraquist Hussites dominated the Kingdom of Bohemia, and later spread into other Lands of the Bohemian Crown that included Silesia and Moravia. Both Wycliffe and Hus preached against indulgences. Hus wrote his Six Errors, fixed to the door of his church, in which he criticized corruption of the clergy and touched on other topics which under the later Luther became the key to Reformation. After the Battle of White Mountain, persecuted Hussites established minor churches such as the Unity of the Brethren (and its international branch Moravian Church).
Those early reformers influenced German monk Martin Luther, who spread the Protestant Reformation. Originally, Luther intended to reform the Roman Catholic Church rather than break it up. Reformation in Germany diversified quickly as did the earlier Hussites in Bohemian Crown, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in local languages. Similar to his predecessors, Martin Luther wrote Ninety-Five Theses on the sale of indulgences in 1517. Soon, the Reformed tradition began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli in 1519. The Reformation evolved into a large debate involving theologians throughout most of Europe. The political separation of the Church of England from Rome under Henry VIII brought England alongside this movement. The work and writings of John Calvin helped establish a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. Calvinism took a special path and evolved into the Reformed tradition with specific subgroups like the Continental Reformed, Presbyterianism, Congregationalism and a variety of English dissenters, including the Puritans. Other important movements that emerged during the Reformation include Anabaptism, Arminianism, the Baptist movement and Unitarianism.After excommunicating Luther, the Pope condemned the Reformation and its followers. In 1545, the Counter-Reformation was launched by Roman Catholic officials at the Council of Trent to destroy Protestantism with help of the Jesuit order and powerful monarchs like the Habsburgs. Demographically, its impact is mostly visible in the vast areas that were under Habsburg control except for Hungary, where undertaken counterreformational efforts left it only shrunk.In the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 swept through Bavaria, Thuringia and Swabia. The confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648, leaving the agglomeration severely weakened. France suffered its own religious wars. The Dutch people rebelled in the Eighty Years' War. The War of the Three Kingdoms affected the ...