he will find this seed of pride within himself. – John Calvin
We know that riches and power always produce arrogance and a perverse confidence in men. Wars are not conceived in hamlets and villages, but the great cities collect the wood and kindle the fire, and the fire then spreads and sweeps over the whole land. – John Calvin
Social disorder is first and foremost disdain for the poor and oppression of the weak. – John Calvin
If you desire to have me as your pastor, correct the disorder of your lives ... Re-establish pure discipline. – John Calvin, to the Council of Geneva
The Good Samaritan, when he came upon the man who had fallen among thieves, did not ask him to what denomination he belonged. – Katherine Zell
List of Popes
| Innocent VIII | 1484–92 |
| Alexander VI | 1492–1503 |
| Pius III | 1503 |
| Julius II | 1503–13 |
| Leo X | 1513–21 |
| Hadrian VI | 1522–3 |
| Clement VII | 1523–34 |
| Paul III | 1534–49 |
| Julius III | 1550–5 |
| Marcellus II | 1555 |
| Paul IV | 1555–9 |
| Pius IV | 1559–65 |
| Saint Pius V | 1566–72 |
| Gregory XIII | 1572–85 |
| Sixtus V | 1585–90 |
Key Scottish Martyrdoms
ABOUT twenty Scots were burned to death for heresy during the period before the Scottish Reformation finally got under way in 1559. The exact number remains unknown. The three most significant deaths are those listed below. That of the 82-year-old Walter Myln was particularly counter-productive. All three died at St Andrews.
| Patrick Hamilton | February 1528 |
| George Wishart | March 1546 |
| Walter Myln | April 1558 |
The only recorded Catholic martyrdom in the Reformation era in Scotland came at the end of the period. Saint John Ogilvie was hanged (for treason) in Glasgow on 10 March 1615.
Some have claimed that the judicial execution of Mary Queen of Scots in England in 1587 made her a martyr for her faith.
Note on Contexts and Terms
THIS book is a survey of the European Reformation of the sixteenth century and its consequences. It is not intended to be a complete history of the Reformation. What happened in countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Ireland and Wales is barely touched on. The book deals mainly with Scotland, England, Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy, and to a much lesser extent Spain and its colonies in the Low Countries.
There is relatively little here about the threat of the Turks – a constant consideration for Western Europeans in that turbulent century. Suleiman the Magnificent was then the most powerful figure in the entire world, and it could be argued that the Turks saved the Reformation because the Holy Roman Emperor had to divert so much of his energy and effort to dealing with the threat from the East rather than with the Protestant revolt. And, if there is little about the Turks and the Muslim threat from the East, there is nothing at all in this book about the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Two very different places which are particularly important in our story are Wittenberg, the town in northern Germany which will always be associated with Luther, and Rome. Luther was a professor at Wittenberg’s new, and very small, university. It was then a minor town of between 2,000 and 3,000 people. Its main industry was the brewing of heavy beer, a product that Luther appreciated. Rome was, by contrast, a big and important city, more like Paris. It was teeming with life, a lot of it low, though it was not quite as decadent and dirty as Paris, which in the early sixteenth century was (in some ways literally) the cesspit of Europe.
Paris was the city, ironically, where the austere and prim young Calvin studied. It was a city famous throughout Europe for its prostitutes, who sometimes picked up their clients in Notre Dame Cathedral. Rome, too, had its prostitutes, its thieves and its gangsters; but two puritanical popes in the latter part of the sixteenth century did much to clean up the city. It had suffered a grievous shock to its self-esteem during the infamous Sack of 1527.
Much of the wonderful art which today adorns Rome is associated with the Counter-Reformation that began in earnest in the mid-sixteenth century. When the young monk Luther, very much a northern provincial, was sent to Rome in 1510, he travelled in high expectation but despaired of what he found: ignorance and immorality.
The word ‘Protestant’ dates from the second Diet of Speyer in 1529. But I use it in its general sense, meaning an adherent of reformed Christianity as opposed to an adherent of the Roman Church, which is also referred to as the old Church or the Catholic Church. I reckon it is reasonable to talk about Luther and his followers being Protestants in 1519, ten years before the term was actually coined.
The word ‘humanism’ is used, not in its contemporary sense but rather to describe the loose cerebral movement that straddled the late medieval period and the age of the Reformation. Humanists then were learned men who were critical of the state of the Church yet believed that reform and criticism should be restrained. They tended to be of sceptical, urbane disposition; the greatest humanist was Erasmus of Rotterdam. Such men were too sophisticated to go along with the crudity of a bludgeoning revolutionary like Luther.
‘Germany’ is used to describe what is more or less the Germany of today. In the sixteenth century, it was part of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by an elected emperor. Shortly after Luther’s Reformation began, Charles V was elected emperor. He was an earnest and decent man who presided over the Diet of Worms in 1521, where Luther made his great stand. Under the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the empire was formally divided between Roman Catholics and Lutherans.
Lutherans were, obviously enough, those Protestants who followed Luther. Later exponents of the reformed religion, such as Calvinists and Presbyterians, were generally known as belonging to the Reformed, as opposed to the Lutheran, Church. Protestantism had from the start a chronic fissile tendency.
‘Presbyterian’ describes a type of Reformed Church government that excludes bishops and emphasises the parity and equality of ministers. Knox’s Reformation in Scotland was not firmly Presbyterian; it became properly Presbyterian in its second phase, under Andrew Melville.
Finally, the word ‘Reformation’ is
