The expansion of the Reformation in Europe

By the middle of the 16th century, Lutheranism had spread into the various principalities and kingdoms of northern Europe. The duchy of Württemberg, after the restoration of Duke Ulrich, adopted reform in 1534; its outstanding reformer was Johannes Brenz and its great centre Tübingen. Brandenburg, and its capital Berlin, embraced reform in 1539, and in that same year ducal Saxony, until then vehemently Catholic, changed sides. Elisabeth of Braunschweig also converted in 1539, but only after much turbulence did her faith prevail in the land. Albert of Prussia, whose wife was Danish and who was a member of the Polish Diet and grand master of the Teutonic Order, took a stand that was very significant for the north. He secularized the order and in 1525 acknowledged himself a Lutheran. In Scandinavia Denmark toyed with breaking with Rome as early as the 1520s, but it was not until 1539 that the Danish church became a national church with the king as the head and the clergy as leaders in matters of faith. Norway followed Denmark. The Diet of Västerås (1527) officially declared what had for some time been true, namely, that Sweden was an evangelical state. The outstanding Swedish reformers were the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri. Finland, under Swedish rule, followed suit. The reformer there was Mikael Agricola, called “the father of written Finnish.” The Baltic states of Livonia and Estonia were officially Lutheran in 1554. Austria under the Habsburgs provided no state support for the evangelical movement, which nevertheless gained adherents. In Moravia, as noted earlier, the Hutterites established their colonies under tolerant magnates.

The reform movement also spread into eastern Europe. Poland, though remaining predominantly Roman Catholic, acquired a large Protestant minority in the late 16th century, when the Danzig area and its German Lutheran population came under Polish control, and when a large contingent of the Bohemian Brethren migrated to Poland after the Habsburg ruler attempted their extermination. Several Polish nobles adopted their pacifism and wore only swords made of wood. In 1570 the anti-Trinitarian Socinians, named after their leader Faustus Socinus, flocked from Italy to Poland where they received asylum, perhaps merely because they were Italian, from the Italian queen of Poland, Bona Sforza. They flourished in Poland until dispersed by the Counter-Reformation and survived in small groups until the 19th century. Much more extensive was the Calvinist influx not only into Poland but into the whole of eastern Europe. This variety of Protestantism appealed to those of non-German stock because it was not German and no longer markedly French, as well as because of its revolutionary temper and republican sentiments. The Compact of Warsaw (1573) called the Pax Dissidentium (“The Peace of Those Who Differ”), granted toleration to Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Bohemian Brethren, but not to the Socinians.

In Hungary, the Turkish victory at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 brought about a division of the land into three sections, with the northwest ruled by the Habsburg Ferdinand, the eastern province of Transylvania under Zápolya, and the area of Buda under the Turks. Even before this date Lutheran ideas had made slight inroads in the German and Magyar sections of Hungary. Although Roman Catholicism would predominate among the Hungarian population, Calvinism made gains, and the anti-Trinitarians found a permanent home in Transylvania. The weakness of the government and the diversity of religion in this whole area made for a large degree of toleration.

On the other hand, the Reformation gained no lasting hold in Spain or Italy. In Spain this was primarily the result of the conflicts of the previous century, when Christians strove to achieve political, cultural, and religious unification by converting or expelling the unbelievers—the Jews and the Moors. The Inquisition was introduced in 1482 to root out all remnants of Jewish practice among the Marranos, the Jewish converts to Christianity. The non-Christian Jews were expelled in 1492. Then Granada fell and the same process was applied to the Moriscos, the Moorish converts, and the unconverted Moors, after a century, also were expelled. Because the process had thus far been successful, the pressures were relaxed, and Spain enjoyed a decade of Erasmian liberalism in the 1520s. But with the infiltration of Lutheranism, the machinery of repression again was brought into force.

In Italy sectarian and heretical movements had proliferated throughout the Middle Ages. But one by one they had been crushed or absorbed by the church. Furthermore, the Reformation failed to take hold in Italy because of the tradition of moral preaching by the friars. Another consideration was that the new religious orders—the Capuchins, Theatines, and Jesuits—tapped into currents of popular spirituality while gaining papal favour. The new orders became a mighty force in counteracting Protestant infiltration, which nevertheless did take place. Venice was a centre, with its branch house of the Lutheran banking family of Fugger, and so was Lucca. At Naples the Spanish mystic Valdés, though not a Protestant, expounded a Catholic reformist piety, and some of his followers were attracted to the movements coming from beyond the Alps. Calvinism gained a hold, but the Roman Inquisition, as above noted, was established in 1542, and those with Protestant leanings either made cloisters of their own hearts, went to the stake, or crossed the mountains into permanent exile. Ironically, the most radical theological views of the Reformation were those propounded by the Spanish and Italian anti-Trinitarians.