Records: 1378 Protestant Movement

## **The Weight of Paper**

Two words echoed through Christendom, as if a shout between walls of a canyon: *vernacular bibles*.

In the holds of Royal Company galleons, those bibles had sailed into ports and made their way through Europe as if strapped to the backs of greyhounds. In a mere month, Lollardy was tearing at the fabric of every cardinal that refused to adopt the ways of simplicity that new Pope Urban VI demanded.

With bibles in the hands, and words that could be read, the Protestant Reformation had begun. In England itself, the grass-roots protestations were splintering into a thousand directions, from tiny groups like the Puritans to extreme Calvinism to middle-of-the-road Anglicanism.

What was slowly beginning to gel was a form of Ricardian Anglicanism that was a little like a Messianic-leaning proto-Bahá'í Faith in a 1:1 ratio with rational humanism. Richard’s religion seemed to be constantly growing, and the more philosophical, laid-back approach was winning converts in England and well beyond.

### **Flanders**

There were a dozen different protestant movements started, but a majority of them were variations on the Anabaptist interpretations. This wasn’t just about protesting the corruption and materialism of the church, this was doctrinal difference sparked by the mass availability of both bibles and pamphlets.

### **France**

There was a resurgence of the heavily-persecuted Waldensians… and Charles V moved to persecute again, swiftly and violently. It was absolutely the worst thing he could do at the time, demonizing his own forces and sending morale plummeting through the countryside.

This also led to the rise of a French protestant resistance in all levels and forms, essentially birthing the early rise of the Huguenots.

### **The Holy Roman Empire**

Germany, a place that didn’t speak the Romantic Languages yet still called themselves *Holy Romans*, was destined to have problems. 13 decades before Martin Luther, the principles of Lutheranism (Rev-U Wycliffism) were already blooming to the point that *the Ninety-Five Theses* would be spontaneously reborn in the Rev-U.

The sudden and massive divide in the German Catholic faith centered primarily on two points: the proper source of authority in the church, often called the *formal principle* of the Reformation; and the doctrine of justification (often called the *material principle* of the Reformation).

Mere protestant belief didn’t tie together the protestants. Tremendous religious disputes between the Crypto-Calvinists, Philippists, Sacramentarians, Ubiquitarians and Gnesio-Lutherans raged within German proto-Lutheranism.

### **Bohemia**

Bohemia was a late-add to the Holy Roman Empire, but there elements of it that were still very distinct from the lands just west.

John Wycliffe was a rock star in Bohemia, and when it came out that Pope Urban VI himself *was a Lollard*, the Catholics split cleanly down the middle. Demonstrations erupted and quickly devolved into riots. It was a sad prequel to the Alt-U Defenestrations of Prague.

Jan Hus was just a boy, but there were already adults around him following in Wycliffe’s footsteps. The English-printed Czech-language bibles just accelerated the process…

In the space of a week, it descended from committees to mass chaos. In Prague, there was a violent anarchy against the Catholic church (and Catholic churchgoers) for about two weeks. Charles IV, King of Bohemia (and first person to also be Holy Roman Emperor), was already ill with severe gout and had retreated to Prague Castle.

### **Iberia**

The 1380s Iberia was far different than the Alt-U Iberia when the reformation movement hit. In this case, the Church was largely a vehicle to support regal dispositions. Those who suffered the worst were near border areas, where the inquisition was definitely present, but mostly politically motivated, especially between the border of Castile and Aragon.

There were early versions of Erasmus carefully calling for measured reformation, and Ricardian Spanish-language bibles creating a rush to literacy, but even that was a more-suppressed underground movement (and again, because of national politics). The dissonance came from the Spanish-language translation being printed by Richard’s *Royal Company*, which the verboten in Kingdom of Castile (and highly suspect in the Kingdom of Aragon). At the same time, the Portuguese-version was a massive seller in Castile-occupied Portugal.

### **Italia**

The Roman (actual *Roman*) Catholic Church had recent peaks of power – and was now in a trough, treading water because of the methodology to reach those peaks. After wreaking the War of the Eight Saints, upon the Republic of Florence, Milan and the Republic of Siena, the Papal states were trying to figure out the path to the future.
The south was trying to do the same as Joan I of Naples, leading the Kingdom of Naples, looked to find an heir. She searched for somebody that would keep with her sense of peace, progress and so on, and was trying to arrange marriages. In the original timeline, the schism would've pushed her toward Avignon, and an un-guided Urban would've reacted poorly. In this timeline, Urban was already floating the idea of the Papal States joining Naples as a greater Kingdom of Italia. The succession, however, was a key stumbling point.

It was considered a miracle unto itself that Italy wasn’t in the throes of a major holy war. Despite Ricardian bibles being translated into Italian, well-distributed and eagerly consumed, there weren’t really any protests. Much of this peace was attributed to the moderating guidance of the Urban VI and Jesuit spiritual warrior. The Roman church was already leading the way with the Counter-Reformation, an actual reformation from within the church that was defusing a great deal of the ostensible anger against the Church.

Had the Counter-Reformation begun just five years prior, there was a strong chance the Protestant movement would have never blossomed as it did. As it were, Urban was encourage every divergent though to blossom – but keep them in the fold.

One of the few true Italian splinter groups were the Nontrinitarians, but the best they rated was a footnote. In Rome, at least, nobody seemed to care.

Elsewhere, splinter groups were arising almost every day, emboldened to *preach different*…

### **Rome Itself**

Back at Central Office, some movements were already looking to separate themselves from the Vatican. Largely, though, most movements simply wanted peaceful acknowledgement of their insights. Pope Urban was more than wiling to entertain their thoughts. With the elimination of the assumption of infallibility, his were no longer tied on maintaining connection to increasingly divergent philosophies, so long as the central tenet were still those laid down by Jesus the Anointed.

This alone was a miracle in tolerance that took humanity leaps forward in keeping the peace between divergent sects.

#### **The Unknowable**

From Wycliffe's own original specifics, and now everybody else's, there was a massive amount of metaphysical detail that was central to the religious arguments that the Church was acknowledging but downgrading in the same breath. Even in the face of divine miracles, like being able to consistently heal the sick, that was a particular pathway of energy that *still* didn't clarify certain desired answers or provide ethical ways to collect supporting evidence.

This included things like *transubstantiation**;* whether the bread and wine offered in the sacrifice of the sacrament of the Eucharist during Mass, become, in reality, the body and blood of Jesus, the Christ. Christians were literally killing each other over the nature of transubstantiation and *that had to stop*.

#### **The Complexity of Miracles**

The Jesuits had a line on channeling SNS power and a knowledge of Systemic Medicine, but that didn't necessarily confirm or preclude a hundred other religious mysteries that had some connection to what was interpreted as the magic of the Holy Spirit. It may have lent guidance, but didn't provide definitive answers.

## Executive Influence

For the Jesuits, achieving the consistent SNS channeling first was a key political victory. Now they were able to give weight to the own ethics, which emphasized compassion. While anyone could theoretically learn their technique, it was non-trivial and not obvious, giving them some measure of influence when others were looking to learn what they were teaching. That in itself was an ethical issue they wrestled with.

Therein was the "ineffable" portion of the miraculous, the reason for mysticism in belief and the foundations of epistemology: just like gunpowder could be produced and detonated without knowing the precise chemistry, neurologically-tuned energy could be actuated and utilized without knowing every contextual detail.

The SNS actuation meant different, even opposing, faiths could channel that divine energy. Some individuals might be better at certain aspects than others, and in that case, their faith (strength of conduit) and beliefs (efficiency of conduit) actually did play role in their power. It also meant that Rabbis and Imams could learn what the Jesuit priests knew, and so could shamans, bhikkhus and pujaris.

## **The Panic of the Archbishops**

The situation in Rome was dynamic but comparatively peaceful. It was spooky silent, in fact, as Urban VI preached temperance, tolerance and Christian guidance. It was something of a bubble as the Vatican separated itself from temporal conflicts.

In many of the Bishoprics, it was *all about the temporal conflicts.* After the May dictate of divestment, Archbishops (and splinter-cardinals) had taken the time to devise their strategies (few of which included short-term divestiture). There were calls from rivals to excommunicate those who didn't immediately abide, but Urban waved them off. They might require atonement, but he wasn't excommunicating anybody.

*That was the point*.

This was slightly more complicated than the schism had been in 1054, only because there were ecclesiastical differences now bubbling with a toxic mix of money and power.