CHAPTER 16 LESSON 2

How can reform influence society and beliefs?

By permitting German states to choose between Catholicism and Lutheranism, the Peace of Augsburg officially ended Christian unity in the Holy Roman Empire. Previously, however, divisions had appeared within Protestantism. One of these new groups arose in Switzerland. 

Ulrich Zwingli was a priest in the Swiss city of Zürich. The city council of Zürich, strongly influenced by Zwingli, began to introduce religious reforms. All paintings and decorations were removed from the churches and replaced by whitewashed walls. A new church service consisting of Scripture reading, prayer, and sermons replaced the Catholic mass.

John Calvin was educated in his native France. As a reformer and convert to Protestantism, Calvin had fled his native France for the safety of Switzerland. In 1536 he published his Institutes of the Christian Religion, a summary of his understanding of Protestant thought. 

The English Reformation was rooted in politics. King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had a daughter, Mary. He wanted to have a male heir and to marry a new wife, Anne Boleyn. The pope was unwilling to annul the king’s marriage, so Henry turned to England’s highest church courts.

A Spanish nobleman, Ignatius of Loyola, founded the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. Pope Paul III recognized Loyola's small group of followers as a religious order in 1540. All Jesuits took a special vow of absolute obedience to the pope, making them an important instrument for papal policy.