ETYM French réformation, Latin reformatio.
The act of reforming; the state of being reformed.

A religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches.
Religious and political movement in 16th-century Europe to reform the Roman Catholic Church, which led to the establishment of Protestant churches. Anticipated from the 12th century by the Waldenses, Lollards, and Hussites, it was set off by German priest Martin Luther 1517, and became effective when the absolute monarchies gave it support by challenging the political power of the papacy and confiscating church wealth.
causes
In the early 16th century the Roman Catholic Church was in need of reform. The papacy had become an Italian political power, many of the higher clergy were concerned with worldly authority, and moral standards were low. With such an example, the parochial clergy showed little spirituality, and outside the universities clerical learning was meager and misdirected.
influence of the Renaissance
The Reformation owed much to the Renaissance spirit. Humanists were able to demonstrate that documents establishing papal supremacy were spurious, and, even more important, to provide the Bible in the original tongues. Thus from Erasmus's Greek New Testament (first edition 1516) the medieval theory of doing penance, given credit by the official Latin Vulgate, could be shown to have no foundation in Jesus' teaching. The Church Fathers could now be read in the light of this and for their own sake, rather than in the light of medieval scholasticism. The advent of the printing press was an important factor in the dissemination of Protestant belief.
Lutheranism
The Reformation began with the career of Martin Luther. As a priest, he found no forgiveness in acts of penitence or in confession, and began to study the Bible and to lecture on the Psalms (1513–15), Romans (1515–16), Galatians (1516–17), and Hebrews (1517–18). It seemed clear to him from Romans that righteousness was not attainable by good works or any endeavor, but was the gift of God. Luther publicly aired his views in the “Ninety-five Theses”, published on All Saints’ Day 1517, in which he attacked the practice of buying indulgences (paying money so that a soul, on Earth or in Purgatory, could receive forgiveness).
In the next few years it became clear that his criticism had a wider range. In 1520 he published his three greatest works. In the first, Address to the German Nobility, he attacked the authority of the pope and called on Germans to unite against papal exploitation and to reform the Church. In the second, On Christian Liberty, he expounded the nature of Christian faith. In the third, On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church, he rejected five of the contemporary seven sacraments, along with the doctrine of transubstantiation. The next year Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms to defend his views before Charles V, and was excommunicated, but a number of princes, including his own Duke Frederick of Saxony, supported him, and neither Charles nor the pope was strong enough to crush the movement.
In spite of the political vicissitudes of the next 30 years, Lutheranism, led by Luther and Philip Melanchthon, continued to spread. Finally, at the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, it was decided that it was for the prince to choose the religion of his principality, without coercion.
Switzerland
The Reformation in Switzerland began at Zürich in 1520, independently of Luther. Here too the immediate cause was the sale of indulgences. The leader was the humanist priest Ulrich Zwingli. In 1525 the mass was abolished, along with clerical celibacy and monasticism. The Reformation began in Bern also in about 1520, and in Basel when Luther's friend Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) arrived in 1522. At the Bern Disputation of 1528, the Ten Theses were accepted as representative of Swiss Reformed views.
In the following years Basel, Bern, and Geneva became the dominant cities of reform. Geneva expelled its bishop and established its political freedom in 1530. The preaching of Guillaume Farel led to the city espousing the Reformation in 1536. In that year, too, came the Frenchman Jean Calvin. The church government and discipline which he drew up became the model for French, Scottish, Dutch, and Puritan systems.
France
In France, Lutheran ideas were being discussed at the University of Paris by 1520. The reformers found an ally in Marguerite of Navarre, sister to King Francis, and for a time enjoyed toleration. Francis's successor, Henry II, however, set himself to extirpate the movement. That the Huguenots survived is in large measure due to Calvin's exertions in providing literature and ministers. By 1559 there were 50 organized churches. As persecution increased, submission waned, and gave place to conspiracy against the influential Guise family, leaders of the Catholic party, and then to war (1562). Peace was not finally restored until the Edict of Nantes (1598) gave liberty of conscience and worship to Huguenots.
England
In about 1520 a group of Cambridge theologians began to meet to study Luther’s writings. Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament (first edition 1526), with Luther’s own notes, spread these views to a wider audience. Reform was helped when Henry VIII made England independent of the pope in order to divorce Catherine of Aragon, and the new views became prominent when the reformer Thomas Cranmer was made Archbishop of Canterbury (1533). Though Henry introduced certain reforms, he later took a more conservative view, but two facts show his essential support for reformed views—his reliance on Cranmer, and his choice of a Protestant education for his son Edward. At Edward’s succession in 1547 Cranmer was able to go further in reform, with The First Book of Homilies 1547, Sternhold’s metrical psalms of 1547 and 1549, The Book of Common Prayer 1549, revised 1552, the Forty-two Articles, precursors of the Thirty-nine 1553, and a projected reform of canon law.
When Edward died in 1553, his Roman Catholic sister Mary succeeded, and many reformers fled abroad. Some leaders, including Cranmer, stayed at their posts, and were arrested. Retribution followed, and over 300 Protestants from all walks of life were burned, including Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, but Mary's attempt to return papal supremacy failed, and when her sister Elizabeth succeeded her in 1558, the restoration of Protestantism was welcomed. The resulting church settlement followed lines that Cranmer would have approved of. Those returning exiles who wanted to imitate Genevan discipline and practice found themselves in opposition. This spurred the growth of Puritanism.
Scotland
Lutheran writings reached Scotland through the east coast ports, where they began to arrive in the early 1520s. This stage is summed up in the life and death of Patrick Hamilton. He studied at Wittenberg under Luther, and his theses Patrick’s Places contain the pith of Luther’s views. In 1527 he returned home, and in 1528 was burned at St Andrews. His death showed that Protestant opinions were worth dying for, and gave an impetus to the new movement. Attempts at reform from within the Church were made in the 1540s and 1550s, notably by Archbishop Hamilton (1512–71), culminating in the councils of 1549 and 1550, but these failed to improve the state of the Kirk.
Reform had to come from a more dynamic quarter. George Wishart was the first Scot to come into contact with the Swiss reformers, who increasingly became the dominant influence, supplanting the earlier Lutheranism. The government’s fixed policy of repression was dependent on the “auld alliance” with France, and when this collapsed in 1559 the reformers, led by John Knox, were able to have their beliefs legalized. This was done in three documents of 1560— The Scots Confession, The Book of Common Order, and The First Book of Discipline— but in spite of acts of Parliament, the mass did not disappear. The total reform of the Kirk was perhaps not fully effected until 1690; only the foundation was laid in 1560.
elsewhere
In Sweden, Lutheran doctrines were officially accepted at the Diet of Westeras in 1527. In Denmark, though introduced in 1520, they were not finally adopted until 1546. Norway, Finland, and Iceland also became Lutheran. In all these countries Reformation was carried out with government aid, not in spite of it. In the Netherlands, Protestantism flourished from early days, surviving persecution by Charles V and Philip II. The northern states adopted Calvinism when they achieved independence. In Poland Protestantism was at one time influential, but the country was recovered for the papacy. A strong Bohemian Protestantism was largely wiped out in the Thirty Years' War. In Hungary a Protestant minority has survived. Protestant movements in Spain and Italy were totally eradicated by the Inquisition.
theology
The reformers did not question the patristic formulations of the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. The main issues they raised were authority, and justification by faith. The Reformation represents a return to the Bible not in the sense that it was not being read, but in the sense that the whole is interpreted as being understandable only from a standpoint of Pauline theology. Thus Luther calls Romans “a bright light, almost enough to illumine all Scripture”. Luther’s exposition of the faith, On Christian Liberty, is founded on the teaching on Law and Gospel in Romans, and Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, corresponding in outline to the four parts of the Creed, is at the same time a systematization of Scriptural doctrines. In accepting the principle “Scripture only”, they were objecting to the official teaching that tradition also is authoritative. But they were not doing this just because Renaissance investigation showed the conflicts and errors of accepted authorities. To the reformers
Scripture, the written Word of God, had its authority in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who was revealed in it. Since he was revealed there, tradition took a secondary place. Moreover, every Christian had the right to read and interpret the Bible. Understanding of Scripture depended on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The reformers reached this dependence on Pauline theology through their rejection of contemporary systems, in which the sinner assisted God in his own justification. What they discovered in Paul was a message that God’s grace is given in spite of the sinner, not because of his good works. From this came the distinctive Reformation slogan “by faith alone”. The man whom God chose was justified by faith, faith in God and in the death and resurrection of Christ. This faith was neither an assent to the truth of propositions, nor a sentiment of the mind, but was given and maintained by the Holy Spirit.
The question then arose: what of good works and ethical conduct? The answer was based on the Pauline dichotomy between the old and new man, the Law and the Gospel. The man whom God chose was simultaneously justified and a sinner, but his good deeds were not a balance to sin. He was justified by faith in the act of Christ: it was faith that made an act good, not the reverse.
This theology of grace is an interpretation of Paul from a similar standpoint to that of Augustine of Hippo. It thus presupposes first, that man is a sinner, that is, has no faith in God, and that this is inherited from the Fall; second, that man has lost the free-will to choose to secure God's righteousness; third, that every man is predestined by God to calling or rejection. From this springs the reformed doctrine of the Church. A true Church is one where the Word is truly preached and the Sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) are rightly administered. The visible Church has an admixture of hypocrites and nonbelievers; the true and invisible Church is known to God only.
It was from these beliefs that other Protestant beliefs came, and the rejection of Purgatory, veneration of the saints, indulgences, and the Mass.
points of disagreement
The most notable point of disagreement was over what theory should replace the doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass. The mass was considered by Roman Catholics to be a representation of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, in which the bread and wine essentially become the body and blood of Christ, while keeping their original outward appearance. This “transubstantiation” theory was based on an Aristotelian distinction between “substance” and “accidents”, and the reformers had no trouble in showing (1) that according to the New Testament Christ’s sacrifice cannot be repeated and (2) that transubstantiation was irrelevant and misleading. Luther maintained that both bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ were present together, “just as fire and iron are mingled in red-hot iron”. While Christ’s physical body was in Heaven, he was also ubiquitous, and could be present wherever he chose.
Zwingli totally rejected this, and quoted Jesus’ instruction “This do in remembrance of me”. To Zwingli the Eucharist was a reminder of what Christ did in the past, and Christ’s body was in no sense present in the elements. Calvin took the discussion a step further, by asking the questions “Why?” rather than “How?”. In the sacrament, the believer was united with Christ, and took the food and drink which would give him everlasting life. It was a present communion with Christ as well as a recollection of the past. As to how Christ is present, Calvin was content to say that “it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend or my words to express”. Ridley, the leading English thinker on the subject, emphasized the means by which Christ was made present, that it is by grace, and that it was by the Holy Spirit’s activity. He too emphasized the communion with Christ.
Visibly, the greatest disagreement was on Church polity. There were two views. First, that of Lutherans and Anglicans, that customs not contrary to Scripture were acceptable. Thus the episcopacy, wearing of vestments, keeping of saints’ days, and other ceremonies, even if not mentioned in the Bible, were in no way against the Gospel. They were “things indifferent”, to be observed according to present requirement. The view of Calvin, Knox, and English Puritans, was that only things laid down in the New Testament were to be performed. Silence did not indicate consent, and ritual was to be rejected as part of the old covenant. Thus the Calvinist form of Church government was based on what Calvin thought to be the New Testament form. Many things acceptable to Lutherans or Anglicans were explicitly forbidden, and use of the medieval vestments and many of the medieval ceremonies in divine worship were also abandoned as being opposed to reformed belief.
Other points of disagreement between reformers were less important. Within Christological orthodoxy there was room for variation between different schools. Thus Luther is more “Alexandrian”, Calvin more “Antiochene”. On the nature of the Atonement, Luther revived the “classic” New Testament theory that in dying Christ tricked the devil into defeat, setting man free, while Calvin followed the theory of Anselm that Christ died to satisfy God’s judgment and repay the debt man incurred in dishonoring God.